Conversation with Chernow, Kail, Miranda, and Mead: 2016 Records of Achievement Award Ceremony

good evening everyone tonight we are pleased to present our highest honor to Ron chernow Thomas kale and lin-manuel Miranda in recognition of the remarkable work that created the Tony Grammy and Pulitzer Prize winning Broadway musical Hamilton [Applause] the first thing I want to know then is is that photograph of you on vacation real or is it photoshopped and if it's real was Tommy Kayla long directing your vacation yep yep what you don't see three photos later is a picture of me like this because I got suntan lotion in my eye so it's not that glamorous um since we're here in an archive and we've been looking at these amazing documents together I wanted to ask all of you if you could let me know were there any particular primary documents that you came across in your search to do this work that really spoke to you that gave you some kind of key some sort of insight into Hamilton the man and Hamilton the play should we start with you Ron since you're the most something well you know for me it's particularly delighted to sit there watching the show and as I hear lines in the show to actually remember discovering the document that inspired that line I'll just give you one example because it ever sends a chill down my spine I was working at the Columbia University Archives and I was going through these Schuyler and Hamilton family papers and suddenly there was this little loose sheet there was a tiny handwritten note written in a very fine hand and it was written by Angelica Schuyler to her sister Eliza immediately after the exposure of the Reynolds scandal analyzed Angelica who adored her which I think and Tommy had brilliantly captured in the show that Angelica was trying to console her sister and he said you have to realize that you married someone who flew too close to the Sun and then in that beautiful song and the show burned Eliza is saying you know what Angelica told me but I married an Icarus who flew too close to the to the Sun and there was just something it was half instant I never imagined that I would find you know that particular letter in that spot but that's the beautiful serendipity of doing historical research you never know when you suddenly stumbled upon a small gem like that and it was particularly valuable not only in terms of establishing this deep love between the two sisters but Elizabeth Scylla Hamilton never publicly spoke about her reaction to the to the Reynolds scandal and nor do we have any private documents where she commented on it yeah for me the fun is its is the documents that really sort of show the contradictions of Hamilton you know I had Ron's book on one side of my desk and Joann Freeman's excellent collection of his writings on the other side and I'd go to the writings a lot you know a lot of the lines that were actually Hamilton's that I quoted are from those that the contradictory ones are the ones I love there's the first letter to Ned Stevens where he he's basically so you know it's it's the perfect musical theater character I don't know what how else to describe it um he says uh he says I may be said to be building castles in the air' and I hope you forgive me for saying this but we have seen such scheme successful when the projector is constant you know that's that's a Homer man saying I don't want to go down I want to go up and then he says I shall conclude by saying that I wish there was a war which shows this stunning sort of awareness as Ron points out of I know I'm not gonna get anywhere here on this on this little island I have to go fight I have to go achieve something in order to rise above my station the other one that I always think of and it's really heartbreaking I think I read it outside the theater once is for for my last week is Hamilton's letter to Eliza prior to their getting married and he writes this letter to Eliza imagine this imagine you're engaged to be married and you write a letter to your fiancee saying I will be happy with you whether we are rich or poor but listen you're really used to being rich and if you don't think you can be happy with me poor we should not get married he writes and the the line that I used was do you do you soberly relish the pleasure of being a poor man's wife and then he also goes on to elaborate on he says do not fancy yourself running around in a garden with Garland's in your hair being poor socks but if you can imagine yourself being poor and happy with me than if it turns out not to be that way we will be doubly happy so it's this I'm the man I love you you love me but then there's also a disclaimer embedded in there so it's this it's this arrogance and insecurity that are constantly sort of at war and and those are those were really the linchpins for unlocking him for me I think it's a testament to Lynn's writing that he can take the elevated language of Hamilton and have it interspersed so fluidly and organically in in our show and it's brave of him as well because there are moments in one last time which is this song where we have the the farewell address that we sort of make into a speech where you where it's just a section that is that is directly from that address when George Washington and Hamilton are sort of having their third goodbye moment a very personal moment then it becomes the political which i think is also part of the powered one's writing and being struck over and over again by the the deep emotion we know about the brain it was the heart and seeing at the archives you know this this final letter which much to my mother's chagrin didn't make it out of the public theater version where we used to have a moment in the finale where where we had Eliza read this last letter now in the show it's not a spoiler I promise um he hands her a letter and she would read the letter and it has some of those final words and to be in proximity to that letter as I was in the last you know year or so even here having already started to work on the show because one of the things that I'm sure you have all experienced and that is quite confusing for me is is this is what I think Alexander Hamilton looks like like I'm not sure who's on Ron's book but and and so it you know and and Christopher Jackson is George Washington and and Dobby Diggs and so on and so forth and yet in that moment being around that text seeing that that was his handwriting the crafted these words to his love I think just create a dimension for me in a way that's we tried to access with with our show um it's a eight hundred page book I think that gets condensed down into a three hour play were there elements were there stories that you'll in wish that you could have incorporated parts of Alexander Hamilton's life that couldn't get in there so many so many you could write three more musicals called Hamilton three different composers could take it and write equally thrilling works who the gaunt was thrown down who's gonna do it no I am you know uh the one that springs to mind immediately because we saw a document pertaining to it earlier this afternoon was uh the betrayal of Benedict Arnold Hamilton was there he was there when they intercepted the letter he was there when he said to Washington yo let's roll up on Benedict Arnold's house let's go get him um and and the reason I it kills me he didn't say in those words oh you're so hip ha ha but they roll up on on Benedict Arnold's house and Benedict Donald is not there he has fled what they find instead is uh mrs. Arnold with her blouse open and a kid in one hand raving they're gonna take away my baby they're gonna kill my baby he's left me he's poisoning and these August gentlemen soldier scholars are all have no idea what to do when they're faced with a topless damsel in distress and they go this poor woman she she has no idea what has happened they send her off to England she knew what was happening but that weakness for a damsel in distress to be able to illustrate that early because we see his weakness when Mariah Reynolds walks in his door with her story and and his critical faculties go out the window when that happens and so I was really sad there was no way to fit Bennet Donald's story in there but that's that's one that comes to mind because it points to a a key flaw and his character that that gets exploited to it to its fullest was it did you have one wrong moment well that's really important one of them I think the other one was just the relationship with John Adams and and and Lydon wrote some fantastic music and lyrics about that that Hamilton saw John Adams as paranoid unstable temperamental wrote this long diatribe in 1800 open letter to John Adams that was so vitriolic that it hurt Hamilton more than it hurt John Adams I think actually Lyndon was just as well that it didn't find its weight not because because what Lind wrote was absolutely brilliant but I think that by omitting him there is this moment welcome folks to the Adams administration right and you quote accurately Adams calling Hamilton McCrea bastard so you give nobody buddy in some flavor of it but I think that by having the central political conflict between Hamilton and Jefferson it gives the show much more kind of universal much kind of a grander scope because that was a great ideological debate of the day I think that the quarrel between Hamilton and Adams was much more of a personal quarrel whereas I think Hamilton and Jefferson really kind of define the debate that we're still debating and we'll see tomorrow night and the debate between two entire and a lot of other things so I think that that was really the central political the show but he wrote a terrific stuff about Adams you know in just to sort of speak to that and this is a credit to collaborating with Lin to our intrepid company and their ability to process change and perhaps to suggest a way that that government could learn from Lin and I were talking about that moment there was this scree to get on Adams very well stage any blank computer our choreographer had some excellent work there it was very well written and it was the first thing we cut off Broadway and it was the first thing we cut and and lit and I went through the show it when we first started the show our first preview that allegedly like 17,000 people were there for at a 290 seat theater you were there and the earlier you saw it like the badge gets bigger and inland and I were talking and and we knew that it had to go and there was and you know Lin has it an interesting dynamic because Lin is both on stage and is the writer and is able to do both quite well and we said well if that goes away and if we cut something that is Lin's material it's also setting a tone which is we are just going to try to distill this story to its essence it doesn't matter how well performed it is it doesn't matter if it's from the writer it needs to be only the essential moments that we need to dramatize and that was the first thing lifted out of the show and I will having spent some time working on new material that is not usually so easily won Lin's Lin's understanding of the larger gesture of this that this is a show that needs to exist when Lin is not in it it's a show that needs to exist when other people perform all of these roles was already somehow part of the DNA of his initial idea and my job was to try to support that in any way that I could and then let me extend your political metaphor it's also just great politics you can't complain that your parts cut if the writer cut is part so it sets implicit explicit guys and and in fact the only thing that was the easiest version this is a politico version and then the Northern Virginia sorry the other thing is the line that actually remained was sit down John the last all we actually needed was the last line which is another cut lesson and editing and precision yeah yeah I think also Hamilton was so quarrelsome he was so combative he had such a knack for making enemies that I think that the the show was constantly testing the audience's sympathy one of things I've had interesting during the development of the show as producers came inside luckily not our producers who really gave these folks complete creative freedom producers would say things like you know the cat the central character in a Broadway show has to be sympathetic at all times and I think that one of the reasons audiences have responded to this instead of that kind of make-believe world you know a character who is always virtuous that this is somebody who is a flawed genius with heavy emphasis both on Floyd and ingenious and I think that may have been if the feud with Adams had been dramatized as fully as the feud with Jefferson might have kind of gone over that line of sympathy it might have been one feud for many to the point where Hamilton not only you know seems very combative and principled but really kind of manic in making enemies so I think in all sorts of ways was probably good that it was cut yeah it's interesting that that thing about sympathetic I never really thought about sympathetic that's not a conversation we had a lot I can tell you that we you know we look to our forebears when we're writing this stuff you know when I was writing in the heights which is about a community in the midst of change we thanks thanks to you people thank you not them then we liked you better the we looked at the musicals in which that happens we looked at cabaret we looked at Fiddler on the Roof we looked at sort of musicals with that sort of structure with this we looked at Sweeney Todd we looked at gypsy we looked at musicals where the show is about a person and that person is such a force of nature that you are either in league with the person or you're fighting with the person or you started in league and now you can't justify being with them anymore and so we looked at those are sort of the two great antihero monsters I mean those are that those are the Hamlet and Macbeth of musical theater Jesus Christ Superstar which were both shows that you talked about a lot early on because the show as we started working on it was going to be an album and what that actually allowed us to do was to let let the writing lead and not chronology you know yeah and so it doesn't do things you talked about very early yeah yeah I sort of lied to myself for three years and said this was going to be a concept album so I just I said I'm gonna pack it as densely as I can and they'll get more on repeated listens because that's what my favorite hip-hop albums do I am still hearing new double entendres in jay-z's first album and Biggie's first album because they're the lyrics are packed so tight so that's that was also that sort of was a part of the recipe as well but you know I think that that was so important to the development of the of the show because it moves it doesn't have a kind of linear logic which most stories do in which of course being a biographer you know there's always the chronology moving along but the show kind of keeps jumping in this very kind of imagistic way and it's very difficult to define the logic is all working it's all working brilliantly but I think because you start out thinking in terms of an album so you had this kind of series of songs and then kind of building certain connective tissue between the songs but it retained this kind of very imagistic comes kind of you know symbolist structure to it but it's very difficult sometimes to logically define how the show is moving or even the internal movement of a lot of the songs and I think it's one of the reasons that it's just so brilliant and so unpredictable and unexpected as it is it moves along I wanted to ask whether in the process of creating and writing I know you consulted with Ron very early on and said we want to do this and got his blessing and then he served as sort of a historical not sort of as a historical consultant for the show were there things that you wanted to do dramatically or take licenses you wanted to take with the story that Ron ever said you know boys I'm sorry you just can't or you know how did that conversation happen the the most strenuous objection I remember and forgive me if I'm wrong is I had a line about Washington's wooden teeth and Ron said please please please there's been centuries of misinformation you never he had wooden teeth he wrote a Pulitzer prize-winning book about Washington he's like there were no wooden teeth please don't put that work in the show I was out it's out its out we've traded that we traded that for the song we know where we made it our three antagonists going to Hamilton which was obviously not exactly what happened although the act was real so again you know it's a it's bipartisan yeah it's a yeah but but you know what but it was it was it was so helpful to have Ron for those reasons because you know at sort of every stage at every reading at every workshop you know and I remember very distinctly like our our phone call on the Sunday before the first preview Ron was like here are the eight things here are the eight things that just it didn't happen and I'm just going to say them out loud that this is not how it happened and you can change them or you can justify them but that's historians are going to tell you this so I'm going to be the first historian to tell you this and that was a really great phone call and it resulted in some changes and also resulted in us sort of going oh okay you know this is in here for this reason but we can actually clarify this I mean stuff as small as Jefferson singing I helped Lafayette draft a constitution and Ron saying it's actually the Declaration of the Rights of Man but I liked rhyming revolution with Constitution and I said it a few previews with that yeah and I said I can live with declaration revolution I can live with that it doesn't exactly rhyme but it's more accurate and doesn't it doesn't make me lose sleep because I will I will lose sleep over miss rived a couple of words so so it was always it was it was always wonderful to even when we deviated from the historical record to sort of have to be forced to justify it or earn it in a very real way I was like the walk and super-ego of production but you know Linda's very very diplomatic to to work with but I remember sometimes after workshop production Lynn Tommy a producer Jeffrey Knight and I would sit there and Lynn would say okay give me your reactions and I would start rambling on and you would be sitting there with your laptop and if I said something that sounded at all valid you would start furiously tapping right I said something completely asinine you wouldn't move you wouldn't say it was this really early shuttle in demand I came to sort of dread those okay just complete silence and an action I would be saying oh my god I really just made a complete ass of myself by saying this but you know I really felt that in the way the the least important thing that I did which I felt since I had signed on for the cycle of an obligation to vet the show for accuracy but I really felt Lynn 99% of the time when I told you it didn't happen this way you already knew it you know you had you know read my book very closely you read a lot of other books set very closely but I felt kind of an obligation to do every now and then I would encounter resistance for reasons that I couldn't figure out this one that I find very very funny there's a line list places any to talk about it yeah there's a line very early in the show when Hamilton meets Aaron Burr and he says you know that he wanted to go through Princeton an accelerated short course of study and he says that he might punch them you know the bursar it's a blur sir and we were at a meeting I remember in Jeffrey's office and I said Lynne I don't know where on earth you you got that they never punched the bursar and they've got very very quiet and I have to say I mean these guys are very you know quick with the hip hop I'm kind of I can be very very slow on the uptake and then one night I was you know watching the show and every time that Hamilton encounters Barry says well if it is an Aaron Burr sir I'm thinking Burr sir if there's one thing that I learned working with Lynn Lynn has a love of puns you know reminds me would my favorite lines from dr. Johnson writing bad Shakespeare he said that for Shakespeare the pun was the fatal Cleopatra which he lost the world and was content to lose it and then there was it was that pun about that was a losing bursar with personal care if he punched him I wasn't losing that Ryan yeah I could I should have suspected it was a pun because upset he's very wedded to this and he's not telling me why he he's wedded to it and that was it and I will never forget one of our very early previews when that line got delivered and I heard this honking laugh from the back and I was like Oh Stephen Sondheim likes my burger line it's not going anywhere on time in the audience but you've also had thousands of New York City public school kids title one schools coming to see the show what has that been like those are the best audiences we have hands down and that's not um it's just they're the best audience is it from from every actor who will tell you that they're the most fun and most energized audience you will ever have to our house manager who tells us the kids are the most polite patrons we have on the front of the house and you wouldn't think that 1300 11th graders but they are so happy to be there and and what we've been able to sort of achieve with Gilder Lehrman and the Rockefeller Foundation is so extraordinary because it's not just here's a play go good luck with your life it's it's it's three months it's um it's part of the curriculum they they're they are sort of prepped to go to the show they are involved in writing their own projects they are asked to participate in a way and it begins with them performing for us we every school picks an ambassador to perform a creative piece and the pieces will blow your mind I have seen poems from Phyllis Wheatley I have seen yeah all original material written by the kids in response to a historical thing they think hasn't gotten enough you know hasn't been brought to light enough we had one amazing spoken word poem written by a young man from the perspective of one of Thomas Jefferson's sons via Sally Hemings and saying that founding father didn't acknowledge he was my father and starting from there and so the way in which the curriculum has sort of inspired these kids to dig deeper and see these founders is human there's no overstating that and then we do a Q&A with them where they ask us whatever they want Tommy presided over the last two and it's everything from you know it's how do you get started acting - what do you think Eliza really felt there-there it it's incredible and then we do the show for the most incredible and enthusiastic audience in the world I think what's what's most moving for me is is watching our cast our cast works very hard the hours are crazy you work six days a week in you work six days a week every week but one all year you work on Thanksgiving you work on New Year's Eve you work when other people are with their families and enjoying and they wake up to get there at ten o'clock after a show before they have a to show day to to witness to be there for these young men and women and when we do these talkback and you see our cast and what it means to effectively take away any distance between sitting there and sitting here except talked about the 20 years talk about what it meant for that for that person you know who saw the show on the road 20 years ago and Chris Jackson talking about it or renege old there are some people from the cast and I'm so I'm so struck also because I'll go backstage and talk to some of the young women and men who are about to perform and I would say more than half of them they don't want to be performers it's not about that the show at its core can actually be distilled to an idea of understanding that your voice is important that your story matters and these are kids back there they are doing this because they are brave enough to stand in front of 1300 other kids they have never met and find me 12 kids like that anywhere and there they all are and they're not doing this to try to get a job they're doing this because they were moved they were doing this because something that lynn wrote didn't make them just learn the lyric from the song but just study phillis wheatley it's all it's all of the things that we're talking about it's why we're here and and and my feeling about it is no matter what the audience is whether it's an audience of dedicated to students whether it's in it's an audience on a Thursday night you don't know who's out there but there are 1,350 people there and maybe there's one there's one that needs you that night and so you go and you do it for them and what the show is is the show is nourishment the show is sunlight the show is water the show is whatever that seed might need to to go forward and that's on display you know ever every time we do these you know I saw the the first of the student matinees and in April and I had seen this show so many times with the Delta audiences and I was fascinated by the the the difference as the any reference to sex the students found hilarious they me yeah but adults hate that stuff any any put-down they would erupt in laughter and these were a lot of kids over them to hide ones schools you know which we met we had a lot kids from tough neighborhoods but I was also struck I have a deeply moral and even moralistic their reaction was to the show the moment in the second act when Hamilton first embraces Wray Reynolds the performance I saw every kid in the audience shout out now amazing and then and then I think the I don't know if this happened subsequent student performances in these in the towards the end of the second act when Hamilton sent Phillip dies in the duel the way that it is staged is that Phillip is lying on the table and Lynn and Philippa sue who was then doing lies would come out in their bending over the body and Eliza's talking to him and then sudden becomes moment expires and he lies back on the table and the way that Phillip Oh would do it she looked down and then suddenly she would raise her face and look out at the audience and she would let out most blood-curdling scream well what happened the day that I saw it Philip dies I'd seen her do it so many times she lifts her face her mouth opens and the entire audience let out the scream before she did and she I can see that she was kind of thrown by because it was such an extraordinary thing for the audience to actually know do be accurate and and you know Anthony Ramos are said Philip it's not an unattractive young man so you can hear the girls crying out on me he was their favorite it's not oh man Miranda it's not old man Miranda it's santhu knee Ramos um and it's and it's and it's it's wonderful because it also takes you back to when you know you didn't learn you know they're the best audience members because they are just feeling it in real time the other thing that I that I always take away that sort of strikes me is the slightest physical violence gets an incredible reaction and like a a terrified reaction um we have a moment where we a Redcoat twists a rebels neck and it's very stylized doesn't look real at all but it gets rheems at the student matinees and and you dead-eyed adults don't react at all it's the kids it's the kids who go oh my god I mean they're in and so it's um for this and many reasons that they're just the best shows we do we we are winding up but I have to offer for weirdest an what do you mean winding up what are you hungry it's just chicken we can keep going umm I have to ask you know we began seeing you here singing to the president at the beginning of his term he came to see you now towards the end Hillary quoted Hamilton in her in her speech the DNC tomorrow there's the first of the debates which may be more like one of your rap battles than any debate place in memory so I wanted to know why it is that you think this musical and this story is speaking so so powerfully at this moment what does it what does it have to do with this moment and what light can the show and the story and how to himself shed on where we are now just a little one to be going out obviously I've thought about this a lot um and and it depends on the week you know I think that we try to make something and we just put it out there and then you find something in it you find something the person next to you find something else in it I think what the show does is it it's a display of the promise of what's possible of of what it meant at a moment in time at a series of moments in time when it was all it was all out there in front of us and maybe it could be and I think it's it's also making making us feel hopefully in some way connected to another truth which is that is that is still the case so we must keep going and and I've seen certain songs resonate quite differently through the months one last time the song we're Washington stems down was simply a completely different experience once our country again started searching for a leader and when people would see George Washington an incarnation of George Washington brought to bear by Chris Jackson and Linds words and music something happened this spring and that song started to stop the show yeah and it just had not happened in the long yeah yeah I also I think um I think we love an origin story and I don't mean that in the like how Superman got his powers I mean that in the like that story you heard about your father your mother when they were a child and you go oh my god that's that explains everything or that that explains this or that explains that and I think when you see you know the founders presented as humanly as two hours and 45 minutes can allow fighting and feuding and being petty and being brilliant you you look at the news and then you sort of have that prism you've got that origin story in your mind and go that explains that I also think that I mean I think the real takeaway regardless of politics is Hamilton had an extraordinary life and it was an extraordinarily short life as well and so it forces you to reckon with your mortality it forces you to reckon with what am I doing with the time I have on this earth I that the emails I get from friends when they see the show don't come the next day they come at 4:00 in the morning because they can't sleep because they're thinking about their priorities and and that's you know that's how I felt when I read Ron's book I just felt my god I you know insert your age at my age he'd already done this and this and this and this and this and so it really makes you think about how am i spending the hours in my day you know I think that whenever we as a country go through periods of doubt and severe divisions as we obviously are now I think that people are driven back to American history they're looking to American history for inspiration and understanding and clarification I think the you know the wonder is that they're finding that in a Broadway musical and I just want to it for a moment just in terms of what this has accomplished because I think it's very significant that we're getting this kind of understanding and inspiration from a show instead of from from from the schools because I think that what has happened in this country is and we're very very laudable by desire in our schools in our classes and our textbooks to instill a love for the founding era and for these figures but what happens is that the figures are drained of all vitality they turned into plaster Saints the story becomes sanitized to the point where students are very bored by it the characters seem very unreal and you know what I felt I spent 1112 years between Hamilton and Washington is that these were not you know kind of you know Roman senators and togas these were people who were revolutionaries which meant that they were they were brilliant they were passionate they were pinyin ated they were difficult they were argumentative you know they were always fighting for their views and so now this has all been drained out of our educational approach to the founders and so I think that it's so wonderful that so many people are discovering or rediscovering these figures through the show it's also an indictment of what we're doing with this history in the in the schools remember when I finished my Washington book I'd gotten a lot of cooperation from the folks at Mount Vernon and the late Jim Reese was still the president Mount Vernon when the book came out I I sent you a copy and I said you know we have this tremendous shared love and admiration for Washington I said you're going to start reading the book and probably by around page 150 you're going to say gee this is really a hatchet job on Washington you're showing him as a young man he's pursuing money status and Perry doesn't seem at all idealist not even particularly likeable I just said Jim hang in there and by the end of the book I think you're going to find the Washington that you and I know and love and he wrote me back such a thoughtful letter he said Ron I think that you've done a tremendous service he said we get more than million visitors a year at Mount Vernon he said the biggest problem we have particularly with young people is that Washington seems unreal and what you've done in the book is you've really kind of not only dramatized him but that you have humanized him and once he humanize these great historical figures their greatness instead of being diminished is actually enhanced and I think that Belinda and Tommy have done with Alexander Hamilton this is a very very unsparing portrait over this man this kind of not a negative side to him that is omitted you know from this show but in spite of that that was because when people come out of the show loving and understanding these figures and really being immersed in this period in a way that never they've never had before that it truly comes to life and I think that it's just such an extraordinary achievement I love these guys to death I'm just so tremendously proud you know of what they have done you know with the book and with the story and I'll just say one last thing I think that I know we have a number of you know biographers and historians in the audience I think they would say the same thing I think we all felt we were losing the young people you know I would go out I do a lot of public speaking usually the audiences you know 40 or 50 maybe kind of small spattering of young people now it seems like hardly a day goes by that I don't get a destroyed email from a parent saying well my six-year-old does is sit in a room all day listening to the Hamilton album again and again and said all she wants to do is talk about the founding fathers look at me I'm I know we we're moving to this next section but I just wanted to say to sit up here with with these with these two in this building in this temple to words where Ron's book gave us this inspiration which which allowed Lynn to unlock this thing Rebecca who wrote that first article about us in front of people that we love and our family here you know when people say when you started rehearsal were you thinking about the $10 bill and I was like yeah we were going to change that media the other thing we were not intending was to ever be at the National Archives receiving any sort of recognition like this so thank you very thank you so thank you Rebecca Ron Lynne and Tommy and I hope that you feel you've had a special moment that you could not have gotten anywhere else in town and to all of you on the stage we thank you for allowing us to be a part of your incredible Hamilton journey we hope this award and the story of tonight will make its way into the chronicle of that journey and now ladies and gentlemen with a nod to Lin's lyrics I invite you to join us upstairs in the rotunda galleries as we raise a glass to freedom and celebrate celebrate how each and every one of our ancestors whose presence made this America that we live in today possible [Applause] you

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Length: 42min 11sec (2531 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 30 2016