NYU’s Verbatim Performance Lab, in conjunction with the Artists Literacies Institute (NYC) and Mirror Box Theatre (Cedar Rapids), presented a public performance of The Democratic Field on February 2, 2020, just one day prior to the Iowa Caucus. The performance is part verbatim theatre, part social experiment. Ten local actors trained with VPL the day before, and then performed transcripts of interviews and policy statements given by ten Democratic candidates. The experiment tested whether or not audience members could separate a candidates policy from the public performance of the political candidate as a person — each actor was simply presented as “Candidate A” and so on down the line through “Candidate J.” The actors were unaware of which candidate they were playing, and simply read from a scored script which dictated cadence and rate. The performance explored the extent to which different bodies, genders, and races of the actors performing the words of another affected the way in which those words were received by the audience.
The performance in and of itself was quite remarkable, but the real magic happened in between the readings of candidate remarks and after the performance itself in which the audience cast their votes for the candidate they felt strongest about. The standout moment for me happened during the talkback when one of the 100 or so guests reported that he was absolutely, vehemently opposed to electing another billionaire to office, and confessed that he was shocked that he had voted for both Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer. Elizabeth Warren took home the win for the overall election, which was not the result of the caucus itself.
The takeaway for me was that we as a society need to do a better job of checking our own biases and preferences, and instead should focus on the words and policies of the individuals running for office. As an artist, the experience was an incredible boon to my own practice. I am passionate about using community based arts practices to help restore civic dialogue, and this performance demonstrated exactly what that looks like. The play is golden, but the real magic happens afterwards, and that’s what I want to create more of.
Post by Daniel Leeman Smith