Storyline
Summary
Set over the course of Election Day 2024, Tribes USA unfolds inside the studio of a live political debate show hosted by charismatic media personality Jason Proctor. What begins as an energetic night of ideological combat between ten Americans representing sharply different political and cultural perspectives gradually spirals into something far more personal and dangerous.
As ratings soar, outrage becomes addictive, identities harden into emotional armor, and the line between performance and reality begins to collapse. Beneath the spectacle, however, unexpected relationships form and deeply buried wounds emerge — especially between Jason and Clara, his producer and fiancée, whose growing unease with the show’s escalating toxicity threatens both their relationship and the production itself.
Blending satire, contemporary musical theatre, psychological drama, and media critique, Tribes USA explores polarization, loneliness, identity, and the fragile possibility of human connection in modern America.
ACT ONE
Scene 1 – Pre-Broadcast: Fifteen minutes before going live, host, Jason, engages the audience in friendly pre-show banter. He informs them that he needs to attract one million viewers to keep his job and two million to get a bonus. He points out the live viewer counter displayed behind the panelist chairs – the symbol of ambition and ratings pressure for the rest of the show. Clara, the associate producer, and Jason’s fiancée, informs him that Panelist Four has just dropped out. Without the seat, the demographic balance collapses and the ratings target is out of reach. Clara — who has wanted to be on camera since she was eight — volunteers to take the chair herself. Jason resists, relents, and the broadcast begins. The first stakes are human.
Scene 2 – Going Live
Song 1 - Turn It Up!
Jason opens the broadcast. He walks the audience through the color-coded chair scheme (Blue / Purple / Red) and promises to “take you on the ride of your lives.” Behind the panel, the live ratings counter begins to climb.
Song 2 - Meet the Tribes
Jason interviews each of the ten panelists in a rapid-fire patter song, introducing the company in one efficient theatrical stroke: a young activist still living with her parents, a women’s studies professor, and a working-class DMV employee on the left; Clara, an engineer, an ER doctor and a beat cop in the center; a grandmother, a podcaster and a mechanic on the right.
Jason initiates the first three debates.
Song 3 - Go Tribal
Panelists debate the efficacy of partisanship. Each member of the Red and Blue Tribes takes a verse to recommend voters ‘go tribal’ to fight for their ideals and to save the country. Centrists, Clayton and Cristy, break in to warn that tribalism — past a certain point — stops winning battles and starts losing the country.
Song 4 - The Flow
Panelists debate immigration. Three musical lines, sung simultaneously: the Red Tribe wants to slow or stop the flow of immigration, the Blue Tribe to speed or maximize it, the Centrists to keep it under control. The show’s first ensemble canon — and a structural argument as much as a musical one.
Song 5 - 22 Weeks
Panelists debate abortion rights. Rachel sings of the granddaughter who exists only because her daughter chose not to end her pregnancy — and of her exhaustion with the noise. Florence answers for bodily autonomy. Cristy, the ER doctor, makes a measured medical case for choice through twenty-two weeks. Three women, three positions, one of the show’s most stylistically varied numbers.
The show takes its first commercial break as the viewer counter passes 1.1 million. All is well, so far. Clara steps alone into a soft pool of light.
Song 6 – Falling Into Place
Clara’s solo — the emotional turn of the first half. After a lifetime behind the camera, after every “next year” and every passed-on pitch, she is suddenly the woman a million strangers are watching. She is engaged to a man who was on every list she swore she’d never date, and somehow the home she never knew. The girl behind the camera is, tonight, the woman they came to find.
The broadcast resumes.
Song 7 - Not Enough
Panelists debate LGBTQ rights. Frank carries this one — his daughter has come out to him as his son, and he has not yet caught up. Florence answers from her own politics and her own life. Clayton and Cristy stake the centrist ground, agreeing broadly with the left and raising the trans-women-in-women’s-sports question with care. No character is caricatured.
Jason encourages a heated exchange between the Blue and Red Tribes over the shortcomings of the opposition candidate.
Song 8 - What's Wrong With You?
Panelists hotly debate qualifications of Trump and Harris, as well as the sanity of their supporters. A breakneck hip-hop trade between Florence and Elaine, then Frank and Eric — the show’s most pointedly satirical number, and the moment Clara’s worry in the wings begins to register on her face. Ratings cross 1.4 million.
Jason initiates a debate on gun control.
Song 9 - Madness
Elaine, rubbing the memorial bracelet of a high school friend killed in a shooting, anchors the room. The left names the slaughter. The right names the futility of regulating it. Craig — the cop — calls for a both/and compromise.
Tenor of the debate is moving toward incivility as viewership crosses 1.5 million. Jason is pleased with the ratings. Clara is concerned about the tone of the show.
Show takes second commercial break. Clara confronts Jason. He is chasing two million viewers.
Song 10 - At What Cost?
Jason and Clara, alone downstage. Clara asks the question the rest of the evening will have to answer: when you’re chasing what little is left to gain, what are you giving up to get it? Jason promises to dial it back. He doesn’t.
ACT TWO
Scene 1 – Commercial Break Continues: During the second commercial break, three quiet encounters land in succession.
Frank asks Florence to come on his podcast — because she disagrees with him.
Eric asks Craig for a recommendation to the police academy after revealing he failed the psych evaluation the previous year. Craig gently declines.
Eric, in an unguarded moment of empathy, tries to apologize to Elaine for her friend’s shooting death. Elaine, still grieving, dismisses him. He chides himself for trying to be nice.
Song 11 - No Apologies
Elaine and Eric, the show’s two extremes, sing in mirrored counterpoint from opposite ends of the stage about how their life experiences shaped their decision to define themselves without regard to expectations of others — the same refusal pointed in opposite directions. They close the distance, meet at center, and discover that pride pointed at each other is collision, not communion.
The broadcast resumes.
Jason initiates a debate on police reform.
Song 12 - Just Comply
Craig — the only cop on the panel — argues that the most consequential reform required is improving civilian compliance with lawful police orders. This powerful solo paints Craig as either an earnest law enforcement officer advocating civil order, or an authoritarian cop demanding total obeisance—depending on the perspective of the observer.
Lamar pushes back hard. The panelists take sides and bicker. Viewership surpasses 1.6 million. Jason, intoxicated by the ratings and the Jameson’s he’s been imbibing the entire show, allows the bickering to continue unchecked as he momentarily walks off stage to retrieve a keyboard. Clara is incredulous.
Debate about complying with police evolves into the tribes bickering over information bias.
Song 13 - Tribal Truth
Jason turns piano-bar emcee. He invites each tribe in turn to deliver their “good ol’ tribal truth” on the 2020 election, January 6, and Biden. The show’s sharpest send-up of information bubbles — and the moment the host crosses the line from referee to enabler. Viewership crosses 1.8 million.
Clara, in near panic, tries to signal Jason to stop pushing the panel further into conflict. Jason, determined to hit two million views, ignores her and initiates a final incendiary debate.
Song 14 - You're Gone
The final debate spirals. Florence and Elaine inveigh on the right’s motives; Frank and Eric on the left’s. The exchange devolves into raw racial invective.
Elaine slaps Eric. Eric pulls a concealed pistol. Craig draws and shoots Eric. Eric’s falling shot finds Clara. The counter races past 2.6 million and freezes.
Song 15 - Turn it Up (Reprise)
Spotlight on Jason, holding Clara. He mournfully sings an ironic fragment of the opening number — “I’ll take you on the ride of your lives” — and the lights go dark.
Scene 2 – The Aftermath.
Police tape across the stage. Several panelists find or reveal human connection as they absorb the gravity of the moment, standing next to where Clara and Eric lay dead earlier.
Florence and Frank find simpatico and she agrees to do his podcast.
Lamar’s wife calls — the family was watching; his little girls want to talk to their Nana – who is now revealed to be Rachel.
Clayton and Cristy draw closer.
The panelists leave the studio quietly, as people.
Scene 3 – The Benediction. The set is cleared. The actors stand upstage in the order their characters once sat — and step downstage, out of character, as themselves.
Song 16 - Turn it Down
The opening number’s bookend and the show’s benediction. The company asks the audience to turn down the static, the tension, the anger. They name everything we share: a common country, a common creed, a common pursuit of happiness, a common wish to leave our children a better world. If we must be tribal, can we agree to be members of a single tribe – Tribe USA.
End.