Donning and shedding a white medical coat, Anna Deavere Smith transformed herself from physician, to patient, to physician again as she illuminated the inner lives of those on both sides of the stethoscope in her one-woman theatrical piece "Rounding It Out" at the School of Medicine.

Winner of an Obie, a Drama Desk Award and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Award, Smith came to Yale as the Daniel James Memorial Visiting Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine. A playwright as well as an actor, Smith gained national attention for "On the Road: A Search for American Character," plays she created by interviewing ordinary people across America. She currently serves on the faculty of New York University.

Smith spent her first days at the Yale medical school interviewing nearly two dozen doctors, patients and their families. She then incorporated those conversations into her two performances of "Rounding It Out" -- the first presented for physicians, students and staff during Medical Grand Rounds on Nov. 16 in Fitkin Amphitheater; and the second staged for the University community and the general public the following day in Harkness Auditorium. The performances included the singers Suzzy Roche of the Roches and Lynette DuPre.

"The goal of her performance is to illustrate how better to hear what patients are saying and to help us gain a better understanding of the struggle patients, especially those from the lower socioeconomic group, go through in dealing with their illness," explains Dr. Asghar Rastegar, professor and associate chair for academic affairs.

In her show, Smith did deft impressions of many of the Yale physicians and patients she had met. One moment she was Dr. Gerald Friedland, clinical professor of epidemiology and public health and director of the AIDS program, explaining in a contained, frustrated voice that his patient was making it impossible to treat her because of her untruthfulness. The next minute Smith was the patient, talking about a childhood of sexual exploitation that made her distrust the world.

Smith also portrayed a very tired Dr. Forrester Lee, associate professor of internal medicine. As Lee, Smith explained how a young African-American patient awaiting a transplant believed there would be none for him because of his race and said, "I can't tell you the joy I felt when I could walk in the room and tell him there was a heart for him."

Ruth Katz, associate dean of administration at the medical school, spoke through Smith about her own illness and hospitalization. As medical resident Dr. Nancy Kim, Smith talked in a clipped voice about being a young, petite Asian woman in a doctors' world. The other Yale physicians Smith portrayed -- Dr. Barbara Burtness, associate professor of internal medicine and medical oncology, and Dr. Ralph Horwitz, the Harold H. Hines Jr. Professor and chair of internal medicine -- were recognizable immediately to the medical school community by their voices and mannerisms. This was especially true of her portrayal of Horwitz since Smith borrowed his trademark eyeglasses with the confetti frames for her show.

Horwitz, who is also associate chair of academic affairs, said that despite advances in medical technology, the heart of medicine remains the doctor-patient relationship. "That relationship is all about storytelling," he said. "We want our physicians to remember that they're part of their patients' stories."

Among the most poignant pieces in Smith's show were those about patients who were frightened, bewildered and confused: a grandfather, his body withering as he awaited a transplant; a young woman living an outwardly normal life overshadowed by her AIDS diagnosis; a woman diagnosed with multiple sclerosis unclear about when she would become debilitated.

"The artist," Smith said at one point, "creates a fiction to illuminate a truth."

Smith also noted that what struck her during the interviews with Yale patients was the randomness of illness. "You could (suddenly) get some information that is going to dramatically change your life -- change your identity, who you think you are," she said.

-- By Jacqueline Weaver

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