A Conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda

hi everyone thank you everyone for being here and thank you to everyone in the dining hall who waited and gotten their or copy soon dining hall so tonight's that discussion is going to I want to get right to it the question that I know there's a lot of questions out there as well tonight's discussion is going to be structured in the following way is going to talk first to limit while about the obstacle education and it gets some words for some of our young artists and talk about the creative process and developing Hamilton hopefully get some reflections on its historical and cultural impact and then we're going to take a break for some question and answers from the audience and then finally going to end with a little game that we're going to play to see how we're women well eventually ends up on which side of the musical spectrum with rap or with musicals and so it's been it's been well documented that you grow with your parents playing musical theater Canon for you as a child and your sister and the larger community and your sister introduced you to the world of hip-hop and R&B were there particular seminal moments for you that you look back on now you say that was the moment when I whether it was listening to a particular soundtrack or seeing a show or curing somebody yeah I can point it all of them actually and frankly got my sister to thank for me being here we see people and not a hunger go to school here and Steven and we see those class didn't believe I was his hunger so I'm here to prove him wrong but um I so T thank you hi I remember you know the big albums for us my dad loved sound of music and love Debbie Reynolds the Unsinkable Molly Brown and singing in the rain those were big movies growing up at home and I remember cleaning up to Man of La Mancha and Camelot like we'd have parties and the clean of music was always a cast-out thought my sister my sister really led the way I remember her bringing home I remember her having this head of the NWA album maybe like oh you can't put that on the record ten or nine and scandalized and I remember stealing her copy of black sheeps first album a wolf in sheep's clothing and the Tribe Called Quest albums and rotters you know everyone the music that you hear when you're a teenager is what means the most to you for the rest of your life so I'm sort of stuck in early nineties hip-hop within that movement one but the I'm sort of stuck in that on there's a lot of 90s hip-hop references in Hamilton anything before that reason was a lot of Biggie and there's a lot of DMX and there's a lot of mob deep and a lot of East Coast early 90s hip-hop because of that enforce my said that I'll roll my sister a brothel so what was your theater education like high school I am someone who figured out who he was because he got into plays in high school our school ran 7 through 12 I'm sorry middle school and high school were sort of under the same building and and frankly I think it's the best way to experience high school one because if and you know this in your grade everything is the biggest deal and this friends with who and who said what to who and if you're in the theatre group you actually it forces you to make friends with kids outside your grade and work with them and so you go oh okay the drama is high in my grade I'm going to go hang out with kids that you're younger or my friends and we're seniors and and it's a nice way of getting perspective within high school same is true if you're in choir get it up with unaccompanied minors and so so like you know I I figured out where I was by being in the school play I was we had on the way our school was structured as we do play in the fall that was a queen to a musical in the winter and then we had something called brick prison in the spring which was student written student directed plays and I'm an English teacher who sort of shoveled me in the direction of writing plays for that so I was writing plays starting in ninth grade tenth grade because I could get produced if it isn't ours at all and so I started writing plays I got one comedy in in tenth grade and then I started writing musicals for brick prison I wrote a musical called nightmare in D major in 11th grade and it's crazy I wrote I wrote a musical I was really proud of called seven minutes in heaven my senior year it was about my first unchaperoned party them afraid it's about sort of that weird moment in middle school where some of you are like well we're just playing and then like some kids are like no I like girls though I like boys and that weird divide that happens like I thought we were just playing do this thing now and that thing when puberty kicks in for some of your friends but not all of them yeah and it's a for me it's this amazing time capsule of writing about about that time like I wrote a thing about it that actually encapsulates how I felt about it really well was 20 minute music oh but then I was also in the school musical so I was invited to pep dance I was in Godspell I assistant directed chorus line my girlfriend was the director and then I directed West Side Story so those are the shows that I know like on a gut level because the shows you do in school are the ones you know from you will find yourself quoting them at random times in your life I am the very model of a modern major-general snuck into Hamilton because I was in Pirates of Penzance and and that's that's sort of formed with a lot of my DNA so I do have a couple of questions that are sprinkled in here that that came from some of our students who submitted questions earlier last week so one of our 10th graders a sheik Volodya wanted to know how you were able to learn and improve your freestyle rap skills oh this is a great question there you're kidding yourself if you think anyone comes by it naturally it's a power that you have to develop over time and when I was in high school I was too shy to do I friends in high school were really good at it and I was the beatboxing kid I was like and then college I guess I written so much by the time I got into college that I started doing it for fun with my friends and just getting less and less afraid and I can remember one College Road Trip I took it was with three friends we decided to try I don't recommend this we decided to drive to Vegas and back in a week Connecticut to Vegas and back everyone who left us was like they're difficult but I got Kansas 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. shift so it's me driving all we have are these cans of Red Bull and everyone else in the car has passed out and I remember popping in we made a bunch of mixtapes for the ride we'd worn them all out by the time we got to I know 20 hours in but I just started drinking Red Bulls and popping in these hip-hop cassettes and rapping to myself like I am the Kansas on crazy man this is crazy yep and just literally talking to myself before our autonomy survived Kansas the next person's turn to drive I was good at loli lighted before the police team Kansas at night it's like gas station for gas station in the bar and by the end of it I was a new arrived and then freestyle of supreme with the other part of that is that I'm in a hip-hop improv group where we do show is where we don't plan what's gonna happen we get suggested for the audience and we have a beatboxer we have two guys on keys and we just make up the show and we just forced ourselves into that insane situation and did it until we got good at it and so I've had my 10,000 al complied well II intent out at that and now it's sort of now it's almost like an Instagram filter in my brain like if I make an acceptance speech at the Grammys or the Tony's like it's easier for me to make it rhyme than to have to speak as much I find that less why did the Jimmy Fallon thing I was much less nervous to play we love freestyle that I was to talk as myself then be on the cap I think everyone's fine if you just want to keep rapping so you've spoken about the importance of theater education and accessibility for all young people and last year the Rockefeller Foundation provides 1.5 million dollars for 20,000 New York City 11th graders to come see the show why is theater education and exposure so important to it's everything it's the difference between well here's the thing I believe that I think is petrol pn3 or someone one of these brilliant poets that every child has born upon it I believe that's true I believe we all have a certain amount of creativity in us and the weather that goes into engineering or mathematics have such a great conversation with another wesleyan grad who is was talking about how he applies discrete math thanks to his creative work about like man I am so much more math phobic than you I don't know falling down but that's an amazing and it's about what the outlet for that becomes I think if I didn't grow up with musical theatre as a thing we played I be trying to write about music right now or I'd be trying to make movies right now but it was going to go somewhere but my exposure to musical theater is wide went that way so part of it is selfish because I think musical theater is our greatest art form when it's done right and I think we need as much new blood and inspiration as possible coming to our little genre of the world as opposed to all of you going to make beats and becoming hip-hop artists or common white plays come right Peter um and and then the other part of it that I think is really exciting is I think it's the Silver Bullet when it comes to education I know I was a better student because I had something I was passionate about which was theatre that got me through school and I said oh I'm keeping my good grades and I will study whatever I need to study but I can keep doing this and and I also you know music is is one of those things one of the only things involved both hemispheres of the brain is both mathematical and intuitive is both creative and concrete I think if you have a musically trained train you're just a smarter person because you are forcing these connections between both hemispheres of your brain same time my freestyling is I am forcing with the language part of my brain to make friends with the musical rhythm and part of my brain and so it's helpful in all those ways it's also you know if okay so 20,000 kids are going to come see Hamilton not all going to be theater majors some of them might hate it great some of them might and they say I don't believe in this story I think there's a more compelling story go like that story what I find with this show in particular which was my experience with when I read channels biography was you hear about Hamilton's life and you go how does that do same 24 hours that we have I was in all how much he got done three lifetimes worth of work in one lifetime and I can give nothing else these kids never want to see another play in their lives they're going to have to reckon with or what do I want to do because I just watched the reals about a guy who made the most of his very short life so it will do will force them to think critically about what their legacy is going to be so we have a lot of inspiring artists here at ok and I'm sure others in the audience Oh what words of advice you have about choosing to be an artist for a career um if you want to do anything else to it that's not live that's not meant to scare you away that's not even a joke it's you will not make your rent by being an artist you will not live a comfortable life you'll not afford house in the Montclair School District you won't you will if you beat insurmountable odds and have an extraordinary amount of good luck as I have had and but if it is something that you can't help but do anyway if it's the thing you're doing when no one's paying you to do it then if they pay you to do it is going to be great so what I would say is figure out the job that you like that will pay your rent if you want to be an artist figure out the job that allows in time to feed your soul that way and then everything else is gravy I was uh I was a teacher right out of school I taught some pretty English I loved it I loved watching my kids make connections a little bit loved because the inverse of performing if you're really doing your job as a teacher or leasing anything you bring it up and then you watch the kids make connections you just keep the ball in the air make sure they're not hurting each other but there more than YouTube stuff and you just put the material in front of them and you you encourage them to talk to each other and I was thrilled by that and I ran away because I knew I was looking down the barrel of mr. Holland's Opus and I could spend 30 years TJ can never write anything and so I started I continued to work on it but I also when I was a senior in high school when Trent came out and rent is all about artists struggling and being broke and it was like a vision from the future of Mike you know you can take jobs for money but they left more feed your soul and you could struggle but you might be really broke and you might have to like break into your own apartment at some point which I have done so it's it's it's a tough life but it's also you have to be really realistic about that and if it's still calling you and it's that voice inside you is still calling you to do it you have to do it and we want to see what you make okay there speaking of funny things that you did when you report there are plenty of there are plenty of up in there there are plenty of funny before they were famous stories from now famous artist Brad Pitt once have to dress with a giant chicken to make ends meet do you have any funny or cautionary tales from your younger days as a struggling actor I danced at Bar Mitzvahs not you're not you're not entertaining you're just the guy's black shirts were like trying to get people to go oh my god you see I'm a guy I'm too old to have dancing your bar mitzvahs in particular but I dance it's a Long Island Bar Mitzvahs I remember those one was fun evolve and we had to wear carnivale masks and there's something about putting on a mask you'll learn this abuse that actually takes your humanity away from you so here I am in Long Island getting groped by old women carnival masks I think I left the last of my dignity at apartment and now I have no shame and I've no problem being on Twitter all the time but I left the last of my dignity and shape is all like that bump into a lady grab my bucket that was dreadful but I brought you here we got you a point didn't happen so moving out to talk a little bit about the creative process I read I think in the New York Times profile you send unfinished work - Stephen Sondheim for him to critique yeah what well it's a prowess by the time I said okay it's gonna said Steve just tell me what how does that work and are you really really yeah well you know again okay it's elephants a crazy idea it's a crazy idea um but in my head it was a really good idea and sometimes what you need are people to just not say that's a terrible idea and again to be very careful about who you let in when you've had a good idea because people can crush it for you even though I stick to this other thing and if you trust that person and you love that person it can really affect your own view of your work I've learned that the hard way I've had ideas die in front of me because people I respect go maybe not that one so much mine when I was on vacation and I picked up chair nose book and I started reading it reading it to my wife and being like there's something here right this is like I'm not a crazy person and my wife was like no that's a really cool idea like that's as responsible for this as anything and I remember when I first met some time it was to do translations for the last revival or outside story and we talk we talk shop when we talk about what should translate what I shouldn't have we kind of talked about that for about a half an hour then he asked me like what are you thinking about next because Heights was running at the time was its first year and I said I think I have this idea Alexander Hamilton and he threw up his head and made this and she's a really reserved guy and he went that the most incredible idea but I just instantly got it and I like and that's also as responsible for us being here as anything that early encouragement to suggest you know his whole thing and he's proved it with his career is continuing to bury and like lead into what scares you and lean into what people don't think makes a good musical and make that and you know him and Angela who ever have expanded terrain of what a musical can be about it used to be there a love story your be love story your colleague sidekick and I'll see you at the end when all the couples are linked up and here comes saw mine with his murderous barbers and his presidential assassins and his musical is about just relationships and you know Pacific overtures I mean he's just blown it wide open so should have that kind of encouragement has been really cool that's incredible different collaborators develop work a different way like Bernie Taupin writes lyrics and then Elton John cos sets up to music for example if we're collaborating with yourself so the how did the process for Hamilton start with you you read turn out biography of the man but then where'd you go from there do you write lyrics then you put them to music or you start yeah well this I read this book and the initial idea was I'm going to get my enjoyed Weber off I'm going to make a Content album I'm gonna write the greatest hits of this guy's life sort of like Evita or Jesus Christ Superstar which were both Aldo bees before they were shows before people know that they were concept albums they were not and then someone staged them later and so that was my my fault go enjoy my heaven and I had it I had that thought because I really wanted to write really dense really intricate about lyrics um and you know my favorite hip-hop albums I'm just getting stuff out of them and I've been listening to them for 10 15 years and I wanted to write something with that level of lyrical density and I thought Hamilton story provided me an opportunity and frankly that's been a blessing because I just said that to myself and you know as some of you if you waited online a long time to be here you were probably listen to the Hamilton cast album a lot of times there's a lot of stuff that you will catch on the fifth hearing on the sixth theory a motif that shows up here and then ends up here and that's the result of collaboration that's my my brain trust on this show was Alec slacker more with our musical director and and he's orchestrations for the show as well so you know once I give an example on you'll be back which is king Georgia song I say I want this to be a Beatles song he finds the exact sound of the guitar from getting better and make sure that's on there he finds the organ riff from being for the benefit of mr. kite and sneaks it in a half a bar he sort of takes the roadmap and then really building his amazing details and has his own incredible contributions there's Tommy Cale really function because I didn't have a book writer he was he was the other person I was bouncing it off it was in many respects the drama Church of the thing you know saying like alright this makes sense but it took you a long time to get there anything you can do and and none of us are Precious about minutes tommy is great at creating a room with the best idea wings and it doesn't matter who it's from whether it's a new blanket viewer our incredible choreographer or Alex or Tommy or I we all get together and so by and of the place where that the most evident is on the ends of songs I often write a song and it just kind of ends but that's not enough in theater you've got above the song so the audience knows this song is over it's time to clap so the end up non-stop I mean that was months of us being like alright motif can we bring in here maybe they're singing maybe she can sing satisfied history has eyes on you used to be a part of that and we took it out needed its own thing it's a million little decisions like that and it's about having that room fostering an environment where the best idea in the room wins okay I was wondering because you I I was wondering that the the idea of a lot of playwrights and composers have to give up the plate to a certain extent to the director and off it goes but you're there collaborating the entire time absolutely there was an appointment like on the scale tells you to do something and you're just like no it's not what I meant when I wrote it like no because no cuz Tommy he'll get to the point where you're all talking so much that you all just know of it and that's really exciting actually you know we did our first preview at the public and it was three hours long three hours of change actually and you know we all knew alright we gotta make cuts like we lovely mins but we don't be longer and so the first thing you know Tommy and I saw each other after the show and the first thing we said is we have to cut the John Adams rap yeah we have to cut the John a draft it's a great rap and I get deliveries by 16 best bars in the show but it's delivered to an offstage character we never meet and so by virtue of that it goes and and Tommy was really smart because we had a list of things we knew we needed to cut right after the first preview but he said let's start with that because it also sends a message to the entire cast the entire crew the entire company Lynn's going to cut the best rap he ever wrote because if not Pence is not good and it's not about performance it's about what serves the piece and by coming making that cut first it made everyone else very try to go free so I had to cut something from Chris or had to cut something from her day they knew it wasn't about their performance or there was no ego and play the first one was I going to cut my best 16 bars so I don't a lot of sides are really great it was a really smart way to establish the way we worked on the show creepy that's great so don't Carol Carol one of our acapella groups student leaders wants to know were there any major parts of Hamilton's life that you really wanted to have in the show who couldn't make it work and secondly if there was a part of Hamilton that you found kind of repulsive or loathsome about about him as a person all kinds of stuff to stuff and and and there's something I've there's stuff I find repulsive of looks about all of them because they're human and and my mission really was not to deify Hamilton at all it was it was to present as much of them as I could so you know there's no world in which we present Hamilton and don't present the affair and present his culpability in the affair his wife was gone he carried on this relationship and he was complicit in every part of it it's a bower that sort of warns an all portrayal of him when we portray Thomas Jefferson singing about freedom while his slaves are literally wheeling him around by the staircase Thomas and Thomas Jefferson lived that contradiction so it's about presenting that you know the stuff about him there's there's like three more musicals about Hamilton there's so much there a really good story that I couldn't get in is Hamilton was there and helped find out the Benedict Arnold's betrayal the Benedict Arnold who was like one of our best generals was selling was giving secrets away to the British about troop movements about what we were planning to do and Hamilton held a discovery and Hamilton in Washington confronted him they like went to storm his house to go arrest Venna new darling Benedict Arnold's wife is there she opens the door she is topless she is holding her child and she is acting like a raving lunatic being like you're going to kill my baby you're going to kill my baby Washington and handle like a topless lady we didn't we weren't ready for this they are so like bedazzled by the topless lady let her go they go this poor woman caught up in her husband's schemes they sent her to London by the way she was totally complicit she helped create the spy ring she her ex-boyfriend was a British soldier she's the one who like masterminded the whole thing like common sense in that song testify she was the queen bin but she went to top off and these dudes lost their minds and that's I wish I could have got that detail in there because the stage it would have been really interesting great though but also but because Hamilton brilliant guy we established that pretty well but when it comes to a damsel in distress his critical faculty so when Mariah Reynolds shows up and says my husband's been beating me and he's been gone do you walk me home the part of his brain that goes this is a terrible idea the job doesn't talk to him and it would have been a nice setup I can go to the nice setup for the Reynolds affair because it's an example in his youth of pretty lady and that's very common right now you said that you wrote in the heights in part because there were not enough roles for Latinos in musical theater how did the casting work for this show did you specifically say when you start at this cast should be largely made up of people of color it came very organically out of the type of news that's right you know I was went up again like I said I was going to get my Angela driver on when I started right reading this book and had the idea on the second chapter I was never picturing the literal founding fathers as soon as I started reading but when George Washington comes in the story I was thinking who's the best rapper / target II artist to play George Washington when I read the name Hercules Mulligan I thought Busta Rhymes like the voice was already in my head that's the best rugged hip-hop name I broke on these Mulligan like I figured it jumped off the page above the lines of voice I thought part of that which Tommy continued in its casting was honoring the voices I just hear you pop and R&B voices and that's a reflection of the makeup of our company but it's also in Tommy's imagining up and it's a great way of eliminating distance between us and the audience if the founding fathers don't look like guys in a museum painting if they look like us in period clothes then suddenly we're sucked in and and we're able to identify in a way it's almost the inverse of Hollywood's sort of old rules which is oh this is a great story about your person of color here oh we got to give them a white friend the audience will have someone to relate to no on the contrary on the contrary if you make it look like us if you make it look like you really looked if you tell the stories honestly as possible we're going to be sucked in you don't need to give us a wave the way in is if the company looks like our country looks now and that's what's the hopefully the legacy of the show will not be oh my gosh like history and they're people of color amazing it's that it was a cast of people of color not star above us and it did really well cause that's really the only thing that changes producers minds is if something as a success so the whole hope is that the legacy is Audacity the legacy is oh wow they took they went out on a limb and they cast the show this way and it worked and people liked it because of that thing so that's sort of the whole point that's great Hamilton incorporates dozens of musical references styles you've already mentioned some of them the older generation notes a model modern model of a modern major-general or you've got to be carefully taught lines while kids today hear references from Beyonce and big smalls crack commandments I just got the street cred for saying crack commandments do you think of it did you think of you kind of partially answered this already but do you think of particular characters having specific musical inspirations or do you think like I want this to be an R&B moment or I want this to be like have a lay minuscule to it it's a little above the most fun for me in building a score is figuring out the musical pulse of my character in the Heitzig was even more clear because I was dealing with three generations so I want to go out yeah is old-school Bamba when she comes on stage you're going to hear old-school rumba who snobby is my age he grows up listening to hip hop so hip hop is how he enters the world when abuela and Rustavi sing together it's an old-school Pablo and hit and hoose Navi is rapping over it we literally just combined those flavors that's also true to an extent of Hamilton I found myself almost subconsciously giving dancehall rhythms to burr because he can't pin her down he's never going to be one two three four it's done she's a really exciting rhythm to write to but it also kind of makes you go like where's Burke somehow um V is so much fun with Schuyler sisters because I got to play with all of the sister and female R&B groups that I love from pointer sisters and The Supremes to Destiny's Child to TLC and there's bits of all of those in the Schuyler sister Schuyler sister then helpless helpless is sort of like my I'm getting my Beyonce on twelve directions and it's the stuff it's not just like stressing yes it's not just that stuff it's also the structure of it is the template of the hip-hop R&B song with the guest verse from the rapper so think of crazy in love where Beyonce sings for two and a half verses of the chorus then here comes Jay Z with the first how was the structure the same way it's two versus two choruses and here comes Hamilton to like hit on the girl singing the song it's me getting my ja Rule Ashanti on or Rihanna Drake depending on your generation but it's it's that in that template which I love so much and applying it to sort of the courtship of Hamilton analyzing great one of our students Anna shawl or wanted to ask you what inspires you and what scares you um what inspires me is whatever honestly it's it's um that's that's the fun of this gig if you get lucky enough to do it is you chase what interests you and you have to be honest with yourself about what it risks you you know right now I'm in a phase where people are just pitching historical errors the streets on Twitter you should do a thing about women's suffrage okay I like a and a no case would be a great peaceful by the way but the UM the the problem with that the challenge of that is that I have to rub something so much I'm willing to spend years of my life writing it and sometimes you chase an idea down and it's not worth years of your life or there's not enough there to sustain you for it so you know it can be any III have writer friends that I talk to all the time and we send each other is this anything is this anything my upstairs neighbor is a tiara who wrote in the heights with me she literally lives upstairs for me and will send me to the articles did you read this to do it does this or something here and that's a wonderful feeling to to literally just seek to be inspired is a lovely way to live what scares me is the same thing that scares everybody getting hit by an asteroid out of the sky or whatever idea is in my head every every musical is this leap of faith that you're going to see it through to the end I'm also you know again going back to rent I'm painfully aware that Jonathan Larson died before the first preview of that show and didn't get to see the success of that show and the incredible wave would change the lives of so many young people and the world so the fear is always an unfinished idea the fear is you know not buckling your seat belt on and I think that fear also bleeds into Hamilton I mean it's so many characters sing about how much am I going to get done before I come here and I think that's probably my number one fear and I think it bleeds urgency into all of my work that's great I wanted to shift now a little bit to talk about the historical impact I guess at the show that politics and culture the entire political spectrum seems selector show what's it like to know that Shayne Rupert Murdoch loved the show just like Madonna and President Obama oh I don't know how much a Madonna loved it but but I know that that's it Tracy what what I love about it is I think the thing people are coming away with is the story of the founding of this country has something for everyone and it may not be the same thing you know Republicans they walk away being like that guy invented our financial system but they would Bob how much Hamilton wanted government involved in our daily life if your conservative don't want government altogether and Democrats are very moved by his rise it's it's it's sort of a belief that if you work hard and you're smart and you get the breaks you can rise in the society that's true from both sides of the aisle actually so everyone comes away with something and and I'm not only very proud of that and I've had people whose politics I totally disagree with come to the show and I'm very proud that they see something that inspires that because that means the show is working on its own terms right did anyone you find out somebody loved the show that it really surprised you or you were taken aback by um I'm always fascinated when when politicians come to see the show because I know they're dealing with the essential question of it even more than we are they're going to be in history books Dick Cheney comes to see the show like the history does have its eyes on them when Obama comes to see the show and the Clintons Kumsusan history has their in textbooks and they're going to be measured by the things they did far more acutely than you or I we're going to live or die anymore who love us we'll continue to talk about us and that's how we live on but these people are going to be in books hundreds of years from now so I'm always curious how it lands on that I've enjoyed having those talks of them that's great there are two moments that were particularly striking to me as I as a historian when I was watching the show first when watching this multi-ethnic diverse cast thing about rising up and saying the words this is not a moment it's a movement and then watching an african-american man playing George Washington a slave owner turn to the audience and say history has its eyes on you do you feel do you feel that art can have an impact on political discourse yes in fact it happened so much more than you even admit I'm thinking of God remember when Joe Biden was just like yeah gay marriages are fine like I had of like them being officially okay with a very good but he just settled because it believed it and then I remember him going on TV and said this was a conversation that happened on TV this wasn't a conversation that we had in legislation this was Ellen having our own TV show and realizing the world didn't blow up this was Will and Grace and saying like oh we can be friends and these are people just like us it's moments of identification the moments of empathy that create the creep change minds and change hearts you can't vilify someone and you can't put them in a box if you feel like you know it would like to be them even a little bit or at least an ace at Harbor and you know for me getting to write having to force myself to find what I loved in Thomas Jefferson and love of George Washington it gave me a great deal of empathy I had to leap into these people's shoes and write down what I thought they might say it's a it's a great way to live it's harder to deliver vilified people and I think that's what art does for us I think art allows us to walk a mile in shoes we never would have walked in otherwise I think of I think of movies like Schindler's List where you when you see that horror in a way that feels first hand you can't ever think about certain things the same way again that's that's the thing that makes change real is is this notion of empathy the only thing that makes change otherwise we're just shouting right as an extension of the previous question before heading off to battle Lafayette and Hamilton say immigrants we get the job done how do you hope to change the conversation on immigration which is obviously a really potent and divisive topic in American politics today yeah it's um it's cyclical this is the latest strain of it before Latino immigrants were the villains desert is Irish immigrants and there is always going to be a nativist streak in our country and people who will play on the fears of the people who are hanging on and struggling they say oh well they're going to come take your stuff let's make them the enemy and vote for me that's always going to be a part of our politic that's not new that's super old and every 20 years or so you know or 30 years or so immigrant becomes a dirty word I remember was a dirty word when Pat Buchanan was running for president 1996 he would use the word immigrants and drug dealer or immigrant and killer in the sentences together to try to link them in your mind what we do in our show is constantly apply the term to the people who help in this country Marquis de Lafayette one of our greatest generals in the war came here to fight because he believed in this cause he believed in the idea of this country he was a French royal he would have been fine who's floating but he wanted to fight and so he came here and became one of our greatest most trusted generals and and Hamilton came from insane circumstances mean how Deakins is dicket how hard to like him Nevada to come here and what he built so that little moment when Lafayette Hamilton slap each other five and say immigrants we get the job done it gets a big reaction because it's true we know the story of someone who came here and worked three jobs no one else wanted to do that their kid could go to school that's been the immigrant story as it's practiced in this country we come here we do the jobs no one wants to do is that our kids can be artists or doctors or lawyers that's that's the that's the dream and and I'm happy to you know it can be a dirty word in politics I'm happy to remind people the other connotation in my work at a recent student conference in Florida we had a couple of students who would wrap your lyrics when they were walking down the street and I found at other points kids from other schools at the conference also sitting around wrapping parts of Hamilton so what does it feel like for you to know that the show will be to them what flame is or rent was to pretty generation I think makes me so happy I just liberate a teacher like instance I also was that kid I also was that kid singing and recover you reprieves at the top of my mom when I was in high school so I recognized myself in that kid and that's that's joyous to me because I know most people can't afford a Broadway show I didn't see that many voters shows when I was a kid the way you fall in love is through the cast album and is through memorizing lyrics with your friend singing to each other okay this time I'll be I'll be Roger and you be mark and I was that kid too so it making thrilled me that that kids are erasing the songs I wrote and and finding styling them and that's that's the joy of the gig you know Chris off mic my friend Priscilla Lopez is here so help us a little Diana Morales in the chorus that's the life story that that's all I felt nothing that's P Mo's story and I remember when we were doing heist she took me aside and said to me you have no idea the ripples that are going to come back to you because of this thing and I think about it every day you drop a rock in the pond when you make something new and the ripples sometimes the ripples go all that you never hear them again you know it's funny I get a lot of Hamilton love the bottom in the height of love every once in a while I get some bring it on love from some kid who saw it five times that makes me just as happy because that's one of my kids too and they go out into the world and then the ripples that come back at you are extraordinary so that's one of the perks that are unanticipated that I love the most about that's awesome so I think right now we're going to try and take some questions from the audience hey I don't know where they're coming from go to I get it are currently up again you're coming your cars alright got more water too oh all right so we've got the first three the first three are from the dining hall okay the first one's from Montclair high school civics and government newspaper what is your approach oh wow that one's really what is her approach to the Buckland what is her approach to translating history into storytelling my approach it became very quickly on the show I started doing research and I started crying because there's just so much and a playwright named John Weinmann gave me incredible advice which was start by musical izing the moments that you're just the most passionate about and that's going to form its own kind of spine so don't worry about getting the manufacturer's report in there don't worry about every moment in the constitutional convention just write the stuff that interests you and start there and then you're going to make connections between the things you wrote and and that's the fun you know we have to write outside our own skin all the time we write outside our comfort level we write outside we're writing characters we think at first blush they have nothing to do with us and the first step in getting in that person's skin and being able to write from your perspective is empathy and reading about their situation the second one is research I get a ton of research for the show and I did research until I figure it out all right well that's why he did that or that's why she did this and and that's that's the most important thing I was playing with hip hop so I needed details so the history became really fun because it was like alright well oh my gosh Hamilton and Angelica used to put commas at weird points in their letters like have secret messages comma sexting this is awesome I want to I get this into a lyric and make that work how do I translate this you and that was weeks of just alright how do I get this comma thing to work so it's about being inspired by facts it's not about oh god I'm gonna write a song about the compromise that's a homework assignment that's no fun but if the compromise is from the perspective of Aaron Burr who has no power oh then suddenly becomes really interesting and we're dying to be in the room where it happens when the political becomes personal that's what it's interesting and so that became our our guide what is your favorite Federalist paper No numero uno it sets the terms and that's the one Hamilton wrote and it's so Hamilton um it is you know listen in a perfect world we wouldn't need a government we're not perfect we're kind of self involved in crazy so this is like the best shot we have and we're going to prove why um and it's really beautiful writing uh but yeah I wrote a wall this coming from an aspiring musical theater actress who grew up in New Jersey listening to hot 97 wanted power 105 what inspired you combining two worlds of hip-hop and musical theater what made you think would turn out how it has oh I love both those genres for the same reasons the storytelling is unparalleled in both genres I can't think of a third one that kids storytelling as well as a popular musical theater do and two they're both really John refuted anything can be musical theater if you flip it the right way anything can be hip-hop if you flip it the right way it's about taking an absorbing culture and then refracting it through the prism of your music and that's really exciting to me and so there are places where they don't agree musical ergo purists will focus on pure by which I mean June moon you know coat moat they would never let you rhyme I don't know green and like please whereas that might work because the vowels agree in hip-hop hip-hop rewarded the unexpected rhyme the words that don't quite work but if you saying just the right way they work and I love that and the inventiveness of language with hip-hop is something that's so much fun so when I'm writing when I was writing Hamilton I'm constantly threading the needle between what's going to like delight the musical theater fans here and what's going to delight in the hip hop heads here and I live the middle of books think so well I was ever Hamilton there's a million things I haven't done doesn't cry it doesn't it's not a pure one but it connects Hamilton with his ambition right away it's a it's a great hip-hop line and so again it's it's about making those two things needs because they both they both do the thing I love which is tell stories and really interesting unexpected ways okay this one's kind of a deep cuts things I hope you understand it when Angelica says well have to be naive to set that aside she calling Eliza naive or is that something she can't do like sense to you um yeah hello second the whole lyric event anyone in the other room could tell me satisfied and he's after me scholars just a little bit status I have to be naive to set that aside so what you saying I know that this is one of the reasons he's pursuing me / us I can't put that away like I can't let him see that truth so she's not calling my allies and I you by any stretch its I just I can't and don't get lie to herself and she can't um you know and and she knows that um she can't marry him because she's got a different job as the oldest sister she's got that you've read your jane austen gotta marry well and so it's a so that's that's what the night numerous thanks for that pair deep cutter I can barely remember everything the whole front rows ready to stir up this cowboy when did you know that Hamilton had become a revolution of sorts I knew that Hamilton was in weird unprecedented territory when he announced our second extension at the public and we broke the phones of the public we brought we brought down websites before but breaking the bones as a whole and that was when you know and seeing Oskar Eustis who is not an easily shocked person going broke the phone I've never forgetting his face we're in tech and the third protocol then we need it started it was we just you know it was it's been really crazy ever since that's awesome what's the one thing you'd go back and tell your high school self what did it go back and tell my high school self tough question and a really good one props to whoever asked it I would tell my high school self to relax I was ten times as ambitious in high school as I am now I would always make movies I was always writing plays and I took it way more seriously than I take it now if someone didn't show up in my our friendship could be in statement because I couldn't fire or hire that so my friendship was the only leverage I had of course reading the thing and I probably was a lot to deal with because of that imagine your most annoying theater friend times 10 so I probably would've would tell myself to relax and it's gonna be okay keep making the things but it's not the end of the world just keep making things what was the first line of Hamilton that you wrote the first one here is Michelle real awesome yeah all right Lucy there you go how do you think you and the viewers of Hamilton have evolved after learning the story and seemed to play just narrow down how do you how do you think you've evolved over this whole process um it's a great question uh I don't know that I will I don't know that I feel the effects of it so much I go to work I do this seven times a week the temperature inside the theater is the same I still have to do the show right every night it doesn't matter what they've heard I've got to do the best show I can't for every audience or more like chefs that instead of Tommy's analogy and it's a good one we're not actors who did the thing once really well and they shot it for a movie and it's captured forever we got to do the whole thing from scratch I have to follow up every night I have to lose my every night I have to make best friends and lose my friends every night and it's a bit of a groundhog day situation so I live is this weird hermetically sealed world and oddly the most relaxing part of my day is performing in the show because the rest of my life is unanswered emails and commitments and requests and that's a wonderful position to be in but I'm kind of behind on everything else whereas in written the show I just have to be Hamilton for two hours and 45 minutes and it's only when I come to Montclair and see all of you guys freaking out I realize sort of the larger effects in the world that's not entirely true I'm starting to get people asking me to write my lyrics down for them because they're getting tattoos and my handwriting absolute thing I don't really terrible so like don't give it away but but I said all that to say the show keeps me sane and my family life keeps me sane and then it's it's the field trips that are crazy what is that you've kind of answered it a little bit but what's your typical routine you go through before going on stage but in the first in the theatre I'm usually there a few hours prior because I like to eat at least an hour and a half two hours before showtime because you cannot digest food and play Hamilton at the same time because truth of Mousavi as well I have a verb that's three lines God so number one is like being really conscious of my diet making sure I give diet and exercise and giving myself the tools to physically perform the role every night and you know I stretch I warm up I hang out with drama Jonathan Groff who shares things on the internet because you know social media anything so I go you know that there's like a whole video of why you let show have all the insane things you make for him and and then we do the show and the show is enormous fun because our company gets along really well so we have our own backstage rituals like I freestyle with Renee and jasmine during the top of right-hand man Stage Left during the can I be real a second I freestyle with Devine during the meanwhile section of room where it happens it's like the only time we're off stage together so we go instead of meanwhile we're going freestyle like rap and then have to go enter so there's a million little things like that throughout the show that in become traditions and some of the hand for hand videos you watch oh man wait till you see the one this Saturday it's so dull so silly but it's something that Groff and Sasha were doing in the wings and I've never like could this be him for Hamels like I don't think of the airplane yeah what's good and so that's that sort of the fun of it is is these backstage things and getting giving you guys glimpses into it's no different than doing the school play it's just people paid a lot more money in ron chernow book he talks about Eliza Hamilton's desire to protect her husband's legacy how do you think she would react to Hamilton oh gosh I'll get teary-eyed just talking about that I got I think the you know the sort of the sneak attack of the show is that it is a Liza story every bit as much as it is Hamilton and Ron you know gets a lot of credit for that that last chapter of the book is all about her and and so what's what's really exciting to me is that I didn't know the orphanage that Eliza founded still exists the organization still exists in the form of the Graham wings of the organization so they got in touch with me via Twitter and I was in home and I immediately made the largest possible donation I could and the president called means that thank you for this out of the blue great donation I go if you see the show get I said no I have that pleasure I said you're gonna freak out when you see the end of this show because the show ends with the establishment of your organization and what's been wonderful is that relationship is blossomed into continuing work with that organization it helps kids with foster in foster care and our our actors have gone and done acting workshops and singing workshops with these with these young men and women and it's been an incredible relationship that sort of fed us as artists and humans and also driven up donations for Windom which is a not-for-profit so that's been I think that's the parts you like the most is that bird or they just alive and all fair and very much for your questions as a couple down I'll pass along to Lynn they're a little bit more personal but I am not in a bad way but I did want to give a chance to be able to play this game that I came up with that friends of mine and I play called the keeper delete you can only keep one of the following on your playlist and the other one you have to delete and not listen to for the rest of your life this is like a school edition of Ahmed kill yes all right so is it I'm gonna give him two songs one being a rap song and one being a song from the musical theatre Canon and he's going to have to decide when midwives to decide whether which one he wants to keep summertime from for EMS sung by Audra McDonald or summertime by DJ Jazzy Jeff it is groups like trains oh just a bit of a break from the norm I delete the jazzy jeff cuz i can already do it i got it again you're in here and I know you're thinking about not afraid by mm or not while I'm around from Sweeney Todd only gets harder from here I would somebody needs to keep track by the way we got one for musical so from I I would keep the Eminem because now while not while I'm around is a beautiful song it does not help me at the gym at all I would want one mama said knock you out by LL Cool J or Don't Tell mama from kappa rekt oh um again because of gym playlists I have to keep Mamas up yeah mama said knock you out Ellen all day wins ever okay two to one rap winning so far see how they make up choose good love it all get your freak on by Missy Elliott I also get points for saying that on stage or free flag from Shrek The Musical I can't live my life without get your freak on okay don't know how I live before hojoon Rosie another hundred people from company huh for 99 problems from JC great god what musical theater wins this round because another hundred people is so the New York anthem you ever want to feel good about your choices in life get on the subway and listen to another hundred people and you are a stranger musical leader with that okay keeping in mind the context but we have the audience nothing from a chorus ID or nothing but a G thang from dr. Dre P lon keeping you yeah I love the G thing but but nothing is like I mean that's one of the great musical theater songs of all time and you know lady three right I think we're right good ray all right now we're moving on to whole albums okay I love the pimp a butterfly by Kendrick Lamar or fun home by Janine's a sword I should leave wow that's a really tough one those are both in heavy rotation no me right now I am very much what I will I went out to keep tick pimp a butterfly and I just go to see mother I guess we'll love the Unsinkable Molly Brown I know your dad's in the audience see I'm singable Molly Brown the other words in Miseducation of Lauryn Hill see that's what he must die because I listen to the Unsinkable Molly Brown so many times if I never hear together so this education for to Zion alone that's great all right so we're five two three five degree line yeah five two three all right late registration by Kanye West right album or West Side Story yeah I got you blessed story five-four rap is still winning lame is or straight out of Compton by real I get to walk I play medicine alright knowing that we might end up with five for five which is where we're at I do have a tiebreaker okay fear of a black planet that Public Enemy or South Pacific they're pretty different for the both about racism I think hip-hop wins you're welcome so what's next for you where do you go from here I go home I go slap lose you go five and I go home and but uh you know I the crazy thing about this that I've also been writing songs for this animated musical called marijuana that comes out in November one of the writers on it rose utopia so I think that's been our sort of Big Brother movie that's been just six months ahead of us in the fight lines so I got to hear a lot about in actually if you see Zootopia there's a part in a cab where there's like this French rap going on that's got boutiques little cameo in Zootopia if you catch that this weekend but I I've been writing that over the past almost two years concurrent with Hamilton so I'm really excited that'll come out Thanksgiving this year so I'm really excited for for that because that's been a dream of mine I hear because of Sebastian the crab we meet on so it's been a real few country to work them well thank you very much for this conversation you you

Channel: Montclair Kimberley Academy

Views: 178,457

Rating: 4.968821 out of 5

Keywords: Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda, MKA, PAMKA, Lecture Series, Montclair, Big Brothers, Big Sisters, Teach for America - New Jersey, Montclair Kimberley Academy, Muscial, Conversation

Id: CyiBYlGNUSM

Length: 69min 6sec (4146 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 09 2016