Hamilton
It's the longest I've gone without writing a newsletter for a number of reasons but mainly because writing about watching something random didn't feel fitting for what was and still is currently happening across the country. Going forward, I want to do a better job of providing recommendations that give voice to a variety of people from different backgrounds. Movies, TV shows, podcasts and other forms of "entertainment" are not only tools to unplug and relax; they can change the way you see the world by sharing stories. I challenge you, just as I'm challenging myself, to think about what you consume and who creates it. Before you start reading, if you have the ability, I encourage you to donate to one of these organizations or another organization of your choosing that supports Black lives and anti-racism: Black Lives Matter, the ACLU or the Black Voters Matter Fund.
Today, we're talking about Hamilton, a Broadway show that not only transformed the way we think about musical theater but also how this country was created, whose stories get told, who is included or excluded from the narrative and how actions ripple across history.
As a lover of musical theater, I firmly believe nothing can replace the affect of being in the room where it happens. But Broadway shows, especially a show featuring the original cast that was consistently sold out and charging $500+ a ticket, are notoriously inaccessible. Movie adaptations can rarely capture the same on-stage magic, although exceptions to this rule exist. A high-quality film of a live stage production with an audience is my favorite way to replicate the Broadway experience. If done right, it can capture the magic and energy of being in the audience for a show (think the 2008 filmed production of Rent). From everything I've read so far, Hamilton, which debuts today on Disney+, does just that. Like many of you, I've listened to the Hamilton cast album more times than I can count. On a long road trip, it's the perfect thing to put on to make two-and-a-half hours go by like that. After seeing the production on stage in Chicago, I was blown away by how something I already knew almost by heart could still surprise me, make me think and reduce me to tears. The staging. The choreography. The performances. That's the power of really, really good theater. I cannot wait to watch Renée Elise Goldsberry spin around the stage in Satisfied, to see Daveed Diggs transform from shy Marquis de Lafayette in My Shot to confident Lafayette in Guns and Ships to a sleazy Thomas Jefferson in Washington On Your Side, to see Leslie Odom Jr. sing the emotional Wait for It and the stunning The Room Where It Happens, to see Lin-Manuel Miranda strut across the stage in Non-Stop or Christopher Jackson's One Last Time. Lin-Manuel Miranda performed a sneak peek of the then unwritten musical during a White House performance for President Obama in 2009. The show debuted off-Broadway in 2015 and then moved to Broadway later that year. And it's debuting on Disney+ in 2020. I hope you all enjoy watching it this weekend, whether it's your first or second or third or fourth viewing, as the story's themes prove to be timeless. They fit in 1779. They fit in 2009. They fit in 2015. And they fit now.
In one of the interviews also featured below, Renée Elise Goldsberry says, "We’d been in the Black Lives Matter moment throughout Hamilton; it was 2014 when Eric Garner was killed. But when everything closed down and shut down, we put Hamilton out into this moment in this world. What was clear was the opportunity to use it for something bigger ... One of the ideas we had was to use the education arm, and EduHam was this brilliant idea. Jeffrey Seller, the producer of Hamilton, had partnered with Gilder Lehrman, this wonderful organization that archives all of this work of our founding fathers. They’ve done a really good job of first having it in the theater and connecting it to children in schools, and then putting it online so that families have access to it. What we wanted to do was to make sure that you had access not just to the white voices of the revolution, but the Black voices of the revolution. There wasn’t time to focus on slavery in the way that we needed to. There are several lines in Hamilton that talk about the failure of the Founding fathers to address slavery and how they kept kicking it down the road that is not ignored. But what we don’t hear are the actual voices of those brilliant people at that time. What we want to do with EduHam is to use cast members to do online reading and study Phillis Wheatley reading the work of some of these people and introducing them to anybody who is interested Gilder Lehrman — anybody who loves Hamilton. We want you to also know about their voices."
A round-up of Hamilton interviews + coverage:
‘We need to talk about the money’: Leslie Odom Jr.’s ‘Hamilton’ duels, onstage and off
Renée Elise Goldsberry Says, “You Could Win a Tony for Singing a Song That Lives on Your Break”
Revisit the 2009 White House performance that started it all
Renée Elise Goldsberry and the Importance of Hamilton Right Now
