Big Picture
This website is a showcase for the vision and libretto (script and lyrics) for Tribes USA, a musical in the making. We hope to gain exposure, garner interest, gather feedback, and connect with potential collaborators and investors to help us turn this unique project into a show.
To that end, if you find this libretto compelling, please pass the link to this site to anyone who may have the wherewithal and interest in helping bring Tribes USA to the stage. If you are just such a person, please contact us.
Synopsis
Tribes USA is a concept musical about the cultural-political dynamics polarizing contemporary American society. Against the backdrop of a polling station during national elections from 2016 through 2022, ten voters representing the ethnic, social, and political demographics of the US electorate engage in a rolling series of focus group debates about the current hot button cultural-political issues that force us into ethnic and ideological tribes. Each debate allows for satire about the positions and strawman arguments of the extremists, followed by more thought-provoking, reasoned arguments from the less extreme on both sides.
With each successive debate, the polarization increases, and so does the heat. The penultimate debate devolves into a verbal altercation, and the final debate ends in tragic violence. The tragedy spurs all characters to come together to advocate for more thoughtful discourse on the things about which we disagree, and greater recognition of the more plentiful and important things binding us in our common humanity. They remind us that as citizens of a particularly wonderful country, we should all celebrate our good fortune at being, fundamentally, members of just one tribe – USA.
Themes
Despite being a majority centrist country, we allow information bubbles with competing minority extreme views and their strawman arguments to dominate the discourse. This forces many into ‘tribes’ on either side of a host of ideological fault lines. Tribes-USA dives right into debates across the following fault lines with healthy doses of satire and sobriety: Importance of voting, Trump v Clinton fitness of office, abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, immigration, gun control, Trump administration performance, Covid response, police reform, 2020 election results, January 6 Capital attack, Biden administration performance, information bias, and significance of racial identity.
Over the course of the debates three major themes should become apparent. First, voting is critically important to democracy. Second, as passioned discourse moves beyond the boundaries of reason and civility, its capacity to produce useful light is replaced rapidly with a propensity to produce only destructive heat. And finally, despite the time and energy we spend engaging one another in ethnic and ideological tribal warfare, at our core we are far more alike than different. We all want to be safe, healthy, and free to pursue happiness. We want our families and communities to flourish, and to leave our children a better world than the one we found. We should take more time to recognize that as citizens of a particularly wonderful country, we should all celebrate our good fortune at being, fundamentally, members of the same tribe.
Aspiration
We hope to secure partnerships to compose music for the 14 song lyrics, produce and stage the musical, and someday receive a review like the notional one below.
“Bold, ambitious, and unconventional tour de force!”
“More than just a great musical, Tribes USA is a breathtaking sociological and psychological romp through every sensitive region of the American psyche. Tribes USA is as harrowing as it is funny, as poignant as it is inspiring, and as entertaining as it is enlightening. It offers the audience a mirror to see ourselves with a fresh perspective – one with multiple dimensions and no filters. In stark relief, we get the harsh reflection of the id driving us into ethnic and partisan animus, as well as the hopeful image of our best common ground-seeking selves.
In the opening scenes we are introduced to ten characters representing all key demographics of the American electorate including gender, race, sociopolitical orientation, religion, and sexual orientation. Against the backdrop of The US federal elections from 2016 through 2022, the ten characters square off in a bracing and unrestrained sequence of debates about all the hot-button cultural issues. From abortion and LGBTQ rights to gun control and police reform, all buttons are pushed, and pushed hard. Each debate presents not only the well-known political dimension of what positions the characters take on each issue (left vs. right), but also adds the psychological dimension of how they arrived at these positions (low-thought tribal default vs. reasoned truth-seeking journey).
Elaine (the young fist-in-the-air, woke rebel) and Eric (the AR-15-toting, white nationalist) anchor the cultural-political left and right extremes, respectively. While easily the most colorful, these two also represent the lowest thinking rung on the psychological ladder. Clayton and Cristy, the always introspective and enlightening centrists, are the high-minded inspirational avatars at the top of that ladder. Six other cast members fill in the rest of the multi-dimensional space.
Tribes is the ultimate E-ticket ride that rapidly cycles you between anticipation, elation, trepidation, and near-terror, with little warning and no respite until the end. By then you’re ready to celebrate your good fortune to be alive. Every scene has moments where portions of the audience are taken to wildly disparate reaches of the emotional spectrum. Several times a third of the audience will seem ready to storm out of the theater in protest while another third applauds in righteous approval and the remaining third sits on edge wondering if a riot will break out between the other two. No one is spared or denied multiple opportunities for membership in each third. Near the end of the show the rollercoaster ride leaves the audience sufficiently spent to allow the final inspirational number to sweep them up into an unguarded emotional high of hope and exhilaration. The night I went, following the finale, there was not a dry eye in the house during the giddy one-minute standing ovation. Bravo! ”
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