On Monday, September 9, NYU Steinhardt’s Verbatim Performance Lab (VPL) presented ‘The Democratic Field 2’, in collaboration with the Artists’ Literacies Institute (ALI) and the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI). The theatrical experiment, where actors performed anonymized policy statements on health care and climate change by ten leading Democratic candidates, was the second collaboration between VPL, ALI, and CSI in an effort to dis-integrate substance from the spectacle of the presidential primary contest.
Laura Cabochan, Jack Dod, Daryl Embry, Analisa Gutierrez, Carmen Meyers, Scott Michael Morales, Tammie Swopes, Ashley Thaxton-Stevenson, Robert Thaxton-Stevenson, Karl Williams joined the performance as actors.
Coming into the event, 12 audience members ranked Elizabeth Warren as their first choice, while 6 chose Bernie Sanders. Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg were the first choice of 2 participants, with Joe Biden being the first choice of 1 participant.
Following the performance, audience members voted for the anonymized candidates whom they thought delivered the best policy statements. Elizabeth Warren was still in the lead, but with only 8 votes this time, compared to 6 votes for Bernie Sanders. Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg secured 4, 3 and 2 votes respectively, while Kamala Harris and Cory Booker each won 1 vote.
An audience member said of the experiment: “Even the candidates I like, I couldn’t tell what their policy positions were.” “When you strip away the caricature, I like what I hear a lot more,” observed an actor.
Plans are in the works to repeat ‘The Democratic Field’ a third time, in advance of the next round of primary debates. Stay tuned for a date and more information!
Post by Sudaraka Ariyaratne