I have more staging thoughts. So. Microphones.
Microphones can be a really fun staging device to establish what kind of story youre telling. Giving your characters an actual physical microphone gives a story a presentational, fourth-wall-breaking air, and in the setting of Warriors visually calls to mind the hip hop emcees who will soon start popping up in the Bronx.
In the beginning of the musical, theres at all times one distinguished speaker, and everyone else speaking is just chiming in (with the exception of when the DJ is on stage) so having a microphone also helps visually sort through the massive ensemble number of Survive The Night to highlight who are the important people on stage. I think the DJ should have her own like old timey radio microphone that she carries around but when she introduced the Bronx she hands them a more standard microphone which then gets passed from Borough to Borough throughout the song.
Cleon has it for Roll Call, even though Ajax and co still interrupt her. The Warriors trade it around for the Cypher (prop work!) and then, during Make Way For Cyrus, Masai marches over to Cleon to get her to hand over the mic (this is fun. They get to have a silent interaction Before Everything) and bring it to Cyrus, who has it for If You Can Count.
And by If You Can Count, the audience understands how this works. They've had the microphone for four songs now. They get the bit. Maybe they even saw the obc of Spring Awakening. They get how Microphones In Musicals work. Which is what makes it surprising when Cyrus gets shot and disappears off stage. With the microphone. And then its just gone. The world changes, fundamentally, in that moment. Cleon should have the microphone in Derailed, the rules we've established should dictate that she has it. But she doesn't. Because Cyrus is gone. And so when she says "I didnt do this," nobody hears her.