NYU Celebrates Constitution Day with Debut of Verbatim Performance Lab Piece

That’s Not a Partisan Feeling, That’s Patriotic portrays real-life interview subjects’ complex thoughts on the role of the U.S. president.

On September 18, NYU Steinhardt’s Verbatim Performance Lab (VPL) debuted its newest performance, That’s Not a Partisan Feeling, That’s Patriotic: A Portraits US Election 2024 Event, as part of NYU’s Constitution Day celebration.

The performance utilizes first-hand interviews about the perception of the responsibilities of the president of the United States from diverse individuals living and/or working in the U.S. as the primary source material, which are then performed word for word by VPL actors. After the September 18 performance, the VPL engaged the audience in a conversation about what they want from a President to generate a list of ideal qualities.

“That’s Not a Partisan Feeling offers audiences a compelling glimpse into the complexities of how people perceive the role of the presidency across the United States,” says Joe Salvatore, founder and director of the VPL, clinical professor of educational theatre, and vice chair for academic affairs in the Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions at Steinhardt. “We hope to encourage audience members to think back to that conversation and the qualities they are looking for in a President when they vote so they can see which candidate hits the right notes. That’s the kind of work the VPL does: asking folks to reflect on what they think and why they do, rather than tell them to think in one way or another.”

NYU-TV, an ongoing and important collaborator of VPL, recorded and live-streamed the performance. Several members of the Steinhardt community also participated as respondents; after watching the performance, they joined Salvatore on stage to discuss their thoughts about what they heard and experienced:

Isra Ali, Clinical Assistant Professor in Media, Culture, and Communication
Elisabeth King, Vice Dean, Faculty Affairs; Professor of International Education and Politics
Jonathan Nagler, Faculty Co-Director of the Center for Social Media and Politics; Professor of Politics at NYU Arts & Science; Affiliated Faculty at the Center for Data Science

Constitution Day Collaborations

Constitution Day is a nationwide commemoration of the signing of the U.S. Constitution on September 17, 1787, and recognizes all who are born in the U.S. or have become naturalized citizens. To honor the event, educational institutions that receive Federal funding, such as NYU, must hold educational programming for its students about the U.S. Constitution.

The VPL has provided the cornerstone of NYU’s Constitution Day activities in partnership with NYU’s John Brademas Center for the past six years. Prior performances include 2023’s We’re Not There Yet, which revisited the second confirmation hearing of Judge Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination in the wake of accusations of sexual harassment by Professor Anita Hill.

That’s Not a Partisan Feeling is also co-sponsored by Braver Angels, the largest grassroots organization working to bridge the partisan divide and find common ground between liberals and conservatives.

In addition to the Constitution Day performance at the Pless Hall Black Box Theatre, That’s Not a Partisan Feeling will be presented as a series of pop-up performances:

Thursday, September 26, 8 p.m. ET: Braver Angels will host an online version of the event.
Thursday, October 10, 5 p.m. ET: NYU Votes will co-sponsor an event on campus for NYU students.
Monday, October 21, 8 p.m. ET: Braver Angels will co-sponsor an event at Everything’s Jake.

Each of the performances will focus on different themes: time (with interviews taken from 2024, 2022, and 2020); geographical location (interviews from different states); ages; and political affiliations.

“Our goal is to try to get this piece to happen as many times as we can between now and the election in November, so we’re also working on developing it into a plug-and-play model that we can offer to folks across the country and internationally to do in their communities,” says Salvatore. “We’ve reached out to around 40 contacts who have worked with the VPL in the past—teachers, community organizations, and other higher education institutions—to offer this performance template. We have interest in partners all over the country—from Connecticut and Illinois to Hawaii and California—as well as abroad in Australia, Spain, and the Philippines.”

The VPL also hopes to be able to access the data from each post-performance poll so they can look at all of it holistically over time.

Steinhardt Marks 60th Anniversary of Free Speech Movement

NYU Steinhardt will host a range of events to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement—a semester-long student rebellion that erupted at the University of California, Berkeley, in the fall of 1964.