Who doesn’t love Hamilton? Seriously, I’ve watched it probably a half dozen times since it released to Disney+. I’ve been a fan of live theater for a long time. I was a light & sound techie back in the 90’s, and my grandmother was an actress at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin before she moved to the USA.
But, back to Hamilton, it really is a beautifully built and performed piece of theater, and I really identify with Miranda’s drive. He read a book about Alexander Hamilton, became obsessed with telling the story of this forgotten founding father, and did so in a wonderful way. The culture built around Hamilton, and the show’s ability to empower people of color to tell their own stories, and encourage everyone to take a second look at history, and look at it history in a new way.
After the most recent viewing of Hamilton, I did a quick look and saw that Lin-Manuel Miranda is one of the best TTM returns in entertainment. Not only is he a great TTM subject, but he responds to requests via email, and not only that, but his returns are always magnificently personal notes.
I wrote to him and did what a lot of people do, thanked him for sharing his passion through his show. I also shared my grandmother’s story. My grandmother was an ambassador of Irish culture in the early 30’s. But before that, she was a young actress, debuting the role of Mollser in the show “The Plough and the Stars”. The original production; which tells the story of a Dublin tenement building during the Easter Rising, starred several members of the Irish Volunteer leadership who held the General Post Office. The Easter Uprising, obviously, was 1916, the first production of Plough was 1926. A decade later my grandmother had moved to the United States and given up acting. But before joining the theater, the family home in Dublin was raided by Royal Irish Constabulary under the suspicion of providing aid to the IRA.
I shared this story with Lin-Manuel, and he wrote a touching note in return. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s site is: https://www.linmanuel.com/
Very cool! My daughter got the rest of the family into Hamilton, and we’ve watched the movie numerous times.