How do you portray mental vulnerability on stage without resorting to clichés and without stigmatising people? In Being Britney, Colette Goossens explores this. With great sensitivity and transparency, she makes the inner logic of mental turmoil palpable.

Being Britney is a solo performance in which Colette Goossens plays a young woman who believes she is the pop icon Britney Spears. Britney is experiencing an acute psychosis. In an uncontrolled, associative and wild manner, she attempts to resolve fundamental questions about her existence. She finds herself in her bathroom, an intimate space where a world of hallucinations, delusions and extreme emotions unfolds.

Being Britney raises questions about psychosis and the care surrounding it. What is psychosis really? Should we view psychosis as an end point? Or would it be better to look at the rich thoughts and experiences hidden beneath it?

Through existing and new texts, performance, physicality and rhythm, Colette explores how mental vulnerability can take on an open form on stage that is not stigmatising. Being Britney is a continuation of her artistic research in which she makes the inner logic of mental disarray tangible to an audience.