All productions for 2025's OUTright Theatre Festival will take place at Reed College's Performing Arts Building Black Box Theatre
Music and Lyrics: Stephen Sondheim
Book: John Weidman
ASSASSINS is based on an idea by Charles Gilbert, Jr.
Orchestrations: Michael Starobin
Director: Rusty Tennant
"Everybody's Got the Right to their Dreams"
The Feature Presentation of 2025's OUTwright Theatre Festival
2025's OUTwright Theatre Festival feature production, Assassins, needs no introduction. This brilliant and controversial work is a staple of the American canon. Fuse is seeking to bring it to life at a crucial time in American history where looking back on such a landmark work brings new perspectives to the forefront.
Synopsis
In this darkly humorous musical revue, Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics) and John Weidman (book) depict nine misfit men and women who set out to assassinate American Presidents. Though only some were successful, all left their mark on American history. While every nation has its assassins and would-be assassins, only in America, the authors suggest, do disturbed and disturbing individuals act not because they hope to influence national politics, but because they are wrapped up in a malignant sense of entitlement. Feeling betrayed by the failed promise of American democracy and the American Dream, they strike out at the symbol for America: the American President. Assassins spans several musical styles and many decades in a dizzying series of musical and theatrical inventions that culminate in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.