HER OPPONENT Reframes 2016 Presidential Debates with Gender-Reversed Casting at NYU

Could experiencing what the two U.S. presidential candidates said and how they said it during the three 2016 presidential debates -- but with the genders inverted -- cause people to revisit their own personal biases and develop insights or a different perspective?

"Her Opponent," an ethnodramatic re-staging of excerpts of the 2016 presidential debates with gender-reversed casting will explore this concept through performances at the Provincetown Playhouse on Saturday, January 28, 2017, at 8 pm and 9:30 pm.

The experimental performance replicating the actual text, gestures, and movements of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump from the three 2016 presidential debates was conceived and created by Maria Guadalupe (INSEAD Business school, France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi), Andrew Freiband (Rhode Island School of Design), and Joe Salvatore (NYU Steinhardt). “Her Opponent” features eatures actors Daryl Embry, Rachel Whorton, and Andy Wagner, with costumes by Marion Talan and hair design by Troy Beard.

After watching the first and second presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Guadalupe had the idea to explore the double standards that exist in gendered styles of communication between men and women by enlisting an actor and actress to learn and perform sections of each of the three debates verbatim, but with the actor learning the text, gestures, and movements of Hillary Clinton and the actress learning the text, gestures, and movements of Donald Trump.

Guadalupe, an economist and associate professor in the economics and political science department at INSEAD, said: "Many commented before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election how much gender was an issue in our perception of the two candidates. Would we feel the same about Donald Trump if he were a woman and about Secretary Clinton if she were a man? Is there anything in the way when they expressed themselves that make us like them more or less just because of their gender? This work is an attempt at answering those questions through experiencing the two characters with genders reversed."

Guadalupe contacted Joe Salvatore, a playwright and director and clinical associate professor of educational theatre at NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development who specializes in ethnodrama, a method of adapting interviews, field notes, journals entries, and print/ media artifacts, like the debates, into a script to be performed as a play - sometimes referred to as "reality theatre." Salvatore assisted in developing the presentation, finding appropriate performers, and coaching them in the necessary techniques to create the verbatim performances.

"The theatrical re-staging gives us the opportunity to try on what certain gestures and speech patterns feel like and sound like when we switch the genders. Each new person who's come into our rehearsal process and experiences the switch for the first time has had a similar response. It's one of surprise followed by reflection and the need to talk about what they've just experienced. That's what we want to happen for our audiences," said Salvatore.

Salvatore also contacted Freiband, a filmmaker, media artist, and faculty member in the Department of Film/Animation/Video at Rhode Island School of Design to join the project, as Freiband studies ways of enabling artists to work more directly in the study of complex systems and the comprehension of human decision-making.

The live performance is the first stage of a multiphase project; the collaborators will also create a recorded version that will feature a shot-for-shot video reproduction of the debates, layered with multiple channels of qualitative metadata, such as vocal pitch and gestures. The collaborators intend for the video to be used as an educational tool in classrooms throughout the world to help uncover un- or subconscious perceptual biases.

A public dialogue will follow the January 28 live performances, with audience members providing their responses to the experience. The performances will take place at the historic Provincetown Playhouse (133 MacDougal Street between West 3rd and West 4th Streets) at 8 pm and 9:30 pm.

Admission for the event is free and open to the public. Reservations are required and can be made at heropponent.brownpapertickets.com. The performances will also be streamed live here.