Overview
Big Picture
This website is a showcase for the vision, script, lyrics, and music for Tribes USA. We hope to garner interest and connect with potential collaborators and investors to help put this one-of-a-kind musical theater project on stages and screens across the country.
To that end, if you find Tribes USA compelling, please pass the link to this site to anyone who may have the wherewithal and interest in partnering with us to take Tribes USA to a national audience. If you are just such a person, please contact us and / or make a donation.
Synopsis
Tribes USA is a musical about a country that has learned to mistake performance for politics — and a stage that dares to make us watch ourselves do it. On Election Day 2024, a live television debate gathers ten Americans, from the far left to the far right, before a charming, snarky host whose contract depends on conflict and ratings. As the panelists spar over hot-button issues like immigration, abortion, race, and faith, the show interrogates the machinery that profits from division: the algorithms of outrage, the spectacle of certainty, the tribal pull that turns neighbors into enemies. Humor disarms; sobriety lands; escalation reveals the human cost when ideology outpaces empathy. Yet beneath the noise, the piece insists on a stubborn, hopeful question: what do we still share? An indictment of polarization and a love letter to the messy American family, Tribes USA invites every audience to choose civility — and family — over tribe.
Themes
Set inside a live televised political debate show on Election Day 2024, Tribes USA explores how identity, media, and tribalism shape modern American life.
As ten panelists representing sharply different ideological, cultural, racial, and generational perspectives clash on live television, political disagreement gradually gives way to something more personal: the emotional wounds, insecurities, ambitions, and fears beneath their public personas. What begins as entertainment slowly evolves into a volatile exploration of belonging, loneliness, validation, and the human need to matter.
At the center of the musical is the relationship between Jason, the charismatic host addicted to ratings and spectacle, and Clara, his producer and fiancée, who becomes increasingly uneasy as the show spirals into emotional manipulation and chaos. Through satire, contemporary musical theatre, psychological confrontation, and intimate character moments, Tribes USA examines how modern media rewards outrage, certainty, and performance while discouraging vulnerability and genuine connection. Tribes USA asks whether people conditioned to fear, perform for, and condemn one another can still recognize each other’s humanity before the noise overwhelms them entirely.
Aspiration
We hope to secure developmental partners to help move Tribes USA beyond its initial proof-of-concept production to larger stages and someday receives a review like the notional one below.
“Urgent, emotionally provocative, and unexpectedly human, Tribes USA transforms America’s culture wars into compelling contemporary musical theatre.”
“Set on Election Day 2024 inside a live televised political debate show, Tribes USA follows ten Americans representing sharply different ideological, racial, generational, and cultural perspectives as public conflict gradually gives way to private revelation. What begins as spectacle evolves into something far more personal and unsettling — an exploration of how identity, loneliness, media, ambition, fear, and tribalism shape modern American life.
Rather than reducing its characters to political caricatures, Tribes USA reveals the emotional wounds, aspirations, contradictions, and insecurities beneath their public personas. The result is a psychologically layered ensemble musical that challenges audiences without prescribing easy answers.
Musically, the show blends contemporary Broadway, rhythmic spoken-word textures, satire, emotional balladry, and ensemble-driven confrontation into a theatrical experience that feels immediate, modern, and deeply relevant to contemporary audiences.
At its best, Tribes USA achieves what the strongest political theatre aspires to accomplish: not ideological agreement, but emotional recognition. By the final moments, the audience is left not with simplistic optimism, but with a deeper understanding of how fragile — and how necessary — genuine human connection has become in a culture increasingly defined by outrage, performance, and division.”