Fires in the Mirror,  a one woman show, offers verbatim stories about the tension and violence in Crown Heights in 1991 between the Jewish and Black communities.

The play, at Long Wharf Theatre, runs from January 15- February 6, 2022. Rabbi Immerman will facilitate post-show discussions about race and the intersection of race and Judaism on the following nights and we hope that our CMI community will join him!

Tickets available through the Long Wharf box office. 

• Tuesday, January 25 at 7:00pm

• Wednesday, January 26 at 2:00pm

• Saturday, Feburary 5 at 7:00pm

About the  Show:

In 1991, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, an Hasidic man’s car jumped a curb, killing Gavin Cato, a seven-year-old Black child. Later, in what appears to have been an act of retaliation on the part of a faction of the black community, Yankel Rosenbaum, an Hasidic rabbinical student, was stabbed and killed. The ensuing riots that wracked Crown Heights’ previous atmosphere of tolerance for its divergent cultures made national headlines and pointed to the growing friction in racial and cultural relations across America. 

Drawing verbatim from a series of over fifty interviews with Crown Heights’ residents, politicians, activists, religious leaders, gangs, street dwellers, victims, and perpetrators alike, Anna Deavere Smith’s Fires in the Mirror is a theatrical event distilling the lives and voices of twenty-six of the incident’s survivors into a visionary amalgam, the import of which touches upon every American regardless of race, color, or beliefs.