VERBATIM PERFORMANCE LAB
Photo by Nora Lambert, NYU-TV
Created and directed by Joe Salvatore, the Verbatim Performance Lab (VPL) investigates and performs words and gestures collected from found media artifacts and interview-based data. Through these investigations, VPL disrupts assumptions, biases, and intolerances across a spectrum of political, cultural, and social narratives.
VPL’s original projects include Portraits US: COVID-19 and Election 2020, You Can't Unring the Bell, The Democratic Field 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and Iowa (with Artists' Literacies Institute), Guess the Candidate, The Serena Williams Project, The Kavanaugh Files (staged version at Geva Theatre Center, NYU, & NYU Law), The Veterans Story Collecting Project (Johnson County, KS), No(body) but nobody, The Grab 'Em Tapes, The Moore / Jones Challenge, The Lauer / Conway Flip, and Of a Certain Age (with The Actors Fund). School-based performance projects include The Act(ion) Project (Chapin School, NYC) and Boxed Out (Bentley School, multiple venues in CA and 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival).
The Verbatim Performance Lab is a project of NYU Steinhardt’s Program in Educational Theatre.
ADDITIONAL PROJECTS
Her Opponent
A verbatim re-staging of excerpts of the 2016 U.S. Presidential debates with gender-reversed casting.
III
Explores the fifteen-year relationship between the photographer George Platt Lynes, the writer Glenway Wescott, and the MoMA curator and publisher, Monroe Wheeler.
Of a Certain Age
A verbatim documentary theatre play exploring the experiences of performing artists over the age of 65.
GA(Y)ZE
A collaboration with Toronto-based scenographer and installation artist Troy Hourie and choreographer Caleb Teicher, tackling the world of gay male “cruising” in the early 1900s compared to contemporary times.