POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive Tickets

The woes of one dutiful, all-female staff are on satirical display in the new comedy, POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. No one wants a PR nightmare, but when it’s the president? Scandals can’t get any bigger. In the new comedy POTUS, see seven women bend backward to fix one idiotic man’s blunder.

In the play, the fictionalized Commander-in-Chief finds himself in hot water for publicly calling his wife a “See You Next Tuesday.” Who’s going to clean up that mess? Women. In this searingly funny Broadway hit, Fillinger traces how seven women of dramatically different backgrounds mitigate the damage done by male arrogance and political posturing, which ultimately is a brassy homage to the women who keep things running behind the scenes.

What to Watch For

• The New York Times noted, in the play’s Broadway debut, how “POTUS lets us experience the double-bind of exceptional women unmediated by the men who depend on their complicity,” and the Washington Post called the show a mix between Veep and Saturday Night Live.
• Margot Bordelon directs the play, which makes its D.C. debut this fall. Bordelon has experience directing hilarious pieces that track smart women in a world that refuses to see their intellect, including in Wives by Jaclyn Backhaus in New York City. Playwright Selina Fillinger has also developed projects nationwide, including at Roundabout Theatre, Manhattan Theatre Club, McCarter Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the Old Globe Theatre.
• Set on the Potomac River in Southwest Washington, D.C., Arena Stage is near the Navy Yard, many museums, and two miles from the White House. The theatre is in a quieter part of town; there are also plenty of restaurants along the waterfront to explore photos of D.C. landmarks to snap before or after a show.