The Kavanaugh Files: Gender, Gesture, and the Making of a Supreme Court Justice
108 West Third Street New York ,10012 (view map)
The Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Network and the Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging at NYU Law, together with the Verbatim Performance Lab at NYU Steinhardt, present The Kavanaugh Files, a verbatim performance of key moments from the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of fall 2018. Performers present the original words, gestures, and disfluencies of the real-life people, and in most cases, the genders have been inverted — women perform the roles that men had in the real hearings, and men perform the women. The Kavanaugh Files asks viewers to consider how our perception of a person’s behavior is influenced by their gender, and how that impact the ways in which we respond to national events.
Post-Performance Discussion
Melissa Murray, Frederick I. and Grace Stokes Professor of Law; Faculty Director, Birnbaum Women's Leadership Network
Joe Salvatore, Clinical Associate Professor, NYU Steinhardt; Director, Verbatim Performance Lab
This program is co-sponsored by the American Constitution Society student chapter at NYU Law, BALSA, LaLSA, Law Women, and the Women of Color Collective.
The Kavanaugh Files was conceived by Verbatim Performance Lab (VPL), a project of NYU Steinhardt's Program in Educational Theatre. 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.