Join the discussion and contact me for more information on performance opportunities in your area. Please see News and Upcoming Events for exciting updates on this performance.
TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE
In 2021, I created the verbatim documentary play, Two Truths and a Lie, to address how verbatim documentary theatre can serve as a springboard for dialogue regarding perceived truths around the 2016 and 2020 elections. This new verbatim documentary interlaces my connection with four of the women I interviewed in 2019 about their experienes around the 2016 election and incorporating the game, Two Truths and a Lie to engage audience discussion around bias and perceived truth. The play emerged from a ten day playwright retreat at the Hundredth Hill Artist Residency and was performed in Bloomington, Indiana in the summer of 2021. This article aims to unpack and chronicle my experience in creating and performing this new work by narrowing in on the project’s methodology with excerpts from the script, performance and post-show discussion reflections, and future outcomes.
This play recieved a 2023 PSC CUNY Research Grant and will be performed in four cities in the US: Seattle, WA, Phoenix, AZ, Bloomington, IN, and New York, NY with support from the League of Women Voters. The play will be presented at the 2023 American Alliance for Theatre Education Conference on July 28, 2023 in Seattle, WA.
I would love to hear more about your experience in attending Two Truths and a Lie. Please consider this anonymous Google form to share your thoughts.
https://forms.gle/zraJjLhH1eS2kDZ46
DIVIDED WE STAND
This project used qualitative interviews from women in New York, NY and Phoenix, AZ to create a verbatim documentary play that explores the following research questions:
- How have the attitudes and experiences of women been affected by the 2016 election?
- What issues would women be willing to come together for and what might this look like?
- How can theatre aid in illustrating empathy between divided women today?
This project aims to create a theatricalized space for conversations that are not happening today, a space that places women’s voices directly in dialogue. In this project, I explored my research questions by creating a new verbatim documentary play and presenting two staged readings, one in each respective city, to further the development of the play.
Phoenix, AZ Reading: January 30, 2020 at 6:30 PM ASU Performing and Media Arts Center APMA 131 Film Studio 970 E. University Dr., Tempe, AZ 85281 Supported by the Verbatim Performance Lab and the Bridge Initiative: Women+ in Theatre
New York City Reading: January 14, 2020 at 6:30 PM New York University, Pless Hall, 1st Floor Lounge 82 Washington Square East New York, NY 10003 Supported by the Verbatim Performance Lab
This project used qualitative interviews from women in New York, NY and Phoenix, AZ to create a verbatim documentary play that explores the following research questions:
- How have the attitudes and experiences of women been affected by the 2016 election?
- What issues would women be willing to come together for and what might this look like?
- How can theatre aid in illustrating empathy between divided women today?
This project aims to create a theatricalized space for conversations that are not happening today, a space that places women’s voices directly in dialogue. In this project, I explored my research questions by creating a new verbatim documentary play and presenting two staged readings, one in each respective city, to further the development of the play.
Play published in ArtsPraxis, July 2021 in Volume 8, Issue 1.
In this issue, our contributors have reflected on their diverse practices, many of which fall under or draw upon trauma-informed and healing centered practices. In Divided We Stand, Carmen Meyers uses verbatim documentary theatre to investigate how women in the U.S. negotiated and maintained their identities and relationships in today’s climate of political polarization.