About the work
"It's Britney Bitch!" is a production by the Berliner Ensemble (premiered January 2022) directed by Lena Brasch. The solo evening, performed by the actress Sina Martens, takes the life and suffering of pop star Britney Spears as the starting point for an examination of female self-determination and patriarchal power structures. Martens interweaves Spears' story with questions that reach far beyond the specific case.
Plot
On a pared-down stage – a small, half-open box, with deep, dark sound, strobe lighting and costume changes – Sina Martens stands alone. She recites, among other things, passages from the statement Britney Spears made in court in June 2021 regarding the conservatorship run by her father Jamie Spears; a bald wig alludes to an iconic moment in Spears' biography. From the montage of Spears' words and specially written texts (by Laura Dabelstein, Miriam Davoudvandi and Fikri Anıl Altıntaş) emerges less a biographical portrait than a manifesto about the (absence of) female self-determination.
Cultural significance
The years-long conservatorship over Britney Spears and the international #FreeBritney movement became a symbol of the external control of women – particularly at the intersection of fame, family and economic interests. The Berliner Ensemble translates this pop-culture case into a feminist theatre evening that interrogates the mechanisms of control and "toxic masculinity". The production exemplifies a contemporary theatre that links pop culture with a political diagnosis of the present.