Could You Match Inaugural Address Quotes to the Presidents Who Spoke Them?

President Reagan stands behind a podium inside the Capitol Rotunda for his 1985 inauguration — Ronald Reagan delivers his second inaugural address on Jan. 21, 1985.

Five undergraduate students from NYU Washington, DC took turns at the podium, reading segments of presidential inaugural addresses that outlined visions of future prosperity, the promise of democracy, and America’s primacy in the world order.

The twist? Neither the students nor the audience knew the identity of the original orators. That anonymity led to a thoughtful discussion about perceptions and biases and the gap between what we think we hear and what’s actually being said.

“What happens when the words of Bill Clinton come from a young man from Pakistan? How do we respond when a young woman speaks the words of Donald Trump? What does that do to us?” asked Joe Salvatore, the producer of The Inauguration Project and founder and director of the Verbatim Performance Lab (VPL), a project based in the Program in Educational Theatre at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

“When the audience experiences the speech in the voice and body of someone else, it allows them to question how they are responding, and gets them talking about why they perceive things the way they do,” he added.

Joe Salvatore, Kimberly Cheng, and Patrick McSweeney sit onstage for a post-performance discussion — Joe Salvatore, left, leads a post-performance discussion with Kimberly Cheng, assistant director for Academic Affairs at NYU Washington, DC, and Patrick McSweeney, an adjunct professor.

Each student read two excerpts from an address, and then the audience was asked to guess five speakers’ identities using an online survey. Once the survey results were shared, Salvatore was joined by Kimberly Cheng, assistant director for Academic Affairs at NYU Washington, DC, and adjunct professor Patrick McSweeney for a group discussion.

The fall event was the latest version of The Inauguration Project from VPL, a troupe that uses exact speech and gestural patterns from interviews and public appearances—such as debates and hearings—to disrupt biases, perceptions, and assumptions. The 2016 presidential debates and Supreme Court confirmation hearings also served as the foundation for investigations. Coinciding with the 2024 presidential election, VPL conducted interviews about what Americans wanted in a president, and used that research in performance.

The project, which commemorates the 100th anniversary of the first radio broadcast of a United States president’s inaugural address (Calvin Coolidge in 1925), takes on greater significance with the inaugurations this month of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill. The performances were hosted by the John Brademas Center at NYU, the university’s home for informed and civil debate on politics and public policy.

When the audience experiences the speech in the voice and body of someone else, it allows them to question how they are responding, and gets them talking about why they perceive things the way they do.

Joe Salvatore, Clinical Professor and Director, Educational Theatre and Vice Chair for Academic Affairs

When researching the speeches, Salvatore and his team noticed recurring patterns in the addresses, and selected excerpts that highlighted them. This caused some amusing mix-ups in the survey responses and led to a rich discussion afterwards.

“The second group of excerpts were all about American exceptionalism, and they do sound very similar,” Salvatore said. “That was an intentional choice, because I wanted to wrestle with the idea that these speeches have a function, but it was never imagined that anyone else would deliver them. We’re literally putting them into someone else’s mouth and body.”

During the post-performance discussion, McSweeney, a Georgetown University researcher who teaches a course on the American presidency at NYU Washington, DC, noted the similarities of the rhetoric, including the use of confident language about America’s strength and the innovation of defining moments of history.

Four VPL student performers standing with letters connecting their performance to the choice on the audience survey. — Student performers hold up the letter corresponding to the as-yet-unidentified president they portrayed. Audience members completed surveys on which they'd be most likely to vote for based on their speeches, and got to guess who was who.

“After a long and often bitter election, the inaugural address lets the president shift from campaigning to governing. It’s meant to speak to the whole country, which is why these speeches rely on unifying themes and broadly shared values,” McSweeney said. “They’re also global messages, signaling how the new president views America’s place in the world.”

“The experience helps the listener be more attentive to what they are hearing. In our current political moment we find it difficult to listen to the other side. Without seeing these presidents, we are able to approach their words with more of a clean slate,” he added.

Kari Miller, NYU Washington, DC’s program director, has worked with VPL for two years and is continuing the collaboration.

“Not only is Joe Salvatore’s technique innovative and creative, it is a unique way to engage students, faculty, and the community in the art of learning through listening and dialogue,” she said. “Each show is a combination of research presentation, thoughtful listening, and public discourse. Bringing VPL to perform recent projects in the nation’s capital is a lasting resource to our educational community and Washington, DC as a whole. Our students enjoy being the voices that bring the work alive in front of a community audience.”

President Bill Clinton delivers his second inaugural address. — Bill Clinton delivers his second inaugural address.

When The Inauguration Project was performed in New York City, VPL hired professional actors who memorized their segments and performed them twice, with the second performance including the specific vocal patterns and gestures of the original speaker. A wide majority of the audience correctly identified Nixon and Trump, and just over half were correct on Obama. But a majority thought Clinton’s Southern drawl belonged to Jimmy Carter, and only 25 percent identified Ronald Reagan correctly (about a third voted for Ford and another third for Joe Biden).

In DC, where the speeches were delivered by non-theatre students coached by Salvatore, the politically astute audience picked up on the historical clues in the excerpts, such as Nixon’s reference to the “four wars in this century” and Reagan’s nod to being indoors (because of extreme cold in 1985).

The DC crowd guessed correctly on all five.