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BRITNEY SPEARS FOR PRESIDENT (2008)
a pop culture disaster
written and directed by John J. Caswell, Jr.
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all photos courtesy Leslie Rugg
WHAT IT'S "ABOUT"
Meet Cheryl and Steve, a drop dead gorgeous couple that is heavy on looks and light on brains. Cheryl and Steve are hopelessly addicted to everything pop culture and function in a vacuum that is sealed by an unquenchable thirst for celebrity perfection. Cheryl dreams of changing her name to Angelina and Steve's name to Brad. Together, Cheryl and Steve rename themselves Brad and Britney (Cheryl compromises and gives up on Angelina) and they set out on a quest for pop culture saturation which includes the adoption of foreign babies, unrelenting bouts of exercise and bulimia, repetitive plastic surgeries to correct non-existent problems, and a never ending addiction to tabloid magazines. Along the way they are joined by Britney Spears and her dance crew, a villainous Madonna who wants to take over the world, and many other recognizable faces.
DIRECTOR'S NOTES
While developing Britney Spears For President over the course of the past six months, I found myself overcome by an incessant fear that Spears would somehow recover from her non-stop slew of negative press. It isn't something that I am particularly proud of, but a comeback and descent from Crazytown were the last things I wanted to see our pop princess go through... at least not until AFTER my show had opened and closed. Surely if she was doing well we wouldn't be able to laugh at her and the carefully constructed media spectacle that surrounds her. Well, it turns out that we can. In fact, our ability to laugh at Spears is fueled by the very knowledge that this temporary recovery in character will only lead to the next intricately planned ploy to burn her celebrity into the retinas of our pop culture perception. By the time this prints, she is likely to have had another baby or possibly have shaved off her... eyebrows.
Of course, we have to assume that all of Britney's antics are products of mental instability. Surely her PR people wouldn't sit down with her and plan the destruction of public image in order to establish the upward room for a comeback! In the world of celebrity, it seems there is a ceiling to fame and once that ceiling is reached, the celebrity either disappears into Gary Coleman obscurity OR falls from grace only to be resurrected once more.
Pop culture and celebrity are so very fleeting. So why produce a show about it? Art, like celebrity, has a seemingly requisite and over-achieving desire to be remembered, canonical, enduring, and vital to a culture's progression. Art and its creators want nothing more than to be recollected as benefactors of the future through the lasting antiquity of something that can be repeated, reproduced, and recalled. Many artists won't admit this but very few of us carry forth our vision without thinking about our potential legacy. Like today's celebrities, it is impossible to tell which artistic moments, figures, and works will be added to the world's history of performative influence and importance. Likewise, certain elements of yesterday's, today's, and tomorrow's pop culture story might endure but their impact won't be fully felt or realized for a very long time.
It is the goal of most creators of new theatrical pieces to see their work endure. Britney Spears For President won't endure. It can't endure. The very material it is based on dooms the show to certain death at the hands of a fickle society that leaves today's pop culture for tomorrow's without warning. Fast forward. It's the year 2075. We are all sitting with one another in a theater watching a revival of Britney Spears For President. You and I, the products of a generation(s), are the only ones who may be able to vaguely recollect the cotton candy world of today's pop landscape. As a matter of fact, Britney Spears For President probably couldn't be performed next year.
We do this piece to position ourselves in the unavoidable state of popular culture as we know it... now... today. Tomorrow is a different story. Britney Spears For President will die quickly. It will have a short life. I find it personally satisfying and simultaneously disturbing to employ the use of an art form that offers so much potential for creating enduring text to develop and deliver a piece that we know ahead of time will have no place on stages hundreds of years from now. That truth is painfully pleasurable and like popular culture, our efforts will appear briefly, flourish for an audience that knows about now... today... this moment... and then it will retreat into obscurity as the next Britney Spears takes her throne.
JOHN CASWELL, JR. Founding Artistic Director
CAST
Emily Pelzer, Dane de Bruin, Jannese Davidson, Kyle Wills, Kate Kugler, Jamie Sandomire, and Alex Raines
PRODUCTION TEAM
WRITER AND DIRECTOR: John Caswell, Jr.
PRODUCTION STAGE MANAGER: Candy Brayer
LIGHTING DESIGNER: Wolfram Ott
MEDIA: Christopher Peterson
COSTUME DESIGN: Teresa Kopaz
SOUND DESIGN: John Caswell, Jr.
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