How 'Hamilton' Changed Broadway
by Ashley Griffin, Guest Editorial
To read the earlier parts of this series, click below:
It’s become rarer and rarer for a musical to come along that truly pushes the art form forward. That’s not a bad thing. It inevitably happens with all artistic mediums the further away they get from their inception. Advancement and revolution (as opposed to natural, steady evolution) are writ large when an art form comes into being, but there are only ever so many completely brand-new things you can do.
It’s not surprising that pretty much all of the truly revolutionary elements of ballet (again, separate from the natural evolution of technique, which continues to drastically advance from generation to generation, partly because of technological advancements in dancewear and partially from the age-old “if one person did it everyone now has to do it…” mentality), happened by the early 20th century. Musical theater is now over a hundred years old as an art form, and, again, with the exception of technological and technical advancements, we’re no longer really discovering revolutionary new tricks up our sleeves.
This is a big reason why it’s rare to find a post-1985 musical on a “Shows that Changed Musical Theater” list. Shows that are important, sure, but not ones that completely changed the art form.
And honestly, I don’t think I would go so far as to say that “Hamilton” changed the art form. What it did do, however, was, as “Hair” and “Rent” had done before, drag the American Musical kicking and screaming back into alignment with popular culture without sacrificing any of its storytelling power or quality of craft.
“Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda basically created the hip hop musical, the same way James Rado and Gerome Ragni invented the rock musical (that moniker, “invented”, is generally given to the first show to do X on Broadway or in a significant off-Broadway production, there had certainly been artists experimenting with the forms before)
Miranda came to prominence with his 2008 musical “In the Heights,” which was significant for its use of hip hop and rap in its score and for focusing on the Latinx community living in the “Heights” (a Manhattan neighborhood, “the Heights” is, ironically, short for “Hamilton Heights” – the area where Alexander Hamilton lived “uptown” in NYC.) Manuel himself played the lead role in the musical, partially because, at the time, the producing team couldn’t find anyone else who was able to fulfill both the rap and musical requirements of the role.
In 2008, Miranda read Ron Chernow’s biography of American founding father Alexander Hamilton and made what he felt obvious, and others felt out of left field, a connection between Hamilton and the biography of many hip hop artists. Hamilton was an illegitimate, impoverished, orphan American immigrant.
Born in the Caribbean, he literally “wrote his way out” of poverty – achieving such notoriety for a literary work about the hurricane that devastated his hometown that a collection was taken up to send him to university in the colonies. He achieved great success in America – as a military leader (becoming Washington’s “right-hand man” during the Revolutionary War), as a lawyer, and as the founding father responsible for creating our treasury system, all thanks to his literary prowess. He also had a scandal-ridden personal life, including the first sex scandal in American politics.
Miranda originally planned a concept album of songs about Hamilton recorded by popular hip hop artists. He premiered the title song at the 2009 White House poetry jam for a packed house, including President Obama. When Miranda says at the event: “I’m thrilled the White House called me tonight because I’m actually working on a hip-hop album about the life of someone I think embodies hip-hop – Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton,” the whole audience laughs. By the end of his performance no one was laughing.
Eventually, it was decided that the project would be better served as a musical, and in 2015, the show premiered at the Public Theater (the same theater that had shepherded in “Hair” and is where this year’s history musical du jour “Suffs” began.)
Manuel described “Hamilton” as about “America then, as told by America now” and, as such featured almost an entirely non-white cast (the exceptions being the role of King George and some ensemble members) – the idea being that the actors playing the founding fathers (all of the founding fathers were immigrants to America) look like most American immigrants today.
The show also gives a strong voice to the women in Hamilton’s life – especially his wife Eliza (who gets the literal last word in the show,) and his sister-in-law Angelica – women who history has largely forgotten but had a tremendous impact on the founding of our country (the orphanage that Eliza founded, the first private orphanage in New York City, actually still exists, and partnered with “Hamilton” when the show first opened.) “Hamilton” soon transferred to Broadway, playing at the Richard Rodgers theater – the same theater where Miranda’s first show, “In the Heights” played.
“Hamilton” tells the life story of Alexander Hamilton, largely from the point of view of his once friend, then greatest rival, then killer Aaron Burr. Miranda reaches deep into both Broadway and music history for the connective tissue of the show - the relationship between Hamilton and Burr largely mirrors that between Salieri and Mozart in “Amadeus”, Burr functions largely like a less conniving Leading Player (“Pippin”) narrator figure, and minute references abound – enough to fill a book (and they do… check out “Hamilton: The Revolution.”) He even pays homage to Sondheim in the parallels between Burr’s second act number “The Room Where It Happens” and “Someone in a Tree” from Sondheim’s “Pacific Overtures,” and directly references Jason Robert Brown – using the musical phrase and lyrics “Nobody needs to know” from Brown’s first hit “The Last Five Years” (sung at a pivotal moment where the character Jamie begins an affair that will end his marriage,) at the exact moment Hamilton begins the affair that will, almost, end his marriage. And that’s not even starting on all the hip-hop and rap references.
As I said at the beginning, “Hamilton” didn’t actually reinvent the wheel. Still, it did celebrate all the pieces that had gone into making the metaphoric wheel and, in doing so, introduced it to a new audience.
The “Hamilton” team worked hard to make the show accessible to people who ordinarily would never be able to come to a Broadway show. They did special performances for schools and instituted the “Ham For Ham” rush – an update on the rush policy “Rent” invented but which had become largely inaccessible to many people because rush ticket prices had gone up so astronomically. At every performance of “Hamilton”, a certain number of people would be able to purchase $10 (Hamilton is the founding father on the $10 bill) tickets to the show.
The ”Hamilton” cast album was the first Broadway album to become popular music in a long time. People who had never listened to rap before could now recite every word of “Hamilton.” In 2016, Miranda released “The Hamilton Mixtape” – a new album (and spin-off from the original “concept album” idea) featuring assorted and cut songs from the musical performed by popular artists including Chance the Rapper, Wiz Khalifa, John Legend, Kelly Clarkson, Alicia Keys, and the Roots.
“Hamilton” launched the popularity of the “historical musical” genre – not a new concept (look at “1776” for one) but which blew up after “Hamilton”. Recent entries in the genre include “Six” (a look at the six wives of King Henry VIII from the wife's point of view) and this year’s “Suffs” – a pop-rock look at the Suffragette movement of the 1920s. Miranda himself says that people constantly come up to him suggesting new historical figures he should write musicals about, and even Amy Schumer had Miranda on her comedy show to do a parody sketch of “Hamilton” in which Schumer pitches Miranda a “Hamilton” rip off musical about Betsy Ross.
The show also became (I believe) the first American musical to release a pro-shot of the original production on a popular streaming platform – releasing on Disney+ during the pandemic, again providing access to the show to audiences that might never have seen it.
“Hamilton” also launched a partnership with NYC schools to help get kids interested in writing and history, encouraging students to write songs about their favorite historical figures and then selecting some students to present their work on the Richard Rodgers stage.
“Hamilton” has become a juggernaut in our collective consciousness. And I can’t wait to see what the next great influential Broadway musical will be.