A Broadway Show With Every American President
Did you know that every American President has appeared in at least one play or musical.
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Theatre has always intersected with politics, and the presence of American presidents in Broadway, off-Broadway, and regional theatre plays and musicals is a major part of this. Did you know that all of our heads of state have been featured in shows, whether as characters or as plot points that are part of the action? Dramatizing current and former leaders of our nation is a way to examine their affect on society at the time and how political events, even those of many years ago, still impact us all.
George Washington
Our first American president has been a character in dozens of plays and musicals, so let’s spotlight the most prominent current one. In Hamilton (2015), Washington is highlighted among the nation’s other founding fathers and his leadership in battle and policy is dramatized.
John Adams
One of Broadway’s most presidential musicals, 1776 (1969) played the same theater that Hamilton is now at, several decades earlier. In 1776, John Adams leads the charge in Congress for the Declaration of Independence to be signed. As in Hamilton, multiple American presidents are featured as characters, with the events of the show anchored in history.
Thomas Jefferson
While Thomas Jefferson is also character in both Hamilton and 1776, a show will not be repeated on this list; Jefferson’s role in A Free Man of Color (2010) can be highlighted here instead. The epic play about a fictional man of color, Jacques Cornet, who becomes free and is eventually forced back into slavery in early 19th century New Orleans features a meeting with Jefferson. The third president speaks hypocritically to Cornet about all men being created equal and defends slavery.
James Madison
The First Lady in the Land was a 1911 Broadway play. The first lady referred to in the title was Dolley Madison, our fourth president’s wife. The light comedy dramatized Dolley Madison’s ambition and lovability, including her competing suitors: James Madison and Aaron Burr.
James Monroe
The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sidney Kingsley had a 1943 hit with The Patriots, which, like several other pieces here, turned multiple founding fathers into characters. One character in The Patriots was our fifth president, James Monroe, although the piece did center on Jefferson.
John Quincy Adams
The interesting 1924 Broadway entry That Awful Mrs. Eaton took place during Andrew Jackson’s presidency but chronicled the goings on of his secretary of war’s wife. The wife of Jackson’s predecessor, John Quincy Adams, was also embroiled in the drama.
Andrew Jackson
Our seventh president got an entire 2010 musical in his name with Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. The satirical rock musical with a fierce and extraordinary score by Michael Friedman took on the leadership, foibles, and hypocrisy of President Jackson, canonizing him in the style of Jesus Christ Superstar at the same time as it criticized.
Martin Van Buren
The Many Ghosts of Martin Van Buren (2016) is an experimental piece about our eighth American president involving puppetry and video which has played internationally in both Berlin and Madrid.
William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison: The Musical (2026) is one of several musicals about our ninth president that emerged after Hamilton and are a satirical reaction to that musical using Harrison, our shortest-serving leader, as a centerpiece.
John Tyler
Technically another musical about William Henry Harrison, Tippecanoe and Tyler Too: Or Whatever Happened to William Henry Harrison also portrayed 10th president John Tyler who was unexpectedly put in office after Harrison died. The show premiered in Minnesota in 2014 and was created by W. Watts Biggers who co-created the Underdog cartoon.
James K. Polk
Who Is James K. Polk? is a 2019 one-man play depicting Polk and a lesser known chapter of American presidency. The show played regionally in New York.
Zachary Taylor
The experimental theatre troupe the Neo-Futurists in 2001 created 43 Plays for 43 Presidents, where each American president is given two minutes of stage time to present their story. Zachary Taylor’s vignette shows his death after a brief time in office, as he collapses into his cereal bowl. The piece has since been twice updated.
Millard Fillmore
While Millard Fillmore may not be a character in Pacific Overtures (1976), he is a major force in the musical and the reason for the events that occur. As president, Fillmore ordered the opening of Japan for trade with America. The Stephen Sondheim-John Guare musical dramatizes these events, using the lens of Japanese artists creating a musical, Broadway-style.
Franklin Pierce
Pierce, a Ghost of the Union is an epic dramatic play by Nat Cassidy that has been produced regionally and was first presented in 2011 at the Players in NYC. The Players is a legendary venue with a long history of attachment to American presidential history, including its founding by Edwin Booth, famed actor and brother of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth. Pierce, a Ghost of the Union looks at Pierce’s familial trauma and inability to unite the nation, leading to the American Civil War.
James Buchanan
Multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike also penned a 1974 play called Buchanan Dying about our 15th president.
Abraham Lincoln
Prolific Broadway composer Frank Wildhorn followed Victor/Victoria, Jekyll and Hyde, and The Scarlet Pimpernel with The Civil War (1999)—which ran a much shorter engagement than the previous bunch. The song cycle about the American Civil War depicted all angles of the conflict, and included real words from great figures of the time, including President Abraham Lincoln.
Andrew Johnson
The 1931 play If Booth Had Missed imagined just that: the hypothetical situation where our 17th president, Andrew Johnson, didn’t take office to replace an assassinated Abraham Lincoln.
Ulysses S. Grant
The 1945 musical Mr. Strauss Goes to Boston is about composer Johann Strauss’s time at the Boston Jubilee in 1872. Then-President of the United States Ulysses S. Grant is a character who figures in the action.
Rutherford B. Hayes
The major Broadway musical to celebrate the American centennial, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue took for its title the address of the White House. For its plot, the show attempted to look at race relations inside the building over the course of all presidencies by zeroing in on a few. The most acclaimed number in the Leonard Bernstein-composed show was “Duet For One”, where first ladies Julia Grant and Lucy Hayes evaluated the goings-on of the election that led to Hayes’ presidency.
James A. Garfield
The musical Assassins, which premiered off-Broadway in 1990 and on Broadway in 2004, depicts the assassins of American presidents—their inner lives, motivations, and the events they initiated that led to American history. “The Ballad of Guiteau” dramatizes the moment when Charles J. Guiteau shot and killed our 20th president.
Chester A. Arthur
Actress and presidential historian Ellie MacPherson has created multiple pieces about the lesser-known facts about American presidents. One of these facts—that Chester A. Arthur was a dandy who owned 80 pairs of pants!—is a joke from her show Happy Birthday, Mr. President! which has played New York as well as the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Grover Cleveland
Our 22nd and 24th president was in office when the Statue of Liberty arrived in America as a gift from France. Lady of Copper is a show about these events that was first presented in 1998.
Benjamin Harrison
Like several other shows on this list, from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to 1776, The White House (1964) featured multiple American presidents and first ladies as characters. One of these was the wife of our 23rd president, Benjamin Harrison, as portrayed by Helen Hayes.
William McKinley
Earl Carroll’s Sketchbook was a popular ongoing revue series. The 1935 edition found our 25th president ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the show’s beautiful chorus girls.
Theodore Roosevelt
Bully: An Adventure with Teddy Roosevelt was a one-man show starring James Whitmore that played Broadway in 1977.
William Howard Taft
A unique 1987 Broadway musical called Teddy and Alice focused on the relationship between President Theodore Roosevelt and his daughter Alice, utilizing John Philip Sousa tunes to do so. Future president William Howard Taft was also a character.
Woodrow Wilson
In the 2024 Broadway musical Suffs, President Woodrow Wilson is portrayed by a female actor. His obstruction of suffrage is skewered and satirized.
Warren G. Harding
A few years before director Alex Timbers created Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson alongside Michael Friedman, he created a parallel project called President Harding is a Rock Star (2003) with writer Kyle Jarrow. The rock musical about our 29th president played off-Broadway, focusing on the scandals of his presidency.
Calvin Coolidge
President Calvin Coolidge essentially hosts the festivities of How To Steal an Election (1968), an off-Broadway musical about two young activists being taught the ins and outs of the dirty political system.
Herbert Hoover
While President FDR is an important presence in the landmark musical Annie (1977), so is the previous head of state, Herbert Hoover. Hoover gets an entire song in his name; “We’d Like to Thank You, Herbert Hoover” returns to that refrain, emphasizing the president who the struggling characters believe got them into the dire straits of the Great Depression.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The hit 1958 Broadway play Sunrise at Campobello ran for over 500 performances and won four Tony Awards, including for Best Play. The Dore Schary-penned piece dramatized President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s struggle with polio, from first being stricken with the illness to figuring out how to govern while paralyzed.
Harry S. Truman
One of seven Broadway musicals in history that have closed during previews, Senator Joe (1989) was an outlandish take on Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch-hunts. President Harry S. Truman was one of several American presidents that figured in the action.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
An Evening with Richard Nixon and… (1972) featured a panel of past American presidents, including Eisenhower, passing judgements on the political career of number 37, prior to Watergate.
John F. Kennedy
Michael John LaChiusa wrote both First Lady Suite (1993) and a sequel of sorts, First Daughter Suite (2015) to focus on the lives of the wives and daughters of American presidents. Each show zeroes in on a few of these women in a specific moment of their lives. One of the sections of First Lady Suite shines a light on the secretaries of both JFK and Jackie as they foreshadow our 35th president’s tragic end.
Lyndon B. Johnson
“All the way with LBJ” was the campaign slogan that won president Lyndon B. Johnson the office in 1964. It is also the inspiration for the large-scale 2014 play, All The Way, that won the Tony and the Drama Desk for Outstanding Play.
Richard Nixon
The Untitled Unauthorized Hunter S. Thompson Musical, which played La Jolla Playhouse in 2023 and the Signature in Arlington in 2025, is a musical by Joe Iconis about the titular counterculture writer and hero. The show also tackles Thompson’s arch-nemesis, President Richard Nixon, who stands for all that he and his community of self-proclaimed freaks and weirdos are raging against.
Gerald Ford
WIN: The Musical is a currently-in-development show about the legacy of President Gerald Ford, shaped around a visit to his presidential library on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of his administration.
Jimmy Carter
The 2002 off-Broadway play Jimmy Carter Was A Democrat by Rinne Groff took a hard look at the country’s politics veering right following the air traffic controller’s strike of 1981. (Difficult People’s iconic take, Carter, must also be mentioned although it has yet to appear off screen.)
Ronald Reagan
Gary Trudeau’s popular cartoon Doonesbury was turned into a 1983 Broadway musical with a score by Elizabeth Swados. President Ronald Reagan was a major focus of the cartoon and is so in the musical as well, as the characters skewer Reagan-era politics and priorities.
George H.W. Bush
First Daughter Suite (2015) takes a look at the lives of the daughters of American presidents. In one segment of the show, Barbara Bush and Laura Bush, wives of two presidents reflect on politics and family on the 50th anniversary of the death of Barbara and George H.W. Bush’s young daughter Robin.
Bill Clinton
Clinton: The Musical was a 2015 off-Broadway musical that satirized the events of our 42nd president’s time in office. Turning both the serious and the un-serious sides of Clinton’s personality into two separate characters, the show gave his life the musical comedy treatment.
George W. Bush
In Come From Away (2017), about the planes diverted to Gander on 9/11, President George W. Bush makes a brief appearance to deliver his post-attack television address.
Barack Obama
A 2019 Broadway play titled Hillary and Clinton was a reaction to real events during Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential caucus experience and is set during a fictional version of that election. Former president Bill Clinton and future President Barack Obama are also important characters, as Hillary determines a political course of action.
Donald Trump
Senator Joe may have taken place in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s liver, but The Ghost of John McCain (2024) took place inside President Donald Trump’s brain. The farcical show depicted McCain’s afterlife, not in heaven as he hoped, but instead inside the mind of our 45th and 47th president.
Joe Biden
A parody musical written by a former Obama campaign staffer, 44: The Musical (2025) told the story of Barack Obama’s presidency through the eyes of what President Joe Biden could remember. The heavily satirical show pulled no punches, also featuring as characters Hillary Clinton, Ted Cruz, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, and more.
Photo Credit: Daniel Rader
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