Political Commodity

Isabelle Kralj and Mark Anderson ask a timely and pertinent question with their new play, The Perfect Candidate: Is there such a thing?

"The Perfect Candidate is political satire in which we examine the process through which a political candidate is transformed into a marketable commodity," Anderson explains.

Kralj and Anderson are artistic director and associate director, respectively, of Theatre Gigante, a performing-arts organization dedicated to the creation and presentation of collaborative and original performance work that integrates theater, dance, text and music. The company, which is entering its 21st season in Milwaukee, recently changed its name from Milwaukee Dance Theatre to Theatre Gigante in an effort to clarify its brand of multidisciplinary performance work as one of not just dance, but a hybrid that incorporates different artistic styles.

Kralj and Anderson co-wrote The Perfect Candidate, with strong contributions by John Kishline, a key member of the old Theatre X collective and an immensely talented mainstay in Milwaukee's theater world. Kralj, Anderson and Kishline will also be performing in the piece, along with Marcie Hoffman and Tom Bruno.oH

Honest and Genuine?

The central theme of The Perfect Candidate focuses on honesty and genuineness and how, through the process of an election, the whole concept of truthfulness is redefined. Kralj and Anderson create a political cartoon in which the campaign managers, handlers, advisers and strategists manipulate the candidate, sculpting his mannerisms, rhetoric and style in an attempt to make a candidate that everyone will like and, ultimately, vote for.

Kralj and Anderson, who are also directing the piece, have chosen a fairly minimal set for the play, focusing instead on dialogue and character development.

"We're not creating any time or place that is pointing a finger at any one campaign or candidate," Kralj explains.

"It is more abstract," Anderson adds. "So the audience can create their own interpretation."

Theatre Gigante's play also puts on the table our role as voters and whether our expectations for an individual running for public office are reasonable or even possible. Are we playing fair? Are we falling for the gotcha-style of journalism in which a situation or comment is taken out of context or broadcast in such a way that the full story isn't revealed? The Perfect Candidate promises to raise questions, not answer them for you.

"This play brings about many things we've been thinking about as voters without pushing an opinion on people," Kralj says.

The Perfect Candidate is opening a week before our nation's 2008 presidential election, a time when a little humor will be healthy. A valuable aspect of making art is about responding to one's community. While The Perfect Candidate involves national issues, audiences will find it to be universal in nature.

Kralj and Anderson say they take their roles as artists seriously, appreciating the opportunity to respond to their community on a peer-to-peer level and create original work in the process. When writing The Perfect Candidate, Kralj and Anderson not only took into consideration the climate of the country, but what they were feeling as both voters and artists.

"We asked ourselves what we would want to watch a week before the elections," Kralj explains. "It's certainly not something tragic."

While Kralj and Anderson hope The Perfect Candidate incites laughter and allows the audience to breathe a little easier in a tense time, the writers also aim to provide a useful forum to discuss and contemplate where we are as a nation, how we're viewing events and the choices we're making. Given Theatre Gigante's history of high-quality productions and critical acclaim, The Perfect Candidate promises to be a lighthearted venture into the greasy realm of politics.

The world premiere of The Perfect Candidate by Isabelle Kralj and Mark Anderson will take place at the Off-Broadway Theatre, Oct. 30 through Nov. 1.