THE CANDIDACY - 2023

Interactive Performance Experience, Mixed-Medium

Lead Designer, Artist, and Performer

I worked with a small team of performers to create an interactive theater experience made to look like a voting booth, which was developed as part of a larger event known as a Playfair. Our project involved developing a world, creating and costuming characters for each performer, and building a physical booth for people to interact with throughout the fair. I led both the aesthetic and narrative design of the pop-up, being responsible for the creation of the booth, ballots, pins, and several posters. I also worked with the other performers to create solid character backgrounds, including specific talking points and mannerisms, which were used as a starting point for improvised interactions throughout the fair. Finally, we drafted out a series of acceptance speeches, with each speech corresponding to the most ballots being cast for a specific candidate.

This project was built with the intention of simulating and dissecting the language and politics of McCarthyism, both as a means of parody and reflection. For the specific focus of the event, we landed on the idea of using wizards as a stand-in for the “other”, with each candidate’s campaign being defined by their stance either for or against the practice of wizardry. With this as a thematic base, we developed both an anti-wizard conservative candidate and a wizard-agnostic liberal candidate, while also including a third-party non-option in the form of a Sauron-type dark lord. Through this project, we were able to not only parody the past and present of American politics but also dissect the language and strategies that went into upholding those processes. To this end, I feel that we were successful, especially given the fact that when we ran the event, the conservative candidate was able to eke out a victory through the same fear-mongering and fallacious badgering that the performance was intended to parody.