Verbatim Performance Lab

Our most recent experiment, The Inauguration Project, focused on how audiences engage with a president’s inauguration speech when the president’s identity is unknown. We took excerpts from five inaugurals since 1969 and had actors who are different-bodied than the presidents who delivered them perform them verbatim for an audience. We then invited the audience to guess which president was speaking. We conducted this performance experiment in New York City, Washington, DC, and Austin, Texas, with slight variations each time. One theme emerged: the decoupling of the president’s identity from the speech allowed the audience to hear the similarities between the presidents and their messages rather than their partisan differences. 

Listen to full interview

Analysts say Trump faces risks heightened by gender when he debates Harris

As Donald Trump prepares to debate Kamala Harris, analysts warn that gender dynamics raise the stakes, with Trump risking backlash if he appears aggressive or bullying. Harris, as a Black woman, faces her own challenge of balancing assertiveness with likability. Past incidents, like Trump’s 2016 behavior toward Hillary Clinton, serve as warnings. NYU professor Joe Salvatore, who co-led a gender-swapped reenactment of a Clinton-Trump debate, was surprised that viewers found the female Trump “strong” and “concise,” revealing that gender can shape voter perceptions in unexpected ways.

Read full article

During the December 2023 congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, three female university presidents—Liz Magill (Penn), Claudine Gay (Harvard), and Sally Kornbluth (MIT)—faced intense scrutiny, prompting questions about whether gender influenced their treatment. While officials denied bias, critics pointed to moments like Rep. Glenn Grothman’s reference to Magill as “the gal from Penn” and the disproportionate backlash that followed. NYU professor Joe Salvatore noted that reactions to Magill’s composure, such as her smiling under pressure, reflected how women are socially conditioned to navigate high-stakes situations differently—and are often judged more harshly for it.

Read full article

Ahead of the 2022 midterms, NYU professor Joe Salvatore launched Whatever You Are, Be a Good One, an interactive performance using real interviews to explore political and social divides. Performed by students in the Verbatim Performance Lab, the show invites audience participation and aims to build empathy through personal stories. “We’re going to find that folks are a little closer together,” Salvatore said, challenging the idea that Americans are as polarized as media and politics suggest.

Read full article

Drama teachers often attempt to create documentary theatre with their students but without the necessary structure and framework. The Verbatim Performance Lab (VPL) creates verbatim documentary theatre performances that disrupt political, cultural, and social narratives using existing cultural media and interviews as a site of inquiry. VPL offers a specific methodology of theatre-making to schools that guides youth through the process of devising their own original interview-based verbatim documentary theatre performances. This article outlines the pedagogical methods VPL implements with students through this process of arts-based inquiry and articulates three key innovations identified through the experience of creating work with youth.

Read Full Article