A Love Letter to Broadway Disguised as a Constitutional Crisis
Democracy: Terms and Conditions Apply is a satirical musical comedy spanning the sixty-four days between the 2020 election and the storming of the Capitol. Twenty-three original songs. Two acts. Every genre Broadway ever invented — from barbershop quartet to Hamilton-style rap, Gilbert and Sullivan patter to Fosse jazz, country-western to cabaret — aimed at the worst winter in American democracy.
The show follows the unraveling from every angle: the algorithms that fed the outrage, the true believers who bought in, the operatives who saw an opportunity, the lawyers who filed sixty lawsuits and lost them all, and the grifters who sold a stolen-election narrative for everything it was worth. Nobody on stage comes off clean — and the audience doesn’t get off easy either.
The Capitol storming isn’t staged as violence — it’s an over-the-top choreographed dance number. Because the insurrection was already a spectacle. We just added choreography.
The Book of Mormon meets The Producers — every genre Broadway ever invented, aimed at the worst winter in American democracy.
Sixty-Four Days. One National Meltdown.
Act I
Act I opens on Election Day 2020 — a barbershop quartet of civic chaos. As the count drags on, the conspiracy machine spins up: a sentient algorithm explains how it radicalized your aunt overnight, a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song recreates the Four Seasons Total Landscaping debacle, and a boy band of lawyers files lawsuit after doomed lawsuit. Underneath it all, a political mastermind lays out the real plan in a Fosse-style jazz number — and the true believers who got swept up sing an achingly sincere ballad about why they bought in. Act I closes with a full-company patriotic anthem that means something completely different depending on who’s singing it.
Act II
Act II picks up the pace. A Hamilton-style rap dramatizes the infamous phone call to Georgia. The mastermind’s plan takes shape as believers and operatives converge on Washington in a building ensemble number that escalates from cabaret to mob anthem. The President rallies his crowd in full lounge-singer mode — then watches the results on TV. The Capitol storming becomes the showstopper dance number it was always destined to be. In the aftermath, the Cabinet debates the 25th Amendment over what it’ll cost their book deals, and the Democrats ask the only question that matters: how could they possibly lose? The show closes with a farewell that promises everything will be fine — delivered with the dramatic irony of an audience that knows exactly what happened next.