[NARRATOR] It's the musical that took the world by storm.
The story of Alexander Hamilton,
one of the more obscure founding fathers,
told through the medium of hip-hop,
that dazzled America
and became an overnight sensation.
The play is exciting to see.
The production itself is just so alive.
You go there and walk out and you're flying.
I became part of the chorus of people telling people,
"This is really something."
[NARRATOR] The show made an instant star
of its young creator,
Lin-Manuel Miranda,
whose singular vision transformed Broadway,
bringing the sounds and faces of 21st Century America
to a re-telling of his nation's history.
It's just remarkable that he took
a traditional American message
and turned it into a contemporary hip-hop telling
of a great story.
It really marked the watershed moment in Broadway,
not only because of its inclusion of hip-hop,
but for the way that it has changed
and opened up a space
for people of color in a way that's been amazing to see.
He's a genius.
He represents something that we haven't seen
on Broadway in a really long time -
the self-contained auteur.
There are very few people I can think of on Broadway
who wrote the script, wrote the lyrics,
wrote the music and starred in the show.
This is the story of Hamilton: the phenomenon, the history,
and the man whose outstanding talent made it all happen.
To have somebody who's deeply well-read,
charismatic, into pop culture, historically savvy -
he married all these three things together.
It was just like this weird strand of dynamite.
It hit Broadway and it was just like... boom!
[NARRATOR] When "Hamilton" first premiered
in February 2015, it was an instant hit.
Universally acclaimed by critics,
the play soon became
the hottest ticket in New York City,
with queues stretching around the block.
The unlikely mix of history, hip-hop and musical theater
had caught almost everyone by surprise,
and as the "Hamilton" phenomenon grew,
public attention was quick to focus
on the show's charismatic creator and star,
Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Lin-Manuel Miranda is
an actor, singer,
a rapper,
a librettist, a composer.
He works primarily in musical theater
but he's also done television and film.
He's one of the most powerful, galvanizing forces right now
in the American musical theater scene.
He went to Wesleyan,
which is a good liberal arts school.
It was at that time that he began
to merge a lot of his interests from his youth
growing up in New York, in music theater, in hip-hop,
salsa and other kinds of Latino music.
He began to use those to forge a musical theater of his own
that in the end would form a kind of revolution
in what musical theater could be.
[MICHAEL RIEDEL] He is rare,
especially because he's also a performer.
The only thing Lin is missing
is Lin is not a director or a choreographer.
He may become a director.
He's a capable, talented guy. He could do it.
[NARRATOR] Born in 1980 to Puerto Rican parents,
Miranda was raised in the Latino neighborhoods
of both Washington Heights and Inwood
in New York's Upper Manhattan.
His gift for music and the performing arts
showed itself at a young age,
and earned him a place at the liberal arts college
Wesleyan University in the late 90s.
It was at Wesleyan, that the young Lin-Manuel
first started to combine his twin interests
of hip-hop and theater;
he founded an improvisational hip-hop troupe
called 'Freestyle Love Supreme'
and performed in numerous musical
and theater productions on campus.
But it was during his sophomore year at Wesleyan
that Lin-Manuel's prodigious talent started
to separate him from his peers.
He began writing the first draft of "In the Heights",
a musical with an unusual blend of Latin music,
salsa and elements of rap that was set
in the Dominican-American neighborhood
of Washington Heights in New York City.
Together with the young theater director Thomas Kail,
Miranda developed the play
into a full-blown Broadway production,
which premiered in Connecticut in 2005,
before finally achieving a major opening
on Broadway in 2008.
I loved musicals. I wanted a life in musicals.
I knew I was never going to get cast as Bernardo.
Because I don't dance... I'm not a ballet dancer.
I knew I was never going to get cast
in "Man of La Mancha"
because I don't have an operatic voice.
And if you want to be in musicals
and you're a Puerto Rican dude, that's all you get.
That was what existed in the canon.
So I started writing "In the Heights"
because I wanted to make a way for myself.
[JASON KING] It's a story about Dominican Americans
living in Washington Heights in New York
which is where Lin-Manuel Miranda is from.
So it's a kind of story of the lives of these people
who have dreams and aspirations and hopes and desires
to achieve the American dream.
"In the Heights" to me
established him as the new Spike Lee.
It's this brilliant piece of writing.
On the surface you think it's this story
about striving, which it is,
and also family and this cultural diversity
where you see this Latin family in the Heights in Manhattan,
but really it's this story about gentrification.
"In the Heights" is a very traditional musical.
What made it distinct from that tradition
was that it was using different sounds
than had formerly been used to such an extent
in musical storytelling on Broadway.
Specifically, it merged, in an early form,
hip-hop and Latin music.
We haven't had a lot of Latino shows on Broadway.
I think of "West Side Story" and "In the Heights".
That's the extent of it. Lin is a New York City kid.
A lot of Broadway shows tended to be set in the past
or in a kind of fantasy world -
the fantasy world of "The Lion King"
or the 19th century opera house, of "The Phantom of the Opera".
Lin's show was contemporary.
It was his life in the Heights, the people in his neighborhood.
- 96,000! - Damn!
- 96,000! - Dollars? Holler!
96,000!
- That's a lot of spray cans. - 96,000...
Yo, if I won the lotto tomorrow
Well, I know I wouldn't bother goin'
On no spendin' spree
I'd pick a business school and pay the entrance fee!
Then maybe if you're lucky, you'll stay friends with me!
I'll be a businessman, richer than Nina's daddy!
Donald Trump and I on the links
And he's my caddy!
My money's makin' money
I'm goin' from po' to mo' dough!
Keep the bling, I want the brass ring,
Like Frodo
Oh no, here goes Mr. Braggadocio
Next thing you know, he's lying like Pinocchio...
Just the language, the excitement of it...
When "In the Heights" was on Broadway
was a really exciting cultural moment.
It was really powerful
and a lot of that is rooted in Lin-Manuel's skill.
The incredible charisma of Lin-Manuel Miranda,
that was the first time we had seen that
coming through in a musical
written by the person who was playing it.
It's important to note that both in "In the Heights"
and especially in "Hamilton",
a lot of it was written by the author
for himself to perform,
knowing what he can do. It is extremely rare.
[NARRATOR] "In the Heights" proved a spectacular success,
and established Miranda
as a major new voice in musical theater.
The play was nominated for thirteen Tony awards,
winning for Best Musical, Best Original Score,
Best Choreography and Best Orchestrations
as well as picking up a Grammy award for Best Musical
and a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Yes! I mean...
I expected it because... I don't know.
You gotta to think, dream big if you're gonna get there.
But I expected it on the same level
as you expect to become a Jedi knight when you're three
and you've seen "Return of the Jedi".
I never knew it would come true.
So I feel so blessed and happy to be here
with this show that's been a real labor of love...
...for eight years.
[NARRATOR] A few months after "In the Heights" opened
on Broadway,
Lin-Manuel read historian Ron Chernow's biography
of Alexander Hamilton.
It proved to be a life-changing event.
One of the more obscure founding fathers
few Americans would know much about Hamilton,
other than that his face appears on the ten dollar bill.
But Miranda was fascinated by his story
and began to imagine a new project:
a musical based around the life of Alexander Hamilton.
Alexander Hamilton was probably the most important person
of the American Revolution who was not President.
Alexander Hamilton was born
out of wedlock in the West Indies.
He is an orphan by the time he's 14 years old.
He struggled. He was very fortunate
to have some people who became his supporters,
his benefactor and that's how he ended up in New York.
As a young man he knew poverty. He had seen it.
He had experienced it. That really shaped his life.
[NARRATOR] Hamilton's early life took place
during the most critical period in American history.
The Revolutionary War broke out while he was still a student,
and the young Hamilton took a full part
in the political turbulence of the time,
rising to become one of the most important figures
in the birth of American Independence.
Alexander Hamilton started writing
in support of the revolution
when he was just a young student.
He was very active in the military,
he became a close confident of George Washington.
He was at the constitutional convention.
He was instrumental
in getting New York to ratify the constitution.
Then, he became the first secretary of the treasury,
putting the United States on really sound financial footing.
He had a vision for America
that was one of industrial power and military might
that was a huge contrast
to some of the other founding fathers
like Jefferson and Madison,
who saw us as an agrarian society
with a large middle class
and just fringe elements on the upper and lower classes.
The fact that it was his vision that prevailed
is what people will look at it today
that points to what some might consider
the greatness of America, whether it truly is or not.
So I would suggest that's his significance.
The financial institutions and the economy that we have
are all based on his principles, and really his alone.
Alexander Hamilton was a true capitalist,
a true capitalist who believed
that free trade was best for the country,
was best for merchants in the end,
and was best for customers in the end.
It would lower prices,
it would produce better products.
At the same time,
he would not recognize the system we have today.
He was certainly not a supporter
of government supporting ordinary people.
But no one in the 18th century was.
[NARRATOR] Inspired by Ron Chernow's biography,
Miranda started to write material
around Hamilton's life
that would eventually form the basis of a show.
He called it "The Hamilton Mixtape".
He has everything in his life that makes for a great story,
that makes for a great musical
and in many ways it's perhaps surprising
that it took until the 21st century
that we have a play based
on the life of Alexander Hamilton,
I think it's kind of surprising that Lin-Manuel decided
to do an entire musical
based on the life of Alexander Hamilton,
especially having done "In the Heights" previously.
I don't know if you read
the biography of Alexander Hamilton and think,
"Wow, this would make a really good hip-hop musical."
It's a curious choice of source material
but at the same time it's clear that Lin-Manuel saw elements
in the biography of Alexander Hamilton
that he could use to craft a story
about the nature of the American character
and the American dream that he wanted to tell.
What Lin-Manuel seems to focus on through hip-hop, of course,
is the story of a self-made man,
somebody young and hungry in fact -
that's one of the main lyrics -
and comes to the United States to start a new life
and ends up rising to heights
he himself could never have guessed.
That's the aspirational impact and drive of the play.
[NARRATOR] Lin-Manuel's vision for "Hamilton"
was to tell the story
of a founding father through hip-hop.
It was a radical idea, matching historical narrative
with an ethnically diverse cast and rap music.
And it would be something completely new for Broadway,
which in 2008, was ready for a shake-up.
Broadway went through a difficult period
in the late 60s and into the 70s.
New York City was going bankrupt.
Times Square was dangerous.
There was no such thing as a "Lion King"
or a family show in 1975.
And like many other businesses in New York City at that time,
Broadway could not leave New York.
Where's Broadway going to go? New Jersey? No.
Broadway had to survive.
The only way it knew how to survive was
it found young, creative people,
the Lin-Manuel Mirandas of their day to back
who created shows that suddenly became attractions
that people wanted to see.
So if you go back four years ago,
the Lin-Manuel Miranda of the early 70s
was a guy named Michael Bennett,
who was a choreographer, who had this dream of a show
about the dancers in the chorus of a Broadway show,
the gypsies we called them.
From that he fashioned a show called "A Chorus Line",
which was the "Hamilton" of its day.
When that opened on Broadway in Times Square
at the Schubert Theater,
suddenly this business that had been moribund
had life in it again.
Then in the 80s, and we have the British to thank for this,
Cameron Mackintosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber
came along with this completely cockamamie idea for a musical
about children's poems about cats.
That turned into the most successful show
in the history of Broadway
and made so much money for this industry and New York City
that it began to lift the fortunes of Broadway,
Times Square and New York City.
Then when you start to have things like "Les Miserables"
and "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Miss Saigon",
you have a Broadway that is no longer the backwater
of the entertainment industry,
but a business that is literally making billions of dollars
on these shows that travel all over the world.
By the time "Hamilton" was being developed,
the American musical theater was in an amorphous
and almost morbid state
of uncertainty about what it could be.
There were lots of attempts
to find new voices for the musical.
You couldn't be too flat out serious.
That was dreary.
You certainly couldn't be too cheerful and old-fashioned
because people would snore.
You couldn't have phantoms with masks
singing at the top of their lungs.
There were just a lot of things you couldn't do anymore
and yet not a clear idea of what you could do.
In 2008, when "In the Heights" appeared on Broadway,
a lot of the other shows of the time
tended to be jukebox musicals.
By that I mean musicals that would take
an existing song catalogue by a pop artist or band
then create an original dramatic narrative
around that song catalogue.
I'm thinking of "Jersey Boys" which celebrated the music
of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.
"Mamma Mia" which celebrated the music of Abba.
Broadway started to rely on jukebox musicals
because they were a sure thing.
At a moment when Broadway
is not able to take the artistic risks
that it might have in the past, in the heyday
of work by people like Michael Bennett,
I think jukebox musicals provided a safe alternative
for the Broadway community.
People were definitely going to come to these musicals
because they already knew the music
so there was an immediate buy-in.
Then you would just wrap a story around the music.
This is the moment in which
Lin-Manuel Miranda is developing "Hamilton",
in which there's no consensus
about what musicals can be now
but a lot of consensus about what they can't be.
with certainly an understanding that new voices,
new characters who have not been seen on stage
treated seriously need to be part of the story.
[NARRATOR] As the show developed
industry insiders started to circulate rumors
about an exciting new musical
based on the life of Alexander Hamilton,
and in May 2009 the public got their first look.
Lin-Manuel appeared in
an evening of "Poetry, "Music and the Spoken Word"
at The White House
and performed some of the material
from "The Hamilton Mixtape"
in front of The President and the First Lady.
It's a concept album about the life of someone
I think embodies hip-hop,
Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.
How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore
And a Scotsman, dropped
In the middle of a forgotten spot
In the Caribbean by providence impoverished,
In squalor, grow up to be a hero
And a scholar?
The ten-dollar founding father
Without a father
Got a lot farther by working a lot harder
By being a lot smarter By being a self-starter
By fourteen, they placed him
In charge of a trading charter...
[MICHAEL RIEDEL] The initial reaction
to the idea was skeptical.
I mean, a hip-hop musical about the founding fathers,
and all played by black and Hispanic people,
no white people,
a little strange.
But there was a workshop,
very private for friends of Lin's,
the backers of the show.
I happened to have a few spies there.
I heard that people were really impressed.
They thought the songs were terrific.
He's created these compelling characters
in the founding fathers.
It doesn't feel starchy or historical.
It feels contemporary. It feels vital.
It has tremendous theatricality and energy.
That's when I begin hearing,
"You should keep your eye on this show."
Lin-Manuel Miranda was known in the theater back then,
but not to the... world at large.
It was probably the Obamas' endorsement of "Hamilton"
that made it into the phenomenon that it is today.
[NARRATOR] But the real standout from the White House show
was that "The Hamilton Mixtape" was,
as its name suggested, all about hip-hop.
When Lin-Manuel stood rapping
in front of the President,
it was clear to observers that he was planning
to try and succeed where others had failed,
and make hip-hop a hit on Broadway.
All right, drop the beat.
He's throwing up some words
I'm getting to say some free-styling
That you never heard Constitution
The POTUS, I'm freestyling, You know this
Obamacare, okay I'm looking up the present
Was hopeless before You enacted that system
The Federalist Papers
Hamilton wrote the other 51 and greater
And Sunny and Bo, his canine
It's insane asinine, oh my gosh...
[LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA] We're telling a story
of music on stage so it's a musical.
That's the only definition of musical theater music:
telling a story on stage through music.
Everything else, it's up to you to write the rules.
For me, the fun was if that initial inspiration was
Hamilton is a singularly hip-hop character,
you can't tell his story in any other musical genre.
[IN SPANISH] Porque usas más palabras
He uses more words than any of the other founders.
He leaves behind more writing than any of the other founders.
If you did an opera, it would be a day long.
[LAUGHTER]
You need hip-hip because it has more words per measure
than any other genre of music.
It also has that energy of making something out of nothing,
of writing so well about your circumstances
that you transcend them.
There've been many attempts historically
to try to incorporate hip-hop
into musical theater in particular.
I'm thinking in the 1990s of
"Bring in 'da Noise, Bring in 'da Funk"
the George C. Wolfe directed show
that starred Savion Glover.
It was a mix of tap and funk and hip-hop.
That was quite successful in its time.
But I think generally speaking, hip-hop as a form
that pursues a kind of authenticity
that is very much related to street credibility,
that is very much rooted in the blues
where you live the life that you sing about in your song
or that you rap about in your song.
There's a way in which that rubs up against
the kind of expressive inauthenticity
of musical theater.
There've been attempts
at blending hip-hop and theater,
whether it was Mos Def being in "Topdog/Underdog".
Puff Daddy had a major role in "A Raisin in the Sun".
Even like the Tupac play.
Then here comes "Hamilton"
and it's something where it's like all overnight success
or sort of like this big talent and success
comes from a road that was paved by other people.
To take some of the dominant themes
in the mythology of hip-hop, having to do with underdogs
rising to the mainstream of culture -
to take some of those themes and apply them
to the retelling of history.
I think that's really powerful as a gesture.
And of course all of the beefs and fights
that Alexander Hamilton got into
over the course of his long career
run parallel to beefs and fights in hip-hop
which are part of the nature of the form itself.
The success of hip-hop in "Hamilton" is the fact that
in any one minute passage of a song in hip-hop
you will have 4 to 10 times more words
than you would in a traditional song.
So he has the ability to provide 4 to 10 times more information
in any moment of the show.
It's part of why the show is so overwhelming.
You're being given a ton of information
at all times and it doesn't ever let up.
Once I decided Hamilton is a singularly hip-hop figure,
and this is all from my first reading the book,
I go,"So what does he sounds like?"
That's how you build the score.
So he's not going to be... He's gonna be like my heroes.
He's gonna rhyme 6 syllables on a line if he needs to.
He's gonna be the son of Rakim, the son of Eminem,
- the son of Big Pun, - [CHEERS AND LAUGHTER]
who has one of my favorite hip-hop lyrics of all time...
Dead in the middle of Little Italy
Little did we know That we riddled two middlemen
Who didn't do diddly...
[CHEERS AND APPLAUSE]
Lyricists that make you rewind them instantly
because you can't believe
how many rhymes have happened on a line.
Those are the ones that I love and that I keep coming back to,
and Big Pun was a big one of those for me.
So it took me a year to write "My Shot"
because "My Shot" is mostly in Hamilton's voice
and I wanted it to have those 'Big Pun-ish' lines
where every syllable is filled,
making at least a 4 syllable rhyme every time. So it's...
'm a diamond in the rough...
Which is a Big Pun lyric.
A shiny piece of coal Tryi' to reach my goal
My power of speech: unimpeachable
Only nineteen but my mind is older
Which is a Mobb Deep lyric.
These New York City streets get colder, I shoulder
E'ry burden, e'ry disadvantage
I have learned to manage
I do't have a gun to brandish I walk these streets famished
The plan is to fan this spark into a flame
But damn, it's getting dark
So let me spell out the name...
So even the end of the line
agrees with the beginning of the next line.
So they have to follow each other,
as strung together as the best thick rope.
So what does everyone else sound like?
So I'm reading about George Washington
and I'm reading about him fleeing New York
and it's this moral authority.
He's the only veteran we have.
So it's this very regimented,
it's as regimented as military thinking is. It's...
Can I be real a second? For just a millisecond?
Let down my guard and tell the people...
There's no syncopation in it at all.
[ILLUSTRATING RHYTHM] It's can-can-can-can...
He's a military man. He likes a military rhyme.
Thomas Jefferson.
Thomas Jefferson misses most of the war,
but he writes our founding documents.
He writes the declaration of independence.
But he's just been chilling in France.
So I cast him as the jazz that leads to hip-hop.
So I listened to a lot of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.
I listened to a lot of Gil Scott Heron.
I listened to the jazz that if you put a beat under it
it would be hip-hop, but it's jazz.
It was cool.
From the flow, into the cadence,
into the way they were dropping on the beat.
So much so that the soundtrack to "Hamilton" charted.
People would say,
"I was into 'Hamilton'. Did you go to the show?"
"Nah, but I listened to that soundtrack."
Especially when you think about those
who couldn't get tickets to the show.
Instead they had this soundtrack that they could go to
and bear witness to the talent on an audio level.
[NARRATOR] Lin-Manuel eventually sent
a copy of "The Hamilton Mixtape" to Oskar Eustis,
Artistic Director of New York's Public Theater.
Originally founded by the left-wing producer
and director Joe Papp,
over the years The Public had built a reputation
for original, challenging and radical theater.
When Oskar Eustis heard Lin-Manuel's tape,
he immediately offered
to develop the show at The Public,
and Hamilton had its first home.
[MICHAEL RIEDL] The Public Theater was founded
by Joe Papp in the 1950s
and he believed that Shakespeare and theater
should not just be for the rich.
They should be available to the poor
and the working classes of America.
That's why he called his theater
The Public Theater because it's for 'The Public'.
Some of the musicals that The Public has produced
have represented real change points
in the development of musical theater,
starting with one of its earliest,
"Hair", in 1968
which began downtown Off-Broadway
then moved into Broadway.
"A Chorus Line" is the most famous one
and has helped them produce serious non-musical plays
for decades ever since.
And more recently a show like "Fun Home"
and "Hamilton" have also been produced there.
Lin sent the tape to Oskar.
I'm sure Oskar liked some of the tunes.
But Oskar hadn't seen the script yet.
He didn't know what the show was going to look like.
But he liked what he heard
and more importantly he liked Lin-Manuel Miranda.
He believed that Lin-Manuel Miranda
was a genuine artist who was going to create something
that he wanted to be part of.
That is fundamentally the job of the Artistic Director.
It's what Joe Papp did brilliantly
and it's what Oskar does.
They back the people
who are going to create the shows
that we're one day going to be talking about.
To the extent that a show needs to build from a core audience
to a larger audience,
it's useful to brand a show that way and people know,
"Oh, that's likely the kind of thing I'm going to enjoy."
What happens though is you open at The Public Theater.
You already have this buzz building about the show.
You have the critics coming in. They rave about it.
You only have 250 seats to sell a night.
Every VIP in this country, believe me,
was trying to get into that show
which just amped the buzz even further.
So you have this phenomenon created in this tiny theater
that's going to have to explode eventually.
The only way it can explode is to go to Broadway
and explode there.
[NARRATOR] Hamilton opened at The Public
in February 2015 to huge acclaim.
Critics raved about Lin-Manuel Miranda's vision
and a seat in the small, intimate auditorium
soon became the most sought-after ticket in town.
A publicist in New York was begging me to go see it.
He was saying, "It's really good.
"It's like hip-hop and American history."
I'm like, "Oh, man.
"Like Broadway does hip-hop." No, thank you.
Finally, kind of to humor this guy, I said,
"I'd like tickets for tomorrow."
I was just knocked out!
It was the last thing I expected.
The reviews for "Hamilton" were off the hook.
It was one of the best reviewed shows I can imagine.
There've been a few moments
in my lifetime in American theater
where there've been shows that are not just shows,
but they are cultural movements in a particular direction.
I think "Hamilton" is one of those
incredibly galvanizing moments in American theater
where it's critically acclaimed
and it's also... commercially successful.
[NARRATOR] Beginning with an opening song
that summarizes his childhood,
"Hamilton" traces the story of Alexander Hamilton's life,
from being raised as an orphan in the Caribbean
through to his death in 1804
at the hands of arch rival Aaron Burr.
Over its two acts,
the play touches on Hamilton's personal life,
professional achievements, political ideas
and his relationship to other renowned historical figures,
with many critics commenting on its mature
and nuanced depiction of America's founding fathers.
[MICHAEL RIEDEL] The examination
of Hamilton's life in the show concentrates
on his immigrant and outsider status.
He could never be elected President
because he wasn't born in America.
He came from the West Indies.
And he was an outsider who could make it
because he was creating the establishment
that he was going to make it in.
He was inventing himself
and the country at the same time.
Often when we are presented with the founding fathers,
it's either in a very almost religious way
in which they're the kind of pantheon of saints,
or it's the opposite.
You tear this one down. That one on slaves.
This one was problematic for this reason or that reason.
I think "Hamilton" presented
these characters in three-dimensional terms
and in recognizably contemporary terms
which is why I think a lot of young people like it.
It reminds us that this country almost didn't come together.
That there were thirteen independent colonies
that had different economies different world views
and that the men from those colonies
that came to put this country together
represented those views
that were often in conflict with each other.
There were no guarantees that they were going to succeed
in creating the United States of America.
But "Hamilton" shows that in the end
they rose above intractable disagreements,
hatred for each other, to create a country.
[NARRATOR] Among the historical figures that appear in Hamilton
are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison,
King George III and the Marquis de Lafayette.
It is the lesser-known Aaron Burr, however,
that takes center stage
as the former Vice President of the United States
and key character in the "Hamilton" narrative.
I think the dramatic core of "Hamilton" is
the relationship of Hamilton to Aaron Burr.
It was a contentious relationship.
He went to Aaron Burr initially for mentorship.
They had a lifelong relationship
and then Aaron Burr ended up killing him.
I think that's the centerpiece of the entire show.
I think it's all about Aaron Burr's childhood.
He lost his mother very early on.
I think that made Aaron Burr into an arrogant man,
an insecure man, and one who was looking for
his parental figures all his life
and did not find them.
He was also not as happily married
as Alexander Hamilton was.
Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton met
while they were both aides to George Washington.
Both men were in their early 20s.
Politically they had similar views.
Both were federalists.
But nevertheless, they did not like each other personally.
In some ways they were too similar.
Burr was even more arrogant than Hamilton
and somehow they just did not get along.
The bitterness between Aaron Burr
and Alexander Hamilton goes back to 1791
when Hamilton's father-in-law, Philip Schuyler,
was unseated in the Senate by Aaron Burr.
So he didn't care for Aaron Burr for a long time.
Then in 1800, when there was an electoral college tie,
Hamilton worked behind the scenes to see that
the tie between Burr and Jefferson was broken
with Jefferson becoming President.
Even though he didn't stomach Jefferson,
he liked him better than Burr.
He literally called him a dangerous man.
whom the reins of government
should not be entrusted to.
Burr and Hamilton engaged in the, I would argue,
late 18th century version of hip-hop
which is writing essays.
That was their duel of words.
It had been going on for a long time.
That was the weapon of the day.
They were smart about it. They used pseudonyms.
They didn't use their real names.
They had other newspapers on their side.
It was a war of words, a game of words.
[NARRATOR] The bad blood between the pair
eventually reached its deadly conclusion
in the summer of 1804
when Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel.
Lin-Manuel's play culminates in the dramatic re-staging
of pistols at dawn on the west bank
of the Hudson river in New Jersey,
where Alexander Hamilton was fatally shot, aged 47.
The duel between Burr and Hamilton
was a culmination of a correspondence
where neither would back down.
Burr wanted an acknowledgment or denial
that he had said despicable things about him.
Hamilton refused to acknowledge anything
unless he was more specific.
It became a stalemate
to where it became a battle of pride.
When he said, "I challenge you to a duel,"
Hamilton agreed.
Hamilton could have ended it by simply saying,
"If I've said anything to offend you,
"it was unintentional." That would have done it.
Hamilton did have an abhorrence for dueling.
He suggested it was completely uncivilized,
he was against it, yet his pride was on the line.
Hamilton writes a long list of the pros and cons.
Then he proceeds.
I think he knew he was going to die.
I don't think Burr gave it as much thought as Hamilton did.
I also think that Hamilton wanted to miss the shot.
Burr did not.
The tradition at the time was when you fire your first shot,
if your message is, "I don't intend to fire you,"
you shoot directly into the ground.
Hamilton, by all accounts, may have fired accidentally.
He shot into the air
and it went into a tree behind Burr.
He turned around and shot Hamilton.
It's also possible
he wasn't trying to hit Hamilton.
It's possible he likewise was intending to miss.
But pistols back then
oftentimes went far off from their targets.
[NARRATOR] As well as their deadly encounter
on the banks of Hudson,
the play depicts Burr's refusal to assist Hamilton
in the drafting of the Federalist Papers,
and introduces the audience to some of the central ideas
in Hamilton's political philosophy.
The Federalist Papers are a series of essays
that Alexander Hamilton and James Madison wrote together
to persuade Americans to ratify the constitution,
to understand the constitution,
to understand why there needed to be a separation of powers,
why a republic was the only way
a country could survive that would not be a monarchy,
why we needed a house of representatives
that was popularly elected, but why we also needed senators,
who would at that point at least,
not be popularly elected,
why we needed to have an independent judiciary,
why we needed to have a limited executive,
why we needed to have a treasury,
why we needed to have a bill of rights eventually.
When you really think about that era and consider that
some of the greatest minds of our time
happened to be alive and in the same room
to make these things happen is a compelling story
and Hamilton himself was the visionary
whose idea of an industrial culture
and turning a country into a superpower
was the vision that prevailed.
It makes him all the more fascinating
and it's a format that enables us
to see the other people around him
and how this was possible.
[NARRATOR] This theme is further illustrated in the show
by Hamilton's relationship
with both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison,
played by Daveed Diggs and Okieriete Onaodowan,
which sets out the competing visions that the trio had
for the future of the USA.
Hamilton's relationship to Jefferson and Madison
was one of contemporaries.
They all started out as federalists,
believed in a central government
but diverged in terms of how strong
that central government should be
If there was personal animosity,
it was grounded in their political ideologies.
Where they drifted apart the most
was in Hamilton's insistence on a national bank
and tying ourselves to big money interests,
where Madison and Jefferson sincerely believed
that we should be an agrarian society
and not be tied to European banks.
Madison and Jefferson both believed
that it would take a thousand years
to settle this country east to west.
I think Hamilton understood somewhere somehow
that it was going to be much faster than this
and that the country needed to make preparations
for growing, for increased commerce,
for increased competition with other countries
and for treaties with other countries.
[NARRATOR] Finally, the musical explores
Hamilton's personal life,
his marriage to the wealthy Elizabeth Schuyler in 1780,
his extra-marital affair with Maria Reynolds
and the tragic death of his eldest son Phillip,
who is fatally wounded in a duel,
in a grim foretelling of the fate
that would later befall Alexander.
It is Elizabeth Schuyler, however, who takes center stage
in the Hamilton narrative
and she is introduced early on in the show
with the upbeat, celebratory number "The Schuyler Sisters".
- Work, work! - Angelica!
- Work, work! - Eliza!
- And Peggy! - Work, work!
- The Schuyler sisters! - Angelica!
- Peggy! - Eliza!
Work!
Daddy said to be home by sundown
Daddy doesn't need to know
Daddy said not to go downtown
Like I said, you're free to go
But - look around, look around
The Revolution's happening in New York
- New York - Angelica
He was really good-looking, a great writer, a good talker
and very charming, apparently
who met in the woman he ended up marrying, Eliza,
the exact woman that he had described
about a year, year and a half earlier.
She was this amazing woman
who couldn't have loved him any more.
I think it's very appropriate
that the musical begins with her and ends with her.
[NARRATOR] In its 'warts and all' depiction
of Alexander Hamilton's life,
the play presents a three-dimensional view
of the founding fathers,
one which isn't afraid to show them
as flawed human beings.
Hamilton biographer Ron Chernow described it
as 'history for grown-ups'.
We think of our founding fathers
as these figures on Mount Rushmore.
They're made of granite.
Lin made them flesh and blood. He made them human.
You saw the bickering, the squabbling.
You saw the dirty political compromises they had to make.
You saw the burning ambition,
the hatred between Burr and Hamilton.
You saw the jealousy
that Burr had for Hamilton's success,
that Hamilton outfoxed him at every turn.
I think approaching history in a way
that doesn't deify the founding fathers
makes those characters all the more compelling.
Historians don't always do that.
They tend to mythologize Thomas Jefferson
and suggest, for instance, it was never in his character
to have fathered children with a slave.
When you look at the evidence,
it overwhelmingly supports the contrary.
Those are the things that actually
make those characters real.
I think those are the things that we identify.
When you deify somebody, they become as interesting
as the statues that we erect to them
as opposed to the flaws that truly make someone human.
I think that's what's connecting people,
the humanity of it.
I think people are seeing themselves
and how flawed these people are
and it's giving them hope because of the wonderful things
these people were still able to achieve
even with their flaws.
It's a show about a politician
that is also about policy.
There is a tremendous amount of material
about banking policy,
about dealing with the French Revolution,
about slave owning.
It is unique in musical theater, as far as I know,
with one exception,
in dealing with the policy questions
that animated the politicians we take an interest in.
[NARRATOR] But in taking such an approach to its subject,
"Hamilton" inevitably opened a debate
about historical accuracy,
with some critics noting that the show side-steps
some of the more uncomfortable questions of the time,
in particular, the attitude
of the main protagonists towards slavery.
One of the exciting things about "Hamilton"
is the conversation about American history
that it's provoked.
There's a sense in which people argue.
It was Hamilton as against slavery
as the play depicts.
The Schuyler family that he married into,
they were slave holders.
What was Hamilton's attitude about immigrants, for example?
People have contested that.
All of these questions have come up.
Most of the criticism of the play
has been those kinds of debates.
Is this an accurate portrayal? Is it a fair portrayal?
What corners is it cutting?
You can say that of anything
that's based on an historical event,
that there should be a balanced approach.
I don't think it's balanced so much as telling...
It's a story that has two sides to the same coin.
In his instance, it's the contradiction
of being a self-made man coming from nothing,
and yet his vision for America's greatness
lay in elitist ruling.
I think they go hand in hand, and to not examine one
is to leave something out
that I think is integral to his character
and to his story.
Nonetheless, what is there is accurate.
[NARRATOR] Hamilton's most obvious break
with historical accuracy
is in the make-up of its multi-ethnic cast.
With almost all of its parts played by actors of color,
Hamilton presented a bold statement about diversity
and the nature of contemporary America.
I think the statement is:
"This is our history too. We are here." You know?
And we can play these roles
and we can make it our story.
It's the way it flips this convention
of what America is.
Some of my favorite images
that are seared into my brain are like
when you see, to take it to music,
Frank Ocean, the singer.
He wears an American flag as a bandana
or OutKast and they'll have a flag behind them.
It's so incredibly powerful.
You take in the foundation of this country
with the actual idea of what this country is.
Now people are seeing that,
and it's this imprint that's going to be
a permanent record to a lot of young people.
[JESSE GREEN] When you're watching it on stage
after a minute it makes no difference.
This is the man who is James Madison.
This is the man who is Thomas Jefferson.
You're not thinking: why is Thomas Jefferson black?
The theater is amazing that way.
[MICHAEL RIEDEL] Broadway for a long time
was called the Great White Way.
Then that became a kind of a disparaging comment
because the shows were by and large white
and the audiences certainly were white.
But as young people become more interested in Broadway
since the success of "Rent",
they're not all white kids.
And they're bringing new voices and new music
to the form of the musical theater
which I think is good and healthy in the long run.
I think "Hamilton" is a show that says
it doesn't matter what color you are
or your background or your ethnicity.
The musical theater is an artform
that you can thrive in, that you should be attracted to.
There's been so much exclusion in the theater
in which people of color have generally only been able
to tell certain stories
and say certain things on Broadway.
Their involvement on Broadway has been very circumscribed
and very limited.
To tell not just any story but a founding story
of the narrative of American life
has a kind of meta relevance.
It's a commentary itself on the role
of people of color in this country.
I've gotten e-mails from movie executives
who say, "You've totally made me rethink the casting
"of this project or that project because I saw what...
"...an incredibly talented, diverse group of faces
"can do to an audience."
[APPLAUSE]
That's wonderful. That's a wonderful thing.
It's a wonderful feeling to have that kind of impact.
When something has a kind of success it reverberates.
[JESSE GREEN] That's part of the excitement people felt.
Who are these amazing performers?
Why haven't we seen them before?
Oh, because there was nothing to see them in.
[NARRATOR] And Hamilton proved to be the perfect platform
for a new generation of actors to show their talent.
A host of standout performances earned the play's cast
a total of seven Tony nominations,
with Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jnr, Philippa Soo,
Daveed Diggs, Jonathan Groff, Christopher Jackson
and Renée Elise Goldsberry all recognized for their work.
I thought Lin-Manuel Miranda was great
in his role as Hamilton.
In a sense, he was telling his own story.
I feel like he very much identified
with the character that he created.
And Daveed Diggs who played Lafayette and Jefferson.
Just moving between those two roles
was really fun
and exciting and intriguing to watch.
Getting to play a role where I get
to take these things that I learned
from just trying to walk around like my dad walks around
has been so great. I don't know.
And Thomas Jefferson!
There's no way that that should be real,
that I should get to read lines written for Thomas Jefferson,
be like, "Yeah, that's my father."
Except maybe that's way too real!
But, it's been so great. It's been so much fun.
One of the great things about this process
is how much of ourselves we were asked to bring to it
and how much sense it kept making to do that.
I think the real star of the show
in terms of the acting was Leslie Odom Jnr.
Lin is certainly a talented guy. He created the show.
But he was the weakest performer of them all
because he's not the grade actor.
And Leslie Odom was so charismatic
and so compelling as Aaron Burr.
And it's always better to play the villain.
It's just a juicier part.
And Leslie played it with a ferocity and intensity
that was pretty thrilling when you saw it.
Especially at The Public Theater he was at this level
and Lin was still wobbling around here
trying to find the character.
Listen, he also was writing and fixing the show
so he had a few distractions there.
But Leslie to me was the real star of the show.
This show has sort of...
...helped me find some direction,
find some purpose again.
This is what I always felt like I was meant to be doing
but I was waiting for Lin to write it.
To me it was the combination
of their exceptional qualities that were stunning
that they were able to find so many people
who could perform difficult work so brilliantly.
And now with the second cast and with the touring the cast
it's not like they're having trouble finding these people.
They've been waiting for something to come along
with which they could show who they are.
That to me is the thing.
Yes, I love Renée Elise Goldsberry
or Daveed Diggs.
Each day might be a different person
depending on what I'm listening to.
But it was all of them together that did it for me.
[NARRATOR] But as with any work of musical theater,
the star of the show is the music itself.
Although billed as a hip-hop musical,
the play's score moves beyond rap
to take in a series of other styles,
from beat music of the 1960s to traditional show tunes.
On its release in September 2015,
the original cast recording proved to be an enormous hit,
reaching as high as number 3 on the Billboard chart
and winning a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.
One thing that's beautiful about Lin-Manuel Miranda
is that he really reflects the way we listen to music now.
We listen to every kind of music
so every kind of music is useful
when you're writing musical theater now
and there isn't a style of music
in this season alone.
There's country music, hip-hop, classical.
It's all there. It's all relevant and it all matters.
The most important thing as a performer that you can do
is really have the confidence
to know that what your voice is doing is right.
How did we know that this plan would work?
We had a spy on the inside That's right
Hercules Mulligan!
A tailor spyin' on the British government!
I take their measurements, information
And then I smuggle it
To my brother's revolutionary covenant
'm runni' with the Sons of Liberty
And I am lovi' it! See, tha's what happens
When you up against the ruffians
We in the shit now, somebody gotta shovel it!
Hercules Mulligan, I need no introduction
When you knock me down I get the fuck back up again!
I think the music of "Hamilton" is really interesting
because although it is clearly rooted in hip-hop
and some of the standout numbers in the show
are the rap numbers,
there are lots of other types of music in the show.
There's British pop music of the 60s.
There is R 'n' B.
There's Andrew Lloyd Webber style music in it.
So it's very diverse,
much more than I think it's been given credit for.
...eyes on you
Whoa...
History has its eyes on you
I think the introductory number "Alexander Hamilton"
is probably the most striking number in the show
because it introduces you to larger themes,
major characters.
And Lin-Manuel has this thing
where his opening numbers for his shows,
like in "In the Heights", his first show in 2008,
they provide the narrative impetus
for the entire show,
they introduce all the themes, but they do it
with this incredible wordplay.
I remember seeing it on Broadway
and thinking, "Wow!"
The standing ovation at the end of the opening number
was that galvanizing and powerful.
We fought with him
Me? I died for him
Me? I trusted him
Me? I loved him
And me?
'm the damn fool that shot him
Ther's a million things I have't done
But just you wait!
- Wha's your name, man? - Alexander Hamilton!
The depiction of King George III in the play
is just hilarious
because it works on so many levels.
The music is very Beatlesque
which is a kind of pun
on the English and American thing also.
It's a kind of pun on boomer culture
and this young insurgent culture.
There's a very passive aggressive quality
to Jonathan Groff in the original production
in his performance as King George III.
He's dressed up like Elton John!
Beautiful more traditional musical theater numbers,
very melodic.
Lin has a gift for melody
which I didn't appreciate the first time around.
Very important. You can't have musical theater songs
without a melodic line.
Sometimes hip-hop and rap -
the melodic line is not that strong.
So if you had a score that was
just one hip-hop rap number after another,
I don't think it would be as successful as it is.
He's found a way to vary it up.
I think a song like "The Room Where it Happens" is powerful.
It's a... slowly emerging song
of ambition and jealousy
of Aaron Burr saying, "Why am I left out?
"Why am I not the one making decisions?
"Why am I not there
"when this big stuff is going down?"
So it's a very good character number
because it really shows you
why Aaron Burr comes to hate Alexander Hamilton
because Hamilton's knocked him by.
And he's got to get back in the room
and the only way is to kill Alexander Hamilton!
One of the really compelling songs is "My Shot"
where you really feel that energy
of Alexander Hamilton to make it.
And that's such an American theme.
I am not throwing away my shot
Hey yo, 'm just like my country
'm young, scrappy and hungry
And 'm not throwing away my shot
I am not throwing away my shot
Hey yo, 'm just like my country
'm young, scrappy and hungry
And 'm not throwing away my shot
'm not going to give up my shot.
This is it. We're going for it.
In that sense...
...that level of conviction
is something that really comes through
in the play and it links this revolutionary musical
to very traditional themes in American history.
So even if it's breaking certain molds,
it's adhering to certain others.
[NARRATOR] In bringing "Hamilton" to life on-stage,
Lin Manuel-Miranda turned to his firm friend
and frequent collaborator, Thomas Kail.
Kail first met Miranda while both were students
at Wesleyan in the late 90s.
He co-founded the hip-hop troupe Freestyle Love Supreme
and was instrumental in the development
of "In The Heights", which he directed.
When Lin-Manuel had his original idea for "Hamilton",
Kail was quick to come on board as the show's director.
Lin wrote the first song in 2009 and it's June of 2016.
So, that's seven years of your life that you spend
trying to take this little seed and grow it,
into not just a tree but a forest.
That's really what my job is, to try and create an environment
where the writer can feel nurtured and supported.
Then I try to add other seeds around him
and find other people
to make me better and to try to realize the show.
His direction never got in the way
of Lin's score and Lin's script.
He's not a director who puts his thumbprints over everything.
He understood that the power of the show
was in the music, the lyrics, and the storytelling.
His direction is very skillful.
You don't walk away from that show thinking,
"Wow, who's that director? What an amazing production!"
You walk away from that show thinking,
"Lin-Manuel Miranda is a genius!"
And Tom understood that.
His job was to serve Lin's show.
The reality is everybody on stage
and off stage in this company
is working at the absolute top of their game
and I think that the baseline of everything
is trust and faith.
So that's why saying "no" isn't that hard.
saying "maybe" is not that hard
and saying "yes" isn't that hard.
The reality is sometimes the best answer you can give
is "keep going".
It's very rare that I would do anything
that would prevent anyone from...
...taking an idea and fully expanding it.
My job is to create a room where everybody knows
what they're being asked to do, what story we're telling
and how we want to tell it. So the reality is,
Lin and I got to a place, and Alex and Andy shared this,
where it was almost subliminal.
At times he would cock his head,
"I know, just let me go through the thing."
But the reality is it was such a safe room for all of us.
These actors also knew they were allowed
to live in a place where they could explore.
We tried to create that for each other.
He didn't overdo it.
He didn't say, "OK, this is my shot,"
and then overshoot it.
The staging is very stepped back
when it needs to be,
again understanding
that the verbal information is tricky
and needs to be forefronted most of the time.
So he gives space to the verbal component
which is a joy for theatergoers
who remember when plays still were about words.
[NARRATOR] Both Kail and Miranda are steeped
in the history of musical theater,
and although "Hamilton" has been repeatedly praised
for its originality,
its creator and director have acknowledged
that a number of other shows had an important influence
on their own production.
Lin-Manuel's expertise in the genre is just genius.
I would suggest he could very well be
the future of American musical theater.
At the same time, throughout his work,
even though he was involved in hip-hop,
you see a nod to Sondheim
in the density of his lyrics, you see Hart and Hammerstein
and the great composers that he was influenced by.
There are several influences on "Hamilton" -
Stephen Sondheim, as Lin acknowledges,
because Steve wrote of course, music and lyrics,
but also he did adult shows.
He didn't do musical fables,
he didn't do shows for the tired businessman.
He did with Hal Prince, challenging shows -
"Company" which is about marital strife,
"Follies" which is about ageing,
and "Sweeney Todd" which is about murder and cannibalism!
Certainly "Sweeney Todd"
in the hugeness of the central character,
and the ambition of the work.
The works of Kander and Ebb - "Chicago", "Cabaret",
are certainly evident as an inspiration
for the emphasis on thematic development.
"1776" is a very important show that should not be overlooked.
That show written by Peter Stone was a show that said
the founding fathers are not in the text book,
they're not on Mount Rushmore.
They're flesh and blood vital human beings.
I think without "1776",
I don't think Lin could have pulled off "Hamilton".
I would also say, aside from the usual names your hear -
Rogers and Hammerstein are of course there.
He quotes them subtly and humorously a lot -
"Jesus Christ Superstar",
but I think you can't forget Gilbert and Sullivan -
the last real exemplars of that level
of verbal wit in musical theater.
I think Lin would say
that the most profound influence on him was "Rent".
You had no musicals that spoke to young people
going through their struggles in the 90s
and that's what "Rent" was -
poor struggling artists living in New York City
at a time when many of them were being killed by A.I.D.S.,
and it had a rock and roll score.
So it suddenly felt...
...contemporary, and it brought young people to the theater.
It brought the generation
that would become the Lin-Manuel Mirandas
who fell in love with musicals
because of "Rent".
[NARRATOR] Among what he called
the 'grandparents' of "Hamilton",
Thomas Kail listed both "Sweeney Todd" and "Evita"
as two productions that have had a clear impact
on the staging of the show.
I think Hal Prince's staging of "Sweeney Todd"
was very important to the staging of "Hamilton"
because it was on a grand scale
with a lot of people that Hal was moving around.
You can see in Tom's staging of "Hamilton"
echoes of Hal's original staging of "Sweeney Todd".
"Sweeney Todd" really evoked 18th century London,
right down to the fog coming off the Thames,
much as the staging and set design of "Hamilton"
evokes those taverns lit by candlelight
where the founding fathers hashed out the country.
It was very simple staging but it was animated.
The thing that was incredible was the choreography.
Man, it was alive. Everybody was moving.
The design suggests a ship
with wooden planks and ropes and things like that,
possibly the ship of state.
But other than that, it withdraws itself
to forefront the performances.
[NARRATOR] When "Hamilton" hit Broadway
in the summer of 2015 it blew up,
becoming nothing short of a phenomenon
all over America.
The show was showered with awards,
collecting a Grammy and the Pulitzer prize
alongside the avalanche of Tonys.
In July 2016, Lin-Manuel gave a final, farewell performance
as Alexander Hamilton,
before his understudy Javier Muñoz
stepped into the role.
That fall, "Hamilton" began its journey
towards becoming a global sensation.
The play began a residence in Chicago,
a touring cast was assembled to travel America in 2017
and it was announced that "Les Miserables" producer
Cameron Mackintosh would oversee
an opening in London's West End.
I started writing this in 2008. So this is a culmination of...
It's a celebration of a lot of people
putting a lot of hard work in,
particularly Tommie Kail who got all the artforms
and made them into one cohesive thing
called "Hamilton".
The fact that we have so many nominations is a celebration
of how many artforms it takes to make a musical,
and that makes me really happy.
"Hamilton"'s success as a musical
lies in the fact that certainly it's a great story.
It's aspirational, it's American.
It's also a contemporary look at such material
through the diversity of the cast.
But I think its true genius lies
in the genius playwright himself,
in terms of Lin-Manuel's mastery of language
and the brilliance with which he is able
to put a contemporary musical together that appeals.
He could write about nothing and it would be brilliant.
To take something of such substance,
it can't help but be an amazing success,
which of course it is.
His intervention is
to really include people of color
on the American stage in a way that is transformative
and that is sustainable
and that changes the notion of the Great White Way
as an exclusionary space
into something that's much inclusionary.
I think you have to go back to the use of hip-hop,
which, for the first time, in musical theater
since possibly the 50s
is a living form in popular music.
For the last 40, 50 years, the way people sing in musicals,
beautiful as it is, is not the same
as what people are listening to on the radio or on their iPods.
What often gets lost is the quality.
It's really good. That's one reason.
It's just really good.
The socio-political aspects of it, the casting of it.
All of that stuff.
Its connection to larger social issues now
that are very much in the air concerning immigration and race.
That's obviously important.
But if the play wasn't any good,
none of that stuff would have mattered.
I spent seven years writing this.
So I want to hammer that home a lot.
Kicking beats from the cells fueled my writing.
But honestly, it takes a long time
to get it into this kind of shape.
And that's an enormous act of faith, isn't it?
[NARRATOR] Having stepped off the "Hamilton" stage
Lin-Manuel Miranda quickly became
a hugely sought-after artist and personality.
He was invited to contribute music
to "Star Wars: The Force Awakens",
asked to write songs
for the animated Disney film "Moana",
and handed a starring role in the Mary Poppins sequel
"Mary Poppins Returns".
Over the course of two short years,
Lin-Manuel had become
one of the most famous names in America,
celebrated by legions of fans,
all of whom wait, with baited breath,
to see what comes next
from the man who re-awakened Broadway.
[JAYSON RODRIGUEZ] Broadway's not used to
having a rockstar.
I'm sure everybody's like, "What are you gonna do next?
"The world is your oyster."
He has all the rope in the world
to do anything that he wants.
That's exciting. He's carried this audience along with him.
He has all these new fans and all these expectations.
I want to see if he can now
with the platform he has built for himself,
and the skills that he has honed if he can now use his abilities
to tell a musical story without hip-hop.
I enjoyed the hip-hop in this show
and I feel like it was necessary to this show
in order to convey so much material so memorably.
But I wonder what he can do without that.
You might say that's the language
he's developed for himself.
Why ask him to do something else?
And I agree with that too.
But if he's writing a show for me right now,
I'd like to see one where he really pushes
his melodic abilities to the forefront,
rather than just his lyrical abilities.
I think with a theater person
and artist like Lin-Manuel Miranda,
you should expect the unexpected.
His mind works in ways that mere mortals don't.
He sees things that we don't. He read a 900 page biography
about Alexander Hamilton and saw a musical.
He is like Andrew Lloyd Webber in that sense.
Andrew read some nonsense poems for kids
about cats and saw a musical.
He's like Cameron Mackintosh
who picked up a 1,000 page novel in French
about a guy who steals bread and saw "Les Miserables".
He's like Michael Bennett who thought,
"The stories of the anonymous people dancing the chorus
"can make their own show."
I think theater people like that
are going to come across something
that captures their imagination
that only they can see unfold in their head as a show
and eventually they will create it on a stage
for all of us to see and enjoy.
So from Lin-Manuel Miranda
I expect something I've never seen before.