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Lin Manuel Miranda’s mega hit, the musical Hamilton, has got hiphop in it.  Ya can’t miss that, it’s what makes the show distinctive, and most Broadway shows don’t even come close to trying to do it.  Loren Kajikawa put it this way: “Hamilton's engagement with hip hop's history, culture, and aesthetics forms an undeniable part of the musical's appeal. Hamilton deserves to be called a "hip hop musical"

But that raises some questions…some of the traditional themes of hip hop music aren’t exactly  empowering for women.  Or anyone.  There’s also a fair tendency to celebrate violence, especially gun violence.  Is that inherently a part of the hiphop genre, or a sideshow, or is it all merely a metaphor, or is it just true of some songs and not others, or what?

There’s clearly a cultural element to hiphop…but what is it?  Where did hiphop come from, and what does it mean?

And when all those questions are answered it all adds up to one big question for the show Hamiton: What does using the hiphop style of music add, take away, confound, or enhance about the show?  Does it make the show work, detract from it, or not really matter at all?  And…when you listen really closely…IS most of the music really hiphop?

Get your gin, get your juice, sit back, and let’s get our music history on in this episode of Theater History and Mysteries.

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There are 2 questions at the heart of hamilton -- what makes the show work, and what makes Lin-Manuel MIranda tick.  Those might be two sides of the same coin.  Along the way there are some important choices – how women are portrayed, how slavery is handled, what’s up with multiracial casting. 

Lin-Manuel MIranda wanted the show to be a story about America then told by America now – and America now has some issues going on.  Race is a thing.  Charlottesville saw 6,000 white nationalists openly marching.  The death of George Floyd.  ICE raids, with the Supreme Court ruling that racial profiling in ICE raids is constitutional, and ruling that protections long ingrained in the voting rights act are no longer necessary.

The Trump administration is waging war on DEI, and removing the names of highly qualified people of color from major historical sites.  In the Netherlands, two panels depicting black soliders liberating cities after WW2 have been taken down; there are other and even more egregious examples closer to home at the Arlington cemetery.

Women’s rights are an issue; abortion bans are proliferating and intrude deeply into basic health care, the right to vote itself is being called into question with proposed legislation that would massively reduce the ability of women to vote in the first place, and in a way that much more drastically impacts men than women.

Representation in entertainment is an issue.  70% of the Broadway audience is white, as are the majority of the performers.

Racial exclusion and the marginalization of women are not solved problems, and our current political climate brings all of that more sharply into focus.

Into all of this walks the musical Hamilton and the person of Lin-Manuel MIranda.  He'll have to make choices about all of it – race, gender, music, colonialism, representation, Broadway itself, and he will get hit on all sides.

So far, we have had dedicated episodes to each of these topics, but today we’ll look at the guy, Lin-Manuel MIranda, what he put into the show, what worked, and how his celebrity has spilled into other politics.  Are the haters right?  Did his efforts at creating new spaces and new ideas result in a net step backwards?  Is he a hiphop sellout, is he another rich kid who made good on the back of a family fortune while capitalizing on the ethos of the streets?

Those are some heavy topics, but Lin-Manuel MIranda didn’t shy away from them.  Alexander Hamilton didn’t shy away from them either.  And neither will we.  Let’s sort ‘me all out together on this episode of THM.

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Philippa Soo plays the role of Eliza in the Broadway mega-hit Hamilton.  And I gotta say, the more you read about Phillipa Soo the more that you like her.  She’s talented, she’s been in a bunch of stuff, she adopted a dog on her birthday, got to throw out a first pitch at Yankee stadium.

All accounts, she’s a fierce performer on the stage and a compassionate human off of it.  One very cool connection is this: She formed the Eliza Project, named after her character in Hamilton, and the purpose of that is to support the Grahman Windham organization.  They have 19 centers that engage in community enrichment; the point is to transform communities as a way of preventing all the problems before they need treatment.  Provide services to children, youth, and families facing “some of life’s most difficult obstacles.”

The organization can trace its history 220 years back in it original incantation as the Orphan Asylum Society of the City of New York, an orphanage in Greenwich Village.  THe founders were Isabella Graham, Joanna Behune, Sara Hoffman and…Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton.

Clearly, Phillipa Soo finds a connection with the character she plays, and part of that connection is clearly gender.  Both are women in Hamilton.

Today, we’ll review the women in Hamilton and learn more about who they are in the show, how they are in history, and get to the inevitable question of whether their portrayal in the show is a net step forward, or a net step back.

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Lin-Manuel Miranda was not the first person to pursue multi-racial casting to make a political point.  Heather S. Nathans of Tufts university shares the history:

“On March 5, 1858, around the first anniversary of the Dred Scott decision and on the anniversary of the Boston Massacre, African American abolitionist William Cooper Nell re-staged the massacre as a tableau vivant at Boston’s Faneuil Hall. Nell did it to commemorate the Scott decision and to protest the recent ruling by local Boston authorities who refused to declare Crispus Attucks the first victim of the Revolution. Nell’s restaging of the massacre used all black performers to protest their systematic erasure from the history of the Revolution. It also forecast a day when actors of color might rise up and claim their true rights and privileges.” 

Nathans makes a direct connection to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton; the quote continues:  “In that, Nell resembles Miranda, who has said that one of the reasons he became a playwright was because there were no parts for him. Both men literally and figuratively wrote themselves into the archive and the repertoire.”

But, whereas Nell’s staging was all about slavery, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton was not.  It was more about…Hamilton.

And that might be the central question for Hamilton.  By casting historically white people with actors of color, Miranda has put race front and center of the production about a founder.  But, as we have explored in our past episodes, the show doesn’t entirely avoid race questions, but they are hardly a central point of the plot and, by design, no part of the character development.

What happens when you make race a key feature of the casting but you then don’t take on central questions of race, including slavery.  Does that work?  Is it cool to play Geo Wash with a black man?  Alex Ham with a Puerto Rican/NewYorikan?  Does it make the show better or worse, and is it s net step forward for racial progress or not?

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Hamilton, the musical, is a show about the founders of the United States, who were mostly white men, and to a much lesser extent white women, and it is played by people who are definitely not matched to the race of the historical figures.  Like, that is the most conspicuous part of the show.  The one thing that you can’t miss about Hamilton is that the cast is predominantly are actors of color playing historical figures who were undeniably white.  Chris Jackson, Leslie Odom Jr., and Daveed Diggs, all Black men, play Washington, Burr and Lafayette, all white men.  Lin Manual Miranda plays the title role of Alexander Hamilton, and according to wikipeida “He is of predominantly Puerto Rican descent and also has distant Mexican, English, and African American ancestry.“

Once it became clear this show was going into syndication, Miranda quipped: “That’ll be the note that goes with the school productions: If this show ends up looking like the actual founding fathers, you messed up.”

LMM has claimed, “This is a story about America then, told by America now, and we want to eliminate any distance—our story should look the way our country looks.“

There are people who love this approach, there are people who really do not, and there are, strangely, a number of people who almost don’t seem to notice.  We’ll do a deep dive into all these points of view, and explore the nature of history, the nature of art, and figure out what the race options are in Broadway.com’s open casting drop-down menu, in this episode of THM.

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This is a show about Hamilton the musical, and it’s about one of the main characters.  The point is to give some deep backstory to figure, and as I have promised, to never miss an opportunity to explore a crazy coincidence or good ghost story along they way.

This is the 6th episode about Hamilton, and this is our ghost story.  Or rather, a monster story.

There were plenty of crazy coincidences in this guy’s life.  It seemed like history was swirling around him, as events in his life and in world history were moving back and forth across continents and within huge countries, and they almost seemed to land him in the middle of things that would make a statistician shake their head against the impossible odds that one person could walk into that many different major moments.

What was his secret?  Was it that he, like Hamilton himself, found himself orphaned with nothing but his wits and his drive to climb his way up to the top of society?  Was there a social climb for this man, who rose from an entirely obscure and forgotten line of minor nobility to being an international figure?

No, that was all the unlikely deaths by the time he was two.

But, he did seem to have an affability and hopefulness, almost an obliviousness to the fact that other people might not like him.  That WAS part of his character, but it wasn’t the the thing that has convinced many serious historians that he had raw courage, that he was someone who was unafraid in the face of danger, who was willing to enter a fight that he probably couldn’t win just for the sake of who he was.

What convinced historians of that piece of this man’s makeup?

Why, the werewolf hunts, of course.

This is about the hero of two worlds, and his role in the most famous werewolf incident to that point in history, and maybe ever.  We’ll learn about the Marquis de Lafayette’s role stalking the Beast of Gevaudan in this episode of THM.

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I’ll get right to the point: Did Alexander Hamilton own slaves?

There are those who definitely say yes.  There were those who definitely said no, although those voices are growing quieter.  Even Ron Chernow probably lands on the side of “probably.”

But what are the facts?  What do we know for sure?  Does it all add up to an air tight case against him?

But the even bigger question, probably, is what that means.  Does it mean any speech he gave, any philosophy he held, or vote he cast for abolition is a lie?  Does it mean that he was delusional, trying to justify for himself that which was unjustifable?

Or does it mean that his detractors are still too determined to paint him as a villain?  In his day it was the Jacksonians and the Jeffersonians who were too willing to paint him as evil…and today it might be those farther left, who are really upset by the multi-racial casting of the show and, by extension, view it as a death blow if Hamilton did own slaves?

It’s a big question and a serious one, and it deserves a deep dive.  We are going to walk through the mist of the most uncomfortable part of history, and see how that affects how we can understand the smash hit musical, on this episode of THM.

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What’s the one thing you knew about Hamilton before the show?  One thing I remember from elementary school?  It’s the duel.

Isn’t the duel a big deal in the life of Hamilton?

Stop: What does the show have to say about the duel.  What’s the take home point?  What does it mean?

Probably, you like Ham by the end, and it’s sad.

Also probably mad at Burr for killing him.

If you’re like me, a little confused about why he did it.  Why duel at all? Why throw away your shot?  I mean, kinda honor, but had that been the real theme in the show so far?  Hadn’t it all been about a new country, and new ideas, and breaking convention, and rap battles?

There ARE questions about the duel:

Why did it happen in the first place?

Who’s fault was it that they were dueling?  Who challenged who, about what, and why did they have to end it by shooting?

Ham had 11 duels in his life, and most were solved before the dueling.

Why wasn’t this one?

What were they dueling about?

If the 10 duel commandments were that you didn’t really shoot each other, why did they shoot each other?

What do we know for sure really happened at that duel?

Who shot first?

The show ends when he dies…but was there interesting stuff that happened after that?  Yes, there was!  What was it?

Do you wanna know the answers to those questions?  I do!

And WE WILL!  In this episode of THM.

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You have seen the musical and you know how the story ends: Aaron Burr shoots Alexander Hamilton.  This is the podcast where we ask big questions, so let’s ask the biggest of all: Why?  Why did these two guys do it?  There IS more to know about the whole event…why was dueling even a thing?  It was the 11th duel Hamilton had been involved with…was that a little or a lot?  But there’s a bigger, more existential question here.  Did those guys hate each other that much?  Was it the election of 1800, where Burr had a shot at being President but lost?  Did it start earlier? 

Not only did they not always hate each other, but their first meeting…was about as far from a duel as you can possibly get.  And their first experience with a duel that involved each other…was also nothing that would lead you to think these guys were destined to shoot the most famous duel in American history.

Of all the guys in all of the revolutionary period, why were these two the ones so at odds that it ended with one of them killing the other?  

I’m not sure I can answer all of it, but I’ll take my best shot on this episode of Theater History and Mysteries.

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