“Twilight: Los Angeles”:

Docudrama. Written and performed by Anna Deavere Smith. Directed by Marc Levin. (One hour, 27 minutes.) Available to stream at www.pbs.org through June 8, 2021.

seems to lie slack except for one invisible, askew clothespin holding it up. A third seems to have a bubble in the back of the throat, as if the body itself scruples to speak.

Sometimes you might think you see Smith herself sneaking through to comment on her characters as she performs them — a glint in the eye, a corner of the mouth creeping upward. But just as often, the transformation is total. In those moments — when a Korean immigrant asks why a loved one had to die — the enormity, the thorniness, the impossibility of it all hits you. Each of these characters is speaking perfectly reasonably, given their life, their background. And yet none of them can see the whole thing; everyone’s lens has myopia, distortion.

“I want to talk differently than I talk,” Smith says. “It’s not that interesting for me to perform people who are just like me.

“The way that I’m working is a response against psychological realism, which is this belief that I live in every character. I understand I’m very different from every single person I’m performing. I’m chasing that which is not me. I know I could never be it. It’s more like singing a song. I’m hitting the notes.

“Every once in a while — when I can’t expect it; it has nothing to do with my mind — that person’s words knock on the door of my unconscious. And it’s kind of scary sometimes when I’m on stage, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I did have an experience kind of like this!'”

Lily Janiak is The San Francisco Chronicle’s theater critic. Email: ljaniak@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @LilyJaniak