2025/2026 Guild Hall Teen Arts Council with NYU Professor Joe Salvatore. Photo: Kayla Matters for Guild Hall
Don’t You Know How to Make Your Own Coffee?
Presented by the Guild Hall Teen Arts Council
Presented by the Guild Hall Teen Arts Council
Documentary theatre meets community storytelling in this original Verbatim Theatre piece created by the Guild Hall Teen Arts Council (GHTAC). Rooted in the ethnodramatic practice pioneered by Anna Deavere Smith, this newly devised work brings real interviews to the stage—performed word for word and gesture for gesture—honoring the authentic voices of the Hamptons community.
Over the past three months, GHTAC members have explored the rising cost of living in the Hamptons as their central research focus. Through interviews with local community leaders and residents, students examined how affordability shapes daily life, work, and belonging, and questioned who gets to live and work in the region today. The project was developed in collaboration with Professor Joe Salvatore, creator of NYU’s Verbatim Performance Lab and author of Creating Ethnodrama: A Theatrical Approach to Research, who guided students in transforming research into performance.
This public presentation marks the culmination of GHTAC’s ethnodrama unit and invites the community to experience a timely, thoughtful portrait of life in the Hamptons—told entirely in the words of those who live it.
Sponsors
The Guild Hall Teen Arts Council is sponsored by the Meringoff Family Foundation, and an anonymous donor.
Learning + New Works programs are supported in part by funding from Bobbie Braun -The Neuwirth Foundation, the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Endowment Fund, The Melville Straus Family Endowment, and additional support by Collegiate Gateway.
Additional support provided by Friends of Learning + New Works: Toni and Seth Bernstein, Julie Raynor Gross, Stephanie Joyce and Jim Vos, S. Kutler Foundation, N. Glickberg, D. Glickberg, and J. Abrahams, and Barbara Toll.