Join us as we bring together 50 voices from interviews collected across the geographical United States and political affiliations about polarization.

Each performance features 5 actors performing a randomized selection of those interviews that the audience helps to select each time.

Are we as divided as the media would like us to believe? Can our geographical location predict what our politics are? Is there more that connects us, than separates us?

We invite you to come engage, dialogue, and witness with us in this theatrical experience where you might be surprised by what you discover about yourself and this continuing experiment that we call the United States of America. 

An Interactive Performance

Whatever You Are, Be a Good One is an interactive performance which encourages the audience to respond to a range of questions in real time. Each performance features five actors performing a randomized selection of interview excerpts that the audience helps to choose. Because of the randomization at each performance, a new combination of interviews is presented each time. 

In many cases, the actors will perform across identity, meaning they portray a person of a different race, gender, gender identity, age, or political affiliation. This casting serves two purposes. First, it allows the actor to investigate and potentially empathize with the lived experience of another. And second, the casting choice may not meet the audience’s expectations and heightens an audience’s awareness and understanding of the content of a participant’s response. 

During the performance, the audience will be polled about their thoughts and opinions as they experience the different interview excerpts. The polling data will then help to catalyze an audience discussion at each performance. 

About the Verbatim Performance Lab at NYU Steinhardt

Based in the Program in Educational Theatre at New York University’s Steinhardt School, VPL’s mission is to disrupt assumptions, biases, and intolerances across a spectrum of political, cultural, and social narratives. Meaning that we believe that verbatim performance helps viewers identify the effects of how someone communicates a message, understanding that how someone says something is just as important as what they say.

As theater makers, we characterize our work as verbatim documentary theater and use different forms of cultural media in our creative process. Examples of our source materials include interviews, videos, court documents, letters, newspaper articles, and various primary and secondary source documents. Within an academic context, our work can also be called arts-based research and ethnodrama. For more detailed information, video clips and interactive activities go to the VPL website: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/verbatimperformancelab 

What is "Verbatim Performance"?

We define verbatim performance as the precise portrayal of an actual person using their exact speech and gestural patterns as a data source for investigation, literally “word for word” & “gesture for gesture.”

In VPL’s approach to verbatim performance, actors frequently, but not always, perform across identity, meaning they portray a person of a different race, gender, gender identity, age, or political affiliation. This casting serves two purposes. First, it allows the actor to investigate and potentially empathize with the lived experience of another. And second, the casting choice may not meet the audience’s expectations and so heightens an audience’s awareness and understanding of the content of a participant’s response. 

Verbatim Performance Activity

The performance you will see is based on interviews with people from around the United States. The participants were interviewed by VPL team members and student researchers from NYU using an interview protocol that included 11 prompts. Their answers to those prompts were then transcribed, and select portions of the resulting transcripts will be portrayed by actors during the performance:

Below are three of the eleven prompts:

What issue do you think Americans could unite around and what would it take to bring them together? 

If you could ask a politician running for national office any single question, what would you ask them and why?

What right is essential to the democracy of the United States and what is the biggest threat to it?

• In pairs, interview a partner using one or more of the questions. Really engage with your partner and listen actively without interrupting or making any comments when your partner is answering the question. 

• While you are listening to your partner, choose one section of their answer that you think is most illuminating and try to write down, or memorize one sentence or short phrase that stood out for you when listening to your partner.  

• Once both partners have had the opportunity to be interviewed, ask for a few of the interviewers to portray a small portion of the interview they conducted. Encourage them to try to portray a section of their partner's interview using the gestures, facial expressions, and vocal patterns of their partner. Remind them that this is not an impersonation but rather an attempt to respectfully portray what their partner stated during their interview. 

• Provide opportunities to reflect on the interviewing process and to discuss how participants felt being portrayed. 

Town Hall Activity: "Make a Choice"

A Town Hall meeting is traditionally an “all hands on meeting” with a purpose to bridge some kind of communication gap. Town Hall meetings originated from meetings held by politicians and legislators in local town halls or other designated venues such as libraries and sports centers. One of the primary goals of a Town Hall is to provide community members the opportunity to express divergent opinions. The following activity provides a fun, yet at the same time challenging, method for allowing students to express a strong opinion and justify that opinion without fear of debate or disagreement. 

The ‘Make A Choice’ Activity:

If you have space, this activity works best when participants can move from one side of the room to the other to physically identify their choice. However, participants can also do this in chairs and just remain standing or sitting to physically identify their decision. 

• Provide students with a question that has two distinct options. Start very easy. For example VANILLA or CHOCOLATE. Explain to the community that they must make a choice. They cannot say both. They cannot say I don’t like either. On this day, at this moment they must make a choice and move to the side of the room that represents that choice. A few participants are then given the opportunity to justify/explain their decision. Participants are not allowed to comment on any other participants' justification for their choice. 

• Continue with a few more easy choices. For example: SUMMER/WINTER, PIZZA/HOT DOG, NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES, RED/BLUE.

• In preparation for this activity prepare some questions that are specific to your community setting. In an English class these could be about authors, genres, etc. In a Drama class it could be about acting styles, theatrical genres, etc. 

• Finally, and again this would depend on your specific context, formulate a few thought provoking political questions if you feel that it is appropriate for your community. For example, you could ask students to identify which right they think is most important: FREEDOM OF SPEECH/FREEDOM OF RELIGION, FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY/FREEDOM OF PRESS. These are suggestions. It is vital that any questions utilized are appropriate to the age and educational context of the community taking part in the activity. 

• It is vital that the facilitator of the activity comes prepared with a long list of choice questions. However, it is also fun to offer community members taking part in the activity the opportunity to suggest choice questions.  

• Finally, this activity is about making a strong choice in the moment and being able to justify that point even if you feel half/half about your choice. Keeping to this strict rule will elicit thoughtful, interesting and fun classroom discussion. 

Whatever You Are, Be a Good One Activity: Exploring Disagreement

One of the interview prompts posed during the pre-production research was:

Describe the last time you engaged in a conversation with someone who you disagree with politically.

Using this question as a starting point, the following activities provide examples of how your community could engage with this question prior to attending the performance. 

Drama: Ask the community to create, in groups, a short 2-3 minute scene based on a real life incident where one member of the group encountered a situation where they disagreed with someone. It does not have to be a political disagreement. Provide the groups the opportunity to perform the scenes. 

Then, using principles of Forum Theater, allow the group to perform the scene again, but this time allow the community to stop and start the scene and provide suggestions on how the characters in the scene could work more effectively towards understanding each other’s point of view and listening effectively to each other. The group members performing the scene would then recreate the scene using the community's suggestions. 

Social Studies: Using your particular curriculum as inspiration, encourage students to examine the differing points of view of two famous historical figures. For example Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Explore the similarities and differences of their world views and work towards focusing on the similarities and how these figures might have worked together effectively. Consider staging a mock debate between the two historical figures where the community suggests rhetoric that supports listening and empathy rather than division and conflict. 

English: In pairs, encourage students to write a short persuasive letter or speech to a politician, teacher, parent or school administrator about an issue where the students have a differing opinion from the politician, teacher, parent, or school administrator. Encourage the students to consider what language, structure, and techniques could be used to bridge the divide and to hopefully, if not convince the other, make the other potentially empathize with the letter writers’ point of view. 

Whatever You Are, Be a Good One is an interactive performance which encourages the audience to respond to a range of questions in real time. Each performance features five actors performing a randomized selection of interview excerpts that the audience helps to choose. Because of the randomization at each performance, a new combination of interviews is presented each time. 

During the performance, the audience will be polled about their thoughts and opinions as they experience the different interview excerpts. The polling data will then help to catalyze an audience discussion at each performance. 

Virtual Attendance Question Suggestions:

1. Provide your community the opportunity to answer one question after each section of the performance at the same time as the in-person audience is voting and share some responses in real time.  

2. Provide your community the opportunity to answer questions privately and then share responses in the suggested post-performance Town Hall.

What regions of the United States was this person from at the time of their interview?

What age/age range is this person?

How does this person identify politically?

How much do you agree or disagree with this person?

How likely would you be to grab a coffee or drink with this person?

How often do you engage in a conversation like the one you just experienced?

Verbatim Performance: Exploring an Interview Transcript

Provide the opportunity for your community to discover and explore the transcript that inspired the title of the show. 

To support this activity you will find a Scored Transcript Resource linked here that includes: 

1. The scored transcript that inspired the title of the show

2. A description of how VPL utilizes transcripts to build a performance

3. Definition of flat transcript

4. Definition of scored transcript

Activities to consider:

1. Start by providing community members the opportunity to read the transcript two or three times to themselves individually in total silence. Ensure that nobody in the community speaks the transcript out loud at this point. 

2. Once the community has read the transcript in silence, ask the community to comment on the form and structure of the transcript:

How is this different from the standard paragraph or script format that we are accustomed to as readers and/or actors? 

What impact do they think this format might have on their speech patterns and delivery of the text when they finally read it out loud?

3. Next, provide the opportunity for community members to find a spot in the room where they can sit by themselves and quietly read the transcript outloud to themselves two or three times. Once the community has had the opportunity to do this, ask them what they noted when they read the transcript out loud to themselves: 

Did it sound how they expected it to sound after the initial silent reading? 

Did they discover anything new about Angel through reading the transcript out loud to themselves? 

4. Organize the community into pairs. Provide each person in the pair the opportunity to read the transcript out loud to their partner. Once each participant has had the opportunity to read the transcript out loud to their partner, ask them to consider: 

How similar/different were the pairs readings/portrayals?

What was the impact of the format of the scored transcript on their delivery? 

Did the scored transcript encourage a different type of delivery/reading than a traditional script format where the actor potentially has more freedom to incorporate their own ideas about speech patterns and vocal cadences?

5. Provide the pairs one final opportunity to read the text out loud to their partners. However this time explain to the community that one of the primary rules of transcribing a scored transcript, as practiced by VPL, is that the transcriber must hit a hard-return (ie: start a new line of text) to indicate every time the recorded speaker pauses or has some sort of break in their speech or thought pattern. Taking this into account, encourage the community to focus on the pause or break at the end of each line of the scored transcript as they read the script out loud to their partner.  

Once each participant has had the opportunity to read the transcript out loud to their partner, ask them to consider:

What impact did focusing on the break/pause at the end of each line have on their delivery?

Did it change their portrayal? 

Did they learn anything new about Angel?

6. Finally, explain to the community that the next step in the process for the VPL actor would be to listen repeatedly to the recordings of the transcript as a means of portraying and representing the cadences and speech patterns of the recorded person as accurately and realistically as possible. 

Town Hall: Moderated Discussion

Provide the opportunity for your community to take part in a post-performance Town Hall.

Rather than this just being a standard post-show class discussion, formalize the structure, format and questions. Consider having a moderator, an interviewer/host and assigning speakers with clearly defined time limits. Think about how the Town Hall might be set up in your classroom. Is there a podium, microphone? Do speakers have the opportunity to debate their point of view and then provide a rebuttal? Encourage the use of the political debate format (90 seconds or less to answer a question, moderator can ask a follow up question, 60 seconds or less response, etc.) to promote more critical, deeper thinking. 

Most importantly ensure that the students are answering very specific questions set by the Town Hall moderator. These questions should be submitted to the students prior to the Town Hall so they can come prepared with their answers.

Consider starting the Town Hall with a question that is adapted from the play’s central research question:

Do you think this production can help overcome some of the polarization currently taking place in the United States?

Then move onto some of the questions considered by the live audience during the performance:

• Could you identify the regions of the United States where interview participants were from?

• Which of these participants did you agree with?

• Was there a participant you would be happy to grab a coffee with?

• How often do you engage in conversations like the ones you just experienced in the performance?

• Were you able to empathize with a different point of view as a result of one of the participants’s stories?

Finally, the community could consider more generalized questions about the theatrical aesthetics of the performance:

• Did you enjoy the performance? Why or why not?

• Did you prefer the monologues or conversations where the monologues were mixed together? 

• Did the portrayals make you discover biases or prejudices towards certain groups of people that you didn’t realize you held?

Whatever You Are, Be a Good One: Considering the Title

Having watched the production and listened to all the personal testimonies, encourage your community to engage imaginatively with the title of the play - Whatever You Are, Be a Good One. Consider why this title was chosen by the creative team, and more importantly, what does it mean for the individual and for your local community?

Drama: Encourage your community to create an improvised or scripted scene/monologue based on the title/theme: Whatever You Are, Be A Good One (the transcript that inspired the title is linked here). What might this look like for your community? What does being good mean for your specific community?

The community could also explore the transcript that inspired the performance’s title. Community members could perform portions of the transcript, create scenes inspired by the transcript or create a biographical performance sketch based on the transcript. 

Finally, your community members could research scenes from famous plays that they feel connect to the title/theme of the performance. Provide opportunities for research, rehearsal and presentation of the scenes with a post performance discussion examining why the group felt the scene they chose connected to the title/theme of the performance. For example, Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman. Is he a good father, friend, husband, salesman, community member? 

Social Studies: Encourage your community to engage with the title of the performance through comparisons of famous historical figures or famous historical events. Whatever these figures or events were, were they ‘good’ ones? It is a complex and contradictory question which has the potential to elicit fascinating critical thinking skills. Organize a classroom debate comparing and contrasting historical figures/events and asking: Whatever they were… Were they a good one?  In addition, consider encouraging your community to create a community engaged project  proposal that they present to the community that explores something ‘good’ that they could do for the local community. 

English: Encourage your community to complete a creative writing project exploring the title of the performance as inspiration. Provide the community the opportunity to read out loud the transcript that inspired the title of the show. Allow the project to include any genre that interests the community: Letter, Story, Script, Newspaper Article, Blog, Online Video, Poem. Allow them to explore all creative options as they engage with the title/theme of the show. Provide an opportunity for this to be solo, pair or group work. The primary remit of the project should be for the community to engage personally with what being a ‘good’ means for them as individuals. 

SCORED TRANSCRIPT RESOURCE for post-performance transcript activity

Verbatim Performance Lab website

NYU press release for Whatever You Are, Be a Good One

See more of our work on the Verbatim Performance Lab YouTube channel

Whatever You Are, Be a Good One is a production of the Verbatim Performance Lab and Program in Educational Theatre at New York University. This Performance Engagement Guide was created by Davor Golub and Saya Jenks. Performance Engagement Guide website design by Saya Jenks.  

Performance credits:

Created by Joe Salvatore & Keith R. Huff

Director: Keith R. Huff

Acting Ensemble: Averil Carr, Kayla Matters, Beth Weiss, Michael Roberts, Daniel Teutul, Noah Jackson, Devin Joyner, Ran Zhu, Jessamyn Fitzpatrick, Topaz Gao

Director: Keith R. Huff

Actor Coaching: Lauren Gorelov, Ryan Howland, Tammie L. Swopes

Production Stage Manager: Alicia Cabrera

Dramaturg: Sarah Bellantoni

Video Designer: Adam J. Thompson

Lighting Designer: Daryl Embry

Costume Coordinator: Márion Talán de la Rosa

Sound Designer: Ernesto Valenzuela

Education Coordinator: Davor Golub

Community Engagement Coordinator: Saya Jenks