WIT seeks creative team for POTUS Among Us 2024

Play a part in creating America’s future! This is an open call for ideas and leadership to helm POTUS Among Us, Washington Improv Theater’s quadrennial presidential election satire. 2024’s edition will be staged at Studio Theatre in September and October of 2024.

What is POTUS Among Us?

Every presidential election year since 2004, POTUS has presented an improvised presidential election campaign show, complete with a wide-ranging slate of absurd candidates. The show has traditionally ended with an audience that elects the next president. 

Each iteration of POTUS has featured a unique format and a different take on the electoral process. In 2012 focused on the media, 2016 explored the influence of money in elections, and 2020’s pandemic-era all-virtual production explored improvised storytelling through social media, Zoom-based improv, and more.

POTUS has also historically been WIT’s most audience-immersive show. In addition to the final audience vote, POTUS has let audiences question the candidates, play decisive roles in the story, and more. The audience can be “reframed” throughout the show, as a rally audience for one candidate one moment, as an off-the-rails PTA meeting the next. On occasion, audience members have even ended up on the presidential ticket.

Do you have a vision for POTUS 2024?

WIT seeks a director or creative team to devise a new concept for the sixth iteration of POTUS. Nothing about this production is set in stone at this point—the creative direction, the casting, even the name of the show itself. If you’ve had an idea for POTUS that you’ve been dying to try for years, or if this is the first you’ve heard of this show, please consider pitching.

The director or creative team will be in charge of:

• Creating a concept under the supervision of the Artistic/Executive Director
• Casting the show and running auditions (ideally open-call auditions with a set pre-requisite)
• Running rehearsals
• Assisting the WIT team in developing marketing content and strategies for the show
• Working with production manager to define and execute the technical and production aspects of the show

How to be considered:

We are requesting loose pitches/proposals. Depending on submissions and follow-up conversations, a single pitch may be selected or we may (anonymously) survey the top ideas to see if there’s one that the performer community is most excited about. Drop an email with subject line “POTUS Pitch” to Mark Chalfant, WIT’s Artistic/Executive Director, at mark@witdc.org addressing the questions below. Filing deadline for proposals is April 20, 2024.

Application questions

• What’s your pitch? What would you want your production to focus on especially?

• What is the audience experience you dream of creating? When an audience member is leaving the show, you would want to overhear them saying “That was _____________________________”?

• Can you tell us about any experience you have helming creative group projects?

• Do you have any specific casting ideas/targets?

• How do you imagine leading this project? As a sole director? With a co-director? With an assistant-director?

• Do you have any other collaborators already identified who are interested in doing this project with you?

• Do you have any sense of what lights, set, costume elements you may want for this production?

• Do you have any schedule conflicts in the period June through October that may take you away from this project?