Sarah Gets Presidential in "Guess the Candidate"

In late January, I worked with Joe Salvatore, Keith Huff, and the Verbatim Performance Lab on their latest new media project, "Guess the Candidate." Click the graphic to play the game and find out which candidate I performed!

Guess the Candidate is an online game featuring actors performing policy statements on education from 8 Democratic presidential hopefuls from the 2020 election cycle. The actors perform the policy statements in tight verbatim and loose verbatim.

The user has the option to choose an easier version of the game (tight) or a more difficult version of the game (loose). In both cases, the actor has studied and learned the exact speech and gestural patterns of the candidate’s delivery of their policy statement. In the tight verbatim version, the actor performs the policy statement as close to the original speaker as possible. In the loose verbatim version, the actor follows the speech and gestural pattern of the original, but performs in their own voice and body.

Guess the Candidate asks the user to consider the following question: Can you recognize a candidate when their message is separated from their identity?