Titled House Arrest, the play ponders the American presidency through dozens of monologues. This time, however, Smith surrenders the spotlight to other actors, stepping in only as narrator and to portray two people, Clinton and oral historian Studs Terkel. Smith's use of interviews is often compared to journalism. Smith, who shuns scripts and studies her lines by ear, believes that our true character, our humanity, emerges only when we abandon formal language for the messy patterns of spontaneous speech. Imagine a jazz singer who scats and trills, swooping through the musical scale before coming back and restating the motif.
People vocally underline their words, throw parts of their speech into italics.
Or trip over their thoughts in awe or in anger, blaring like a trumpet. Or their voices become staccato, like percussion. Start by imagining one voice. Then imagine 30, and it becomes operatic. Smith's plays, like most operas, are passionate stories about clashing emotions.