POTUS on Broadway Tickets

By: Selina Fillinger Director: Susan Stroman Cast list: Lilli Cooper (as Chris), Lea DeLaria (as Bernadette), Rachel Dratch (as Stephanie), Julianne Hough (as Dusty), Suzy Nakamura (as Jean), Julie White (as Harriet), Vanessa Williams (as Margaret) Design: Beowulf Boritt Lighting: Sonoyo Nishikawa Costume: Linda Cho Sound: Jessica Paz Other info: Hair and wig Design by Cookie Jordan, intimacy and fight direction by Rocio Mendez

Get a rare glimpse into the internal operations of the White House in POTUS, which sees seven women risk their "life, liberty, and the pursuit of sanity" as they're tasked with wrangling a problematic president. Get POTUS tickets on TodayTix.

The POTUS play has a full title of POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, which should give you an idea of the farcical nature of Selina Fillinger's new show. The play's seven characters are the women in an unnamed U.S. president's inner circle. When the president commits a public relations disaster that snowballs into an international crisis, it's up to those exasperated, beleaguered women to do damage control. As usual.

POTUS marks five-time Tony winner Susan Stroman's inaugural gig as a Broadway play director; she's best known for directing and choreographing musicals like Contact, Show Boat, Crazy for You, and The Producers (all of which won her awards). The show is also Fillinger's inaugural Broadway show as a playwright; her play Something Clean appeared off Broadway at Roundabout Theatre Company in 2019.

See the Shubert Theatre transform into the most madcap version of the White House you've ever seen at POTUS on Broadway. Get tickets to POTUS in New York on TodayTix now.

What to Watch For

• Though the play is called POTUS, the president in question never actually appears on stage. Fillinger said in a New York Times article that this is because she didn't want to give undeserved attention to the character of a man who abuses power, and focus fully on the women affected instead.
• Fillinger got the idea for the play in 2016, leading some to believe that the unseen POTUS is supposed to stand in for a specific president. However, she's said that's not true; the character can represent any man who abuses a position of power. It just so happened that the #MeToo movement gained traction about a year after Fillinger started work on the show, making the idea even more relevant.
• Fillinger's previous Off-Broadway play, Something Clean, has ties to the #MeToo movement, too. That play, about a mother whose life turns on its head after her son commits an assault, was inspired in part by the trial of Brock Turner. Like in POTUS, the offending man is not a character on stage.
• Multiple famous faces are making their Broadway debuts in POTUS, including Emmy-winning Dancing with the Stars pro and judge Julianne Hough, actress/comedian Suzy Nakamura, and longtime Saturday Night Live star Rachel Dratch. It's especially fitting that Dratch is making her Broadway debut in a political show like POTUS, as many of her recent SNL appearances saw her impersonating U.S. senator and former presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar.