Unleash your inner Britney at L.A. pop-up museum
Experiential space has 10 rooms that recreate iconic music video scenes
LOS ANGELES— Welcome to a Britney Spears fantasy land: the Britney of the past, the Britney we want her to be.
Britney Spears the Zone, a 30,000-square-foot fan-generated experiential pop-up dedicated to the career of the Princess of Pop, has been erected at a time when there’s no sign of her return to Vegas — or the stage anywhere — and she is still under personal and financial conservatorship.
It includes 10 rooms that each recreate an iconic music video set, album concept or live performance, beginning with a “… Baby One More Time” inspired high school classroom.
There, a video featuring Spears’ erstwhile assistant, Felicia Culotta, plays from a 150inch customized LED screen. A special film was applied to the outside to make it look like a chalkboard.
“Today is all about unleashing your inner Britney,” Culotta, as the school principal once more, reminds each group. Then guests are released into Britney High, the classroom doors flung open by a Zone staff member.
In a jungle-y space, the music video for “I’m a Slave 4 U” was projected onto curtains made of fog, and guests were encouraged to pose with a plush standin for Banana, the albino Burmese python who appeared with Spears during the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards.
“Pop-up museums are my favourite,” said Shannon Stone, 28, an accountant for film productions. Stone, who was dressed as a schoolgirl Britney, filmed a video for her Instagram story, as the motion-tracking eyes of a 35-foot handcarved python watched the scene from overhead.
The pop-up is scheduled to run through April 26. Tickets range from $59.50 (U.S.) to $64.50 at peak hours, and are sold in15-minute blocks, so that no more than12 to15 people are in one activation at a time.