Palm Springs, CA
I walked into this production carrying more than curiosity. I was there with my husband, who saw Assassins about 30 years ago and has a strong, positive memory of it. I had never seen it.
I’m going to start with the part that may make some people stop reading: I did not enjoy this production.
Not because it “wasn’t my taste.” My body rejected parts of it in real time—because in America, guns are not symbolic. Guns are not distant. Guns are not hypothetical. They’re a daily context: headlines, school emails, lockdown drills, and a story we keep telling ourselves we’re used to… but we’re not. We’re simply numb.
That’s the lens I brought into Assassins. And it shaped everything I felt.
What I experienced in the room
From the first song, I was turned off—cold.
When a show builds its language around firearms—when guns are pointed, displayed, used as punctuation—my body doesn’t experience that as “stage business.” It experiences it as a rehearsal of what’s already happening outside the theater doors.
From the opening number to the final scenes, the production repeatedly put the audience in the presence of gun violence—not as an abstract theme, but as direct visual language. In today’s America, that is not a neutral choice. Gun threats are part of the background noise of modern life. So when a production places firearms in the viewer’s face again and again, it doesn’t automatically feel like “provocation in service of insight.” It can feel like reenactment—like rehearsal for a culture we’re already stuck inside.
Art is made to tell stories. All night, I kept asking myself: What is the point of this story—right now, in America, at this moment?
Is the story saying we find mental illness funny—or at least theatrical?
Is it saying gun access is so normalized we can turn it into music?
Is it a history lesson on the violence we don’t want to claim as part of our national identity?
Is it holding up the fact that we’ve built a culture where “every now and then a madman’s bound to come along,” and we treat it like a shrug instead of a crisis?
And underneath all of it: who is the show asking me to feel sympathy for?
The broken? The angry? The manipulated? The violent? The discarded? The country itself?
Because Assassins doesn’t just present one argument. It presents a collision of arguments—like competing signs held up on the same street. On one side: “It takes a lot of men to make a gun.” On the other: “Everyone’s got a right to be happy.” Those lines land differently depending on who you are, what you’ve lived through, and what you fear.
The moment that crossed a line for me
During the production, all of the presidents that were or attempted to be assassinated showed up in succession. And then the image I hate seeing, that brings me to anger is an image of Donald Trump with vindication and retribution in his eyes. That image of Donald Trump—not as a president, but as all the hallmarks of a dictator pretending to be one. That’s not a “reference” to me. That’s a daily dose. It’s the atmosphere so many of us are breathing all the time. The other sequence of video, that was the video of the Jan,6. 2021 the insurrection on the capitol engineered by the very person, who again occupies the White House. So seeing it dropped into the show didn’t expand the story for me—it collapsed the distance between stage and life. And it did something that I wanted to get away from, if only for a short period of time. Trump fatigue.
Again, the last thing I wanted was a reminder of what I’m already experiencing everywhere I look.The show goes further. It includes the depiction of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy—something I did not want to see again. The first time it appeared, it was embedded in the body of the play: everything up to the final frames, the screen goes black and then the bang. But what embodied the whole experience for me was the ending: during the last song, they showed the full footage. Why finish on this note?
Maybe the intent was to say: yes, gun violence is real—and yes, you can bring a nation to its knees. But I didn’t experience it as a lesson. I experienced it as a line being crossed: a moment where the production stopped being “theater about America” and became the worst of America, replayed. I left the theater feeling less like I’d been experiencing a story worth telling, and something more like I’d been forced to rewatch a national wound, reopened.I want theater to be an experience—where discomfort earns insight, where provocation clarifies something true, where the audience leaves enlarged rather than raw.
The true importance of theater
With all that I’ve said about my personal experience, I’m glad and proud that we live in a community where a theater can still make a choice like this—where art is treated as part of civic life, not a luxury, and not a threat.
Because the deeper story isn’t only what happens on stage. It’s whether we remain the kind of society where people can still walk into a theater, have a strong reaction—love it, hate it, or feel somewhere in between—and still be free to decide for themselves.
In that sense, Assassins mirrors America perfectly: not because it resolves the divide, but because it forces you to face the fact that the divide is real.
The educator lens: museums, libraries, and the democratic idea of choice
When I used to lead tours in a major art museum, it happened again and again: we’d stop in front of a piece and someone would say, out loud, “That’s not art.”
“I don’t like it.”, “This is not what I want to see,” now show me some real art.”
And I always stopped the group—children or adults—and explain something I still believe is foundational:
You have every right to feel what you feel. You have every right to dislike what you see. But you do not have the right to decide what the person next to you is allowed to encounter.
A museum—like a library—is built on a democratic idea: choice. You aren’t required to love every book in a library. You aren’t required to admire every work in a museum. But the freedom to choose is the point. Choice is part of what makes America a democracy—where diversity is part of our foundation. And where theater get to choose for themselves, what they want to present to their patrons.
The civic lesson I took anyway: art as a starting point for dialogue
Now let me say the part that matters most to me.
Even though I disliked the experience, I respect the fact that it was staged here.
We are living in an era when communities across the United States are choosing what to avoid—not what to understand. And “choosing” is the key word. Choosing to self-censor. Plays get dropped. Books get pulled. School lessons get softened. Museums get pressured to delete history from public view. Organizations self-censor out of fear—fear of donors, fear of politics, fear of backlash.
And the argument is always the same:
“We can’t show that.”
“We shouldn’t stage that.”
“It’s too controversial, we will lose patrons.”
That’s not protection. That’s control.
So here’s what I believe now—after sitting with my own discomfort: art, and this play in particular, can create a starting point. A starting point for interaction. For conversation. For dialogue.
And we desperately need that.
Because a civil society doesn’t come back through silence. It doesn’t come back through fear. It doesn’t come back through pretending we’re not divided. It comes back when people can be in the same room, encounter the same issues, and still talk to each other afterward—without trying to erase each other.
Why it matters that Revolution Stage Company staged it here
This is what I see as Revolution Stage Company’s mission in action: bringing this community a point of view—and therefore a choice.
They describe their mission in terms like producing “high-quality” and “affordable” entertainment, elevating local production standards, and building audiences who appreciate live theater across the Coachella Valley. They also speak directly about nurturing new talent through mentorship and learning opportunities. And they describe their founding as creating something new here—“a ‘Revolution,’” built with local talent in an Off-Broadway-style space.
That word—Revolution—isn’t just a name. It has real meaning.
Revolution is what made America possible in the first place. And I’ll say this as plainly as I can: it may take a cultural-the arts to create a revolution to get America back—back to civil disagreement, back to shared reality, back to a democracy where choice is not punished. Where diversity, opportunity and choice are the norm, not the enemy. And in many places in America right now, having a choice is treated as dangerous.
My invitation: decide for yourself —go see Assassins
If you’re the kind of theatergoer who wants work that challenges you, unsettles you, makes you argue with your own reactions—or if you want to understand why people debate this musical so fiercely—go see it for yourself. Let it speak to you directly. Take what you can from it, reject what you must, and then talk about it with someone who experienced it differently.
That conversation—the one that happens afterward—may be the most important “production value” of all right now. What we know from experience, if you are talking about the show the next day, or the next. It means that you are not indifferent. And indifference means indifference is the worst position someone can have. It means you felt nothing—no empathy, no alarm, no need to respond—because the experience was forgettable.” And for many in this country, indifference has now become the norm.
What I won’t judge (and why)
This is not the typical review that we do for theater. To be very honest, it would not be fair for me to talk about all the production values, the performances, the timing, or the direction—because my reaction to the material itself was so strong that it would color anything I said about execution. At best, this is difficult material for everyone involved: performers, directors, and audiences, because the subject matter is designed to press on nerves. However, everything that I have heard from your patrons is that your productions are always at the top.
What I can say is this: I could hear and feel that the audience around me had deep appreciation—for the performances, the staging, and the overall experience. And that underscores the point I keep returning to: the importance of creating a real opportunity for people to choose for themselves, and to acknowledge the artists who made the work happen. I know I was in the minority in the audience that night.
http://REVOlutionstagecompany.com/assassins
About the Author
Marty Treinen is the co-founder of Creative Core International with Wesley Spencer. They co-developed Universal Creative Intelligence™ (UCI), a groundbreaking framework that teaches people of all ages the creative, emotional, and cognitive skills needed for lifelong success. An artrepreneur, arts/museum educator, and project leader, Marty draws on a decades-long career spanning fine arts, theater, film, design, and museum education.
Their mission is unwavering: to restore creativity, personal agency, emotional intelligence, and human responsibility as the foundation of education, leadership, and community life.
As a columnist for The Palm Springs Tribune, Marty covers theater, film, visual and performing arts, human-centric AI, arts education and cultural events throughout the Coachella Valley. His reviews are known for their honesty, authenticity, clarity, and deep respect for the power of the arts, to enhance our lives.
service.to.others.cci@gmail.com