A Middle-School Theater Director Discusses a Last-Minute Addition to Assassins

Huddle up, Assassins cast and crew! Dress rehearsal is in a week, and if we want to pull off Sondheim’s masterpiece about people who hate US presidents so much they try to kill them, we’re going to have to love it with our whole hearts, our full souls, and every after-school time slot I can book without triggering overtime. To that end, I have a few notes: Marcus P, careful with the accent on John Wilkes Booth, and more importantly, the fact that he’s from Maryland is not an acceptable excuse to reenact The Wire in gym. Mindy G, I really want to feel both Squeaky Fromme’s disgust for Kentucky Fried Chicken and her searing passion for Charles Manson. Finally, I know our timeline is tight, and Billy F will have to play two roles, but as representatives of JFK Middle School, it’s our solemn duty to inform the public about our nation’s latest presidential assassination attempt through the magic of musical theater.

While the media shamelessly portrays a 78 year-old convicted felon who speaks in word salad as if he’s some kind of strongman mastermind, it falls to you, middle-school thespians, to give us hard-hitting journalism in song. After all, when Zach T lied about jumping from the school roof onto his scooter like “a friggin’ based American hero,” it was this very troupe’s production of Wicked that exposed him through a speedy rewrite of “Defying Gravity.” Now, I ask you to dissect this presidential assassination attempt with the same clarity you used to show that “Zach T couldn’t be defying gravity / He was at the dentist filling a cavity.”

Yes, Amanda S, I’m aware that our public is “just” teachers, parents, and Ms. Pete’s geriatric millennial macaw who won’t stop repeating “I lived through 9/11” and lines from Zoolander. But let’s remember that, though these people may be cringe, they’re also likely voters. It’s up to us to tell them that one anonymous Democrat, who is me, isn’t “resigned” to a second Trump presidency. On the contrary, this unnamed source is energized to write a next chapter in our Great American Songbook where I still have health insurance, a teacher’s union, and literally any will to live!

First off, Justin K, no, I wasn’t crying in my car, I had a bug in my eye. Second, the photo with his fist raised was neither, as you say, “hype” nor, as the former president said, “the most iconic photo” that some unspecified and numberless “A lot of people” have “ever seen.” He didn’t get up until the shooter was down, crankily insisted he put on his shoes, and only then raised his fist while surrounded by Secret Service agents forming a human barricade. That’s not “defiance,” that’s Mark F refusing to go back on the field trip bus because he didn’t get to show enough park staff his “totally sick” infected lizard bite.

Listen, we all know Mark F’s popularity is based on a platform of lizard attacks, and we should apply that same logic here.

Moving on— Jesus, no, Justin K, I’m not part of a Deep State plot to assassinate the former president and force seventh graders to eat only Hawaiian pizza. Put on your thinking cap: if we had a Deep State, wouldn’t we have functioning public transportation, school lunches for all of you, and conspiracy theories that don’t hinge on pizza parlors?

Can we all just get back to sing— no, Jenna H, it’s not helpful to ask if the former president staged the whole thing so he could indulge his Chuck Norris fantasies, fire up his base, and use fake blood on his face for a midday ketchup snack. In this turbulent political climate, it’s important that we stick to the facts and avoid spreading conspiracy theories. Remember when no one voted for Helen C for class president because everyone decided that Mark F had already won the race since his lizard bite was simultaneously “a scam orchestrated by Biden,” “a scam masterminded by Mark F,” and “just too unbelievably sick”? It’s like that but with all of your civil liberties at stake.

Finally, now on the count of three, let’s do the new group number. One, two, three:

We want the libs to cry,

Never our own guy!

So now we defy

This political vi-olence!

It’s only common sense:

For us, freedom and rights!

For the rest, li-i-izard bites!