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An article in the Fall 2025 issue of The Carthaginian magazine celebrated a decade of Carthage’s . Read about how an experiment in 2015 has had a lasting impact on students and the community.

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Ten years ago, when Carthage theatre professor Martin McClendon wanted to bring the true stories of U.S. service members to the stage, he looked for a script and discovered that none existed. So he recruited Laurel McKenzie ’16 to interview veterans and write her own play.

Drawn entirely from those first-person accounts, “Afghanistan/Wisconsin” premiered on campus in fall 2015 and toured the state. Rather than a one-off production, it blossomed into Carthage’s highly successful Verbatim Theatre Project.

Over the past decade, Carthage verbatim plays have explored weighty themes like racial justice, women in the military, homelessness, religious trauma, and burnout among healthcare workers. Each time, students conduct hours of interviews and distill those stories into powerful scripts.

This documentary-style theatrical format gives voice to stories that would otherwise go untold and leaves a lasting impact on everyone involved. Brimming with authenticity, these original productions showcase theatre’s ability to do more than simply entertain.

“Drama is what’s happening all around us,” says Prof. McClendon. “Positioned at the intersection of life and art, verbatim theatre has the potential to not only move hearts but change minds.”

Therapeutic Salve

Leah Gawel Keller ’19, M.M. ’21, was cast in “Frontline,” a verbatim play that Carthage produced live in October 2022 to highlight the challenges healthcare workers confronted during the COVID-19 pandemic. That transformative experience continues to prove valuable as she pursues a Master of Divinity at Harvard University.

For a required M.Div. creative project, Ms. Keller decided to use verbatim theatre techniques to tell the stories of individuals who have experienced religious trauma. “Broken Covenant” debuted in August 2024 with a staged reading at Carthage, and she’s now fine-tuning the work into a capstone project for her master’s program.

These projects showed her that verbatim theatre can generate healing and community among people who previously suffered alone. As she reflects on scars inflicted by her strict religious upbringing, Ms. Keller says “working on the script helped me reconcile my own experiences.”

Aspiring playwright Katie Layendecker ’25 was deeply involved in two verbatim plays during her time at Carthage. The first began the summer after her freshman year, when she teamed with Rayven Craft ’23 on the “Kenosha Verbatim Project” first performed on campus as a one-night-only staged reading in May 2023.

Rooted in personal accounts from the city’s summer of racial unrest in 2020, their poignant script won the national Rosa Parks Playwriting Award — one of several accolades the verbatim works have earned in the Kennedy Center’s annual American College Theater Festival.

“It is crazy to say that I’m an awardwinning playwright,” says Ms. Layendecker, who credits the project and Prof. McClendon for shaping her career path.

She also co-wrote and acted in “Terminal Exhale,” the ninth and most recent installment in the Verbatim Theatre Project, which premiered with sold-out shows at the Wartburg Theatre in March. Derived from 28 hours of recorded interviews, it focuses on gun violence through the eyes of healthcare workers who treat the victims.

Beyond the Stage

Heavy on each playwright’s mind is a sensitivity to tell the stories of trauma without exploiting the storytellers. Dr. Kellie Snooks, a pediatric critical care physician in Milwaukee, welcomed the “space of empathy” that the interviewers created.

“Seeing my personal story and the stories of my colleagues treating patients with firearm injuries portrayed on the stage was truly amazing,” she says. “Sadly, I had already treated so many firearm injury patients since that interview, I had forgotten some of the stories I shared.”

Carthage took “Terminal Exhale” on the road, staging it for staff at the Medical College of Wisconsin. The performance captivated Dr. Snooks and her fellow healthcare professionals.

“We hope to see this production and message spread beyond Carthage,” she adds, “because it is truly that powerful.”

The interest spawned a daylong interprofessional seminar that the Theatre, Nursing, and Social Work departments co-sponsored with three advocacy groups: Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort, Everytown for Gun Safety, and the 80% Coalition.. “Healing the Healers” drew more than 50 visitors to campus for sessions that explored recovery from trauma due to gun violence, the impact on America’s youth population, and effective public policy.

Ten years in, the Verbatim Theatre Project is entrenched as part of a dynamic original theatre scene at Carthage. It complements the renowned New Play Initiative, which annually brings in a different playwright to collaborate with students on a more traditional dramatic script.

These firsthand perspectives still speak to Prof. McClendon, who believes they can open minds and illuminate our shared humanity.