By Barbara S. Miller

Staff writer

bmiller@observer-reporter.com

UPPER ST. CLAIR - Weighty topics such as political analysis, physics or foreign policy are the stuff of many a Town Hall South lecture, but not in December.

In an annual departure from the usual subject matter, subscribers to the series sponsored by Westminster Presbyterian Church have been entertained by singers, musicians, or as on Tuesday, an actress, Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright and professor Anna Deavere Smith.

Her presentation of a half-dozen monologues had its lighter moments, but she dealt with serious material, such as a Hispanic teenager serving time for drive-by murder; former Texas Gov. Ann Richards coping with cancer treatments; and the director of an African orphanage reflecting on the death of a young resident.

Smith called the interviews with her characterizations, "verbal pictures I've been taking."

Wearing a red-lined black shirt and using no props, she occasionally referred to a folder on her lectern.

Smith grew up in Baltimore, in what she called "a segregated Southern city," but she wanted to know more about other cultures.

"I'm so happy to be livin' in a country now that's mixed up more. I would like to see it mixed up even more," she said.

In introducing the monologue of convicted juvenile killer Veronica Torres, Smith also talked about hope: "One of the things people talk about is a happy ending," she said. "Hope is not a happy ending. Hope looks outside and says, 'It doesn't look good at all, but I'm going to make a leap of faith.'"

Smith, 58, who formerly taught at Carnegie Mellon University, is in the current film, "Rachel Getting Married." She has appeared on television in "The West Wing" and had a recurring role in "The Practice."

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