‘POTUS’ playwright talks patriarchy and profanity

“I remember [Schellhardt] saying to me, ‘Politics is theater, and theater is politics. I think you’re in the right spot,’” Fillinger recalls. “That really stuck with me.”

Officially billed as “POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive,” Fillinger’s latest play is a farcical fusing of those intertwined interests. The story of various women in a misogynistic president’s orbit — his wife, press secretary and chief of staff among them — and their outlandish attempts to contain cascading crises, “POTUS” premiered last year on Broadway before heading down Interstate 95 for its D.C. premiere.

Speaking last month at Arena Stage, Fillinger discussed the origins of “POTUS,” how she imagined her madcap characters and the exact science behind concocting unhinged profanity.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Q: Let’s start with the genesis of this play. Where did the idea come from?

A: I think the themes were building up in me over a lifetime, but the moment where I actually started to put pen to paper was when the p—y-grabbing tape was leaked. People didn’t know if they were allowed to say the word when they were covering it, so I think it was this moment where someone’s offhand comment, said in private, affected the way language was being used from then on. Then, after [Donald] Trump was elected and the stats came out about how many White women voted for him, I thought a lot about voting against interests and the ways in which we are complicit in our own subjugation and the subjugation of others. So that was when I think it really went from being a screed to more like a battle cry or manifesto.

Q: You mentioned that Trump provided the inciting incident for “POTUS.” How do you think the play is perceived now that we’ve moved on to a different administration?

A: It was never about Trump for me. Yes, something that he said ended up being the inciting incident. But for me, it’s not even about electoral politics. I set it in the highest office in the land because it’s a farce and you want the stakes to be high, but it’s a story that you could put in any institution, any office, many homes. It’s about systems of oppression and systems of injustice. To me, it was never about a specific president. I find that when conservatives see the show, they think it’s about [Bill] Clinton. When liberals see the show, they think it’s about Trump. And everyone has a good time. I personally think it’s about neither.

Q: The president never appears in the play. Did you ever consider depicting that character onstage?

A: No, he was never in it. It’s so funny — so many of my other plays, I do all this research, I do all this thought, I do all this outlining. I hold ideas sometimes for years before I sit down to write it. This one came out so fully formed. I sat down and I just could see the seven women in front of me, and I just started with the first word and went from there. I was like, “I actually have all the information in me that I need to write this.” And I didn’t want to write him. I didn’t find him particularly interesting. There was enough airtime given to people like that.

Q: How did you go about writing the characters who are older than you, who carry a weariness built up over decades of putting up with patriarchal nonsense?

A: I think people tell you what their experiences are more than you think. People love to talk about themselves, and often share things about themselves. So if you can listen, a lot of the information that you need about a person is actually being given freely. For me, the experience of writing characters and writing experiences that are not my own is listening as closely as possible. And I think especially older women, when they talk about their experiences, people don’t listen. With all my characters, it’s about listening really hard to what people around you are saying. I think that’s a necessary thing for making good art.

Q: There’s a manic energy to the play, with lots of precisely scripted overlapping dialogue. What’s the challenge of writing a farce like this and capturing that dynamic on the page?

A: It’s so hard. The difference between whether something works or not can come down to whether the door slams before the line or after the line. Or if the sentence has too many syllables. Or if someone is moving while they’re saying that line, it gets overshadowed and it’s not as funny. So it’s incredibly difficult. There’s a lot of that I can imagine in my head, and then there’s working in the room with bodies in the space.

Q: When I read the script, some of my biggest laughs came from these remarkable sequences of profanity. What was your approach to creating those moments?

A: I was just thinking about what was the silliest thing they could say, but also thinking really technically in terms of plosives, consonants, vowels. You’re setting it up so it can’t be too long. Otherwise, it’s not funny when it lands, right? Even the lowbrow stuff was crafted.

Q: What do you enjoy about seeing new casts and creative teams tackle the material as the play is being produced at regional theaters across the country?

A: It’s so fun to see something that you didn’t see before, and also just to have the distance to try it in different ways. It’s also fun to see what is consistent. It’s validating to be like, “Wow, that joke works in all states.” Let me tell you: Toilet humor lands everywhere.

Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St. SW. 202-488-3300. arenastage.org.