[Voterescue] "Caucus! The Musical" is for real

[Karen Renick]

This appeared in the New York Times online tonight...thought you all 
would get a "kick" out of this article.


November 12, 2007, 8:55 pm


    Iowa Caucuses, With Tap Dancing

By Lisa Tozzi <http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/author/ltozzi/>

'Caucus! The Musical'

It is unclear when the stagehands’ strike will end, but Off Off 
Broadway, you can catch a theater event full of political intrigue and 
featuring a showstopper of a tap-dance number called “The Tough Question 
Sidestep.”

Really Off Broadway. Like Des Moines.

“Caucus! The Musical” <http://www.caucusthemusical.com/> 
[http://www.caucusthemusical.com/_ __]_ is about an Iowa farmer and his 
family who become the faces of the “typical Iowa caucusgoers” in the 
news media and are vigorously courted by the major presidential candidates.

The show is the creation of Robert John Ford, who grew up in Fort Dodge 
and went to Iowa State. The author of several other works set in the 
Midwest, including “The World’s Largest Aluminum Foil Ball,” about a 
roadside attraction that ends up on a list of potential terror targets, 
Mr. Ford said the Iowa caucuses seemed a natural for the stage.

“I always thought a play about the caucuses would be fun and funny,” he 
said. “There’s such a circuslike atmosphere, I knew it had to be a musical.”

The show opens Dec. 27 — just in time for the crowds of reporters and 
political operatives who will be in town for the final push before the 
Jan. 3 caucuses — and runs through Jan. 13.

But by then the media circus will have moved to New Hampshire, where a 
local theater group is performing an adaptation of Mr. Ford’s show 
called, you guessed it, “The Primary Primary.”