aaron burr doesn’t know what to say
hamilton
The writing was on the wall when London’s Billy Elliot announced it was departing the Victoria Palace Theatre on April 9. The venue’s owner, Cameron Mackintosh, is set to refurbish the house and is aiming to put a small show you might have heard of called Hamilton in there. As previously reported, the British mega-producer will team up with the new musical’s creator Lin-Manuel Miranda to bring it to the West End in 2017 and the Daily Mail reports that the tuner will go into the venue as long as it’s ready.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton Aims to Reopen London’s Victoria Palace Theatre (Broadway.com)
Ooh! Reasonably aesthetically similar and of a similar layout to the Richard Rogers – in fact, seats a couple hundred more (which is welcomed). Although who knows what they’ll be doing with the refurb, I guess.
One of only seven West End theatres that can seat upwards of 1500, which is just as well – goodness knows they’ll be able to sell the tickets.
(via wreathedwith)
OMG I AM SO EXCITED
(via turnabout)
Who’s taking a trip to London with me when this happens?
I thought is was funny how they sang “let me inside your heart”, because she was already pregnant, so he’d gotten in SOMEWHERE.
A 13-year-old boy in front of me at Hamilton right before he was whacked on the shoulder by his horrified mother. (via halleregina)
another cool thing about hamilton:
the line “you have no control who lives who dies who tells your story” is not only an integral motif (ie characters trying to write their own history/control narrative via hamilton largely, but also burr, washington, and ultimately eliza [all of this mingles w legacy, reputation, etc]), but it is also the key component of hamilton’s metafictional structure and delivery.
hamilton isn’t ahistorical but it also isn’t a re-imagining of “what if the founding fathers were poc?“ jefferson is called out for being a slaveowner. abolition is mentioned multiple times throughout the show.
hamilton is historiographical. so, in what is frankly a musical about dead white guys, the line “you have no control who lives who dies who tells your story” reminds us that black and latino actors are the ones who now claim ownership to this narrative of america’s creation. they are the ones telling the story now.
i’m still thinking about this but like..
narrative is what the show is all about. from start to finish, being a story about an immigrant desperately trying to alter the narrative that fate has dealt him to the power eliza has in telling hamilton’s legacy despite his enemies trying to destroy it.
and it translates into the audience and even the commercialization of the show!! the posters with the actual portrait of alexander hamilton and the words “who lives who dies who tells your story” across it. and it’s not who you’d think is telling/engaging in the story! that is SUCH a powerful thing for LMM to demonstrate to disenfranchised people.
this is a story about stories! about narrative and about control over narrative! it’s just so !! powerful !!!
Ms. Petrimoulx said that in recent months, more young people have populated her tours, curious not only about Alexander Hamilton but also about other characters from the show who are buried at Trinity Church.
“I got a question about Hercules Mulligan a few months ago,” she said. “No one had ever asked about Hercules Mulligan before.”
For the first time, visitors have started leaving stones and flowers on the graves of both Hamilton and his wife, Eliza. “There are just as many left on Eliza’s grave as there are on Alexander’s,” Ms. Petrimoulx said. “Maybe even more.”
Eliza Hamilton died in 1854 at the age of 97. Her grave, a plain white marble slab at the foot of a far grander monument to her husband, bears the words “Daughter of” and “Wife of.” Little more was known about her until “Hamilton” (and the Ron Chernow biography on which it is based) brought her accomplishments to light. She founded the first private orphanage in New York City and advocated for the construction of the Washington Monument, among other things. Now she has a fan base all her own.
The same can be said for her sister, Angelica Schuyler Church, whose romantic feelings for Hamilton provide one of the musical’s most bittersweet plotlines. Founding fathers aside, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of “Hamilton,” has said that he considers her the show’s smartest character.
“The hot question in the gift shop is where exactly Angelica is buried,” Ms. Petrimoulx said. (Her remains are in a vault that bears only the name Livingston, her relatives by marriage.)
After the Broadway Show, a Trip to Hamilton’s Grave (NYT)
Real talk I’ve visited Hamilton’s grave twice. The first time the snow had been cleared around his grave but not Eliza’s.
This time there was a red rose laid on her stone, and the snow cleared away from both.
(via seiya234)
HAMILPEEP
A Peeps Diorama made for the Washington Post’s 2016 contest, by Kate Ramsayer, Helen Fields and Joanna Church
Hamilton was not content to write [under the pseudonym] Camillus alone. Two days after his second essay appeared, he began to publish, in the same paper, a parallel series as ‘Philo Camillus.’ For several weeks, Philo Camillus indulged in extravagant praise of Camillus and kept up a running attack on their republican adversaries. The prolific Hamilton was now writing pseudonymous commentaries on his own pseudonymous essays. He also tossed in two trenchant essays under the name ‘Horatius’ in which he accused Jeffersonians of ‘a servile and criminal subserviency to the views of France.’
Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton
alexander hamilton joined a forum and created multiple accounts so he could agree with himself in a political discussion thread
(via sonnywortzik)
Humans have not changed in hundreds of years. It truly is amazing.
(via persimmonlions)
#HAMILTON IS ACTUALLY MSSCRIBE (persimmonlions)