Measuring a Verbatim Effect with High School Students 12 Hours Away and across the World by

Abstract

Three recently-graduated Chinese-International high school students and their American theater teacher engage in reflective analysis on their digital verbatim performances of American presidential politicians in If You Wanna Switch Seats, We Could, produced by the Verbatim Performance Lab at NYU Steinhardt’s Program in Educational Theatre (2021). In Part One, the context and conditions of the project are outlined. In Part Two, the students engage in reflective analysis on their participation. In Part Three, the teacher synthesizes the students’ insights using pedagogical analysis and reflective practice. In Part Four, a “Verbatim Effect” is measured to consider the impact of the project. The following takeaways are noted:

1) Political verbatim performance allowed the students to exercise emotional release from mounting international tension; however, this release could not be realized through caricature. Instead, catharsis was found in the innate aesthetic conflict of the performance. 2) As a discipline, verbatim performance demanded that the students consider the precise details of their characters, which created a tension between requirements and choices. 3) This mode of performance allowed the students to analyze and interpret political events that were directly impacting their lives.