Lin-Manuel Miranda says plans are going ahead to bring his musical Hamilton to Australia | 7.30

lin-manuel miranda how are you going over there uh okay all things considered um you know it's in it's a time unlike any i can remember but we have the uh incredible privilege of being able to stay home so that other people can stay safe and uh i'm locked down with my wife and kids uh my uh in-laws live nearby they're able to help so we're we're pretty lucky all things considered well your children are young um we know that you're a great composer and lyricist but uh how are your maths teaching skills eh considerably uh less practiced than my lyrical skills um but but you know my my my son who is five and in kindergarten has adapted really nicely um you know i think the hardest part of this has been zoom kindergarten uh try telling a five-year-old that like the person on the other side of the screen can see him and can tell when he's not paying attention um and so that's been you know that's been i think a challenge a lot of parents have faced but uh we're we're rolling with it and uh you know having a lot of fun so will the planned australian production of hamilton go ahead next year yeah you know luckily we were really um sort of ahead of the ball in terms of this production um we did two rounds of casting sessions last year uh one last fall and one last winter in fact one of the last parties i went to before the lockdown happened was our annual hamilton christmas party and i got to meet the australian cast and stage management and they were telling us about the exciting prospects they had and then they've continued to sort of carry the ball um they've been doing workshops and auditions at boot camps with uh with australian talent our goal is to cast an incredibly diverse all-australian cast for this production and so they've continued to do that incredible work and and these actors have adapted in this incredible time you know imagine running a dance workshop like this um but but that's that's what they've managed to do so you know we are still on track to open in at the lyric opera house uh in march of next year will you come down yourself oh i hope so i really hope i hope uh to be able to absolutely um uh the last time i was in australia was for the melbourne comedy festival um over 10 years ago now um i wasn't even married to my wife yet uh the last time i was there and we had an amazing month at the melbourne comedy festival and i really i really loved it so i'm i'm hoping to go back and enjoy sydney it's such an american show both in terms of the style of the music and the content of the story why the choice to have an all-australian cast rather than export some of the american cast well i just um i find myself continually fascinated by the way in which um other productions continue to make it their own i remember when we first opened the uk production and everyone asked you know how are they going to get any of it like we don't know any american history over here and i go i'm sorry to tell you most americans don't know what ton of american history uh over here um and and you know the other thing that i i always think of is there's an amazing anecdote uh the joe stein the librettist for fiddler on the roof used to say he was at the premiere a fiddler on the roof uh in japan and at intermission someone came over tim said are you men involved with this production and they said yes and they go i hear this place in america how does that work it's so japanese uh and and and that's kind of how i feel about uh hamilton's uh experience uh in other productions i think that um the story of of of sort of um a country becoming itself i think that's universal and i think in terms of the debates of what kind of country we want to be what kind of values we let lead um that stuff isn't unique to america those are those are conversations that every country is having with themselves hamilton is the story of how america became itself i just wonder at the moment if we are possibly watching the beginning of the fracturing of the united states of america certainly from over here watching what's going on it seems just so chaotic and angry and divided you're like it's it is a scary time it is a scary time and i can't i can't remember a scarier one um and um we certainly uh if you watch the news and if you watch the news coming out of our administration um it feels like there's a real lack of leadership in terms of consistency um in terms of what happens during a scary time like this like what to do in in this pandemic and there's a lot of mixed messages that being said there are also a lot of incredible stories like i think new york is i'm going to tell my grandkids that i was in new york during this time and and so many acts of heroism and so many um i see when i walk down the street with my mask on so many other people doing the same uh so many people committed to keeping each other safe i think i waved to people more than i did before um and so you know while it is a scary time and i think this administration is is pretty scary um and hopefully over uh in november um it's um it there's also um a lot of uh there's an enormous sense of community and there's an enormous sense of rallying uh in the face of that you look back to alexander hamilton's time enter the years subsequent and you had politicians who were bitter enemies and the country was at war and the country was was divided what lessons if any do you think that america's history offers that could be pertinent to this time well i'm not a historian i learned just enough american history to write the show you're going to see in march of um and i think any historian will tell you that um but i i do think that one of my insights in writing the show was in reading the debates between alexander hamilton and thomas jefferson um they're the same fights we're having now they are when are we 50 states and when are we one nation who are we in regards to how we treat other countries um those are conversations that are happening right now i mean right now as some states struggle to reopen and push to reopen and others um are just receiving the worst of the pandemic that notion of when are we on our own and when are we unified as a country it couldn't be more um relevant uh and um and and i think my insight in writing it was oh those are just our fights the same way that the fights you have in your family are just your family's fights um and and those debates um i i tried to write them as if they were happening right now and then and use language that would be as recognizable in today's news as it would in the news of 1791. um and and i think that shows how far we've come i think that also shows how little we change um and and and so it's the thing i never really anticipated about hamilton is how political language would sort of adopt lyrics from the show i mean the room where it happens um has become a political catchphrase in the united states uh anytime a vote doesn't pass i see 500 tweets you don't have the votes so that's that's the thing i never could have anticipated was a musical which so often stays on the arts and leisure page entering the national conversation in that way oh totally at any time that i am with somebody who's being a bit of a know-it-all i am literally singing to myself why do you assume you're the smartest in the room yeah again the the trickiest thing about writing is going deeper to that specific thing that then becomes universal you know alexander hamilton at the constitutional convention talked so much that he gained political enemies for the rest of his life and you know i every time i'm on twitter i think every proclamation guarantees free ammunition for your enemies broadway has had to shut down during this time which is unthinkable what impact has that had on people that you know and would usually be working with i mean it's almost unfair to ask any new yorker the impact of covid19 on them because um far worse um or for larger magnitude than the events of september 11th everyone knows someone affected i have friends whose parents have passed away i have friends who have passed away i have friends who were hospitalized at the peak of the epidemic made it through uh and came back home um but you know for those of us who make our living and see see theater as a calling because no one goes into theater to make a living you do it because you love it and everyone in your life tells you there are way better ways of making a living but it's a calling we experience is a calling we have a calling where people gather um and and we we get our energy from where people gather uh uh on that stage and so um it's hard for the actors but i find it it's even harder for the stagehands and for the wardrobe folks and stage management and so you know that's why i think you we've you've seen so much and again when i tell you that there's also good news coming out of uh this unprecedented time i've seen the theater community all over the united states rally as never before we've raised so much money for organizations like broadway cares equity fights aids and the actors funds which just helps anyone involved with entertainment um and their emergency funds uh for this time so um it's it's hard like you see everyone participating in every zoom benefit in the world because we want our audiences back um and we'll be back when it's safe to do so um but it's uh you know it's also about supporting those uh who who really make make their living uh doing this have you thought about it all what it's going to be like what what the vibe in the room is going to be like for the first time when crowds can actually get together again and watch people on stage what the crowd is going to sound like when an orchestra starts warming up and that kind of thing well fortunately i can because we are in the middle of our like last bits of post-production on the hamilton live capture uh you know we filmed the original cast just before the principal started to leave uh in 2016. um tommy filmed several performances we got on stage we basically shot it like an indie movie ourselves and we're putting the finishing touches on it now and it is so poignant to work on it's so poignant to hear that applause and that anticipatory applause before burr steps across the footlights i've been listening been watching it over listening to the sound mix uh as we tweak our final sound notes uh and and um you know you're so you're so nostalgic for when people can gather together again and that film version is being brought forwards quite considerably why is that well you know i think a couple of things happened you know we are um a show that prior to this was was doing incredibly well in all its tour stops and on broadway and in the uk and um we wanted i've always said i'm so happy we have that film of the original cast i want as many people to experience it in a live setting as possible before we release that um and and so we were slated for next year uh and then the world changed the world turned upside down and we realized oh no one can see theater anywhere right now and i you know it just it went from something that we wanted to have a big movie theatrical release to like people need this now people need to be able to see this uh in their homes in the way in which they can uh because no one is seeing theater right now and so it felt like we should we should work hard to make this happen because um it's it the time sort of demanded i just want to do one thing before i let you go and let's show you a picture of a 10 year old i know his name's samson and his mum snapped off this picture when she told him that i was interviewing you tonight and i just thought that his face captures the sort of joy and thrill that fans of hamilton have they're so passionate and they just get such a buzz from it it must be so amazing to know that you've created something that gives people that kind of joy well i remember being samson of course i remember being 16 years old or 17 years old and seeing rent perform on the tonys and memorizing the cast album and singing along with my friends from the high school chorus until we knew every word i remember you know acting in god's spell and doing sleepovers with my cast and you know those those shows with the albums that you memorize become a part of your dna they become a way of speaking to your friends it gets into your bloodstream in a different way when you fall in love with the show you have to know everything about it and you have to share it with your friends and i'm so grateful that hamilton has become that show for people um and it's also just a lot of show right it's like 50 somewhat thousand words in this thing uh because hamilton has never shut up and i had to keep writing it down um so i i'm just i'm just intensely uh grateful for the fans and they're a big they're um you know they're they they guide our our thinking on next steps always when it comes to the next production being in australia when it comes to pushing up the release of the film like that's that's always at the forefront of our minds lin-manuel it's been just lovely to talk to you thank you so much likewise thank you hi i'm lee sales thanks for watching this story if you'd like to watch more of 7 30 stories they are on the left of your screen and tap on the button below to subscribe and get the latest from abc news

Channel: ABC News (Australia)

Views: 33,853

Rating: 4.9546924 out of 5

Keywords: Australia, abc, abc news, news, hamilton, lin-manuel miranda, new york, coronavirus, covid-19, musical

Id: x44XdYVoFns

Length: 14min 44sec (884 seconds)

Published: Thu May 21 2020