When pop princess Britney Spears received a GLAAD award in April last year for her continued efforts in promoting equality for LGBTQIA people she said, “to be accepted unconditionally and to be able to express yourself as an individual through art is such a blessing”. In return for her ongoing support, she’s gained an extremely devoted queer following. Sometimes scary devoted.
How far will her fans go to meet her? Melbourne-based artist, writer, director and filmmaker Alberto Di Troia exposes the realities behind Britney’s rhinestone-covered legacy in his upcoming show Truly Madly Britney, a part of this year’s Midsumma Festival.
Adam and Steve – pun intended – are boyfriends, Savage Garden doppelgängers and die-hard Britney fans. After their Vegas meet-and-greet tickets are inexplicably cancelled, they embark on a tour of the holy sites associated with her iconic 2007 breakdown – confronting their own relationship issues along the way.
“It was kind of coming out of my own obsession with Britney Spears and her 2007 breakdown,” Di Troia says. “I was aware that a lot of other gay men, like myself, were fascinated with it.”
After an intensive workshop at MTC in early 2018, the play will have its premiere at Theatre Works in St. Kilda. Di Troia is thrilled that the show has found its home at Melbourne’s annual queer festival.
“It means that it’s in the context of something that it needs to be and will reach the audiences that it needs to reach.”
He says the show definitely isn’t sanitised for a wider audience; instead, it's decidedly queer. It’s packed with dark and twisted humour, burgers, morphine, vomit, guns, sex and mistaken identity.
“It focuses specifically on the queer experience and I guess you could say the gay male experience, in a way that I think a lot of plays don’t,” Di Troia says. “A lot of plays make that experience palatable for mainstream audiences.”
Di Troia hopes to pay tribute to a woman close to many of our hearts; even if Britney's position of power and pop diva status might sometimes be a little bit of a mystery.
“Queer people potentially love an icon who has an experienced suffering, and getting through that, and pulling through. And the fact that she overcame her breakdown and has risen as this legendary popstar, I guess, is something that a lot of queer people respond to,” Di Troia says.
He wants his audience to think more deeply about pop and celebrity culture. “While everything might be glossy and happy, and people singing and dancing, what you get underneath is something like what happened to Britney in 2007, which is exploitation and violence, and mutual dependency and a lot of abuse. So, the idea was to peel back the shiny surface,” Di Troia says.
Britney has become the kind of icon you can interpret however you desire. “She kind of means everything and nothing at the same time. She’s a way for people to project whatever they want onto her and not.”
Di Troia hopes to entertain audiences – the show itself is a little like a Britney concert – and says that Truly Madly Britney will add “to a greater conversation about queer experiences in narrative”. And if Brit Brit has taught us anything in life, it’s to accept and embrace our own individuality.
Truly Madly Britney is at Theatre Works from January 20 to February 9.