Lin-Manuel Miranda has been a busy, busy man. If you doubt the success of his endeavors, just let me ask you one question: Have you tried to get a ticket to see “Hamilton” on Broadway? The lines are backed up around the block deep into next year. You may get lucky and win the lottery that will get you a ticket before 2017. Otherwise, listen to the cast album and wait for the movie.
The Tony and Grammy award-winning creator, composer and star of Broadway’s hip hop hit, Miranda recently went back to the White House to conduct a workshop and meet with POTUS and FLOTUS. He’d been there before in 2009 to sing at a White House night of poetry and music. The number he sang was from the show that would eventually become “Hamilton.”
After holding a Capitol Hill press conference calling on Congress to restructure Puerto Rico’s $72 billion debt and allow the U.S. territory to declare bankruptcy, he followed up this week by penning an op-ed on the issue this week for “The New York Times.”
Also this week, Miranda’s had to listen to very short-lived complaints about a casting call for non-white actors for the national run of “Hamilton”. The show’s producer, Jeffrey Seller, settled that dustup quickly and pointedly by laying out plans “to continue to cast the show with the same multicultural diversity that we have employed thus far.”
I know you haven’t been living under a rock, but to recap: “Hamilton” tells the story of the rise and fall of the first secretary of the treasury, Alexander Hamilton. His relationship with our other founding fathers is central to the portrait. Miranda had previously said the casting of blacks and Latinos as the founding fathers is a deliberate device aimed at removing distance between today’s audience and the story.
What’s next for Miranda? Maybe casting for the movie? He has said he wants the original members of the musical to reprise their roles, but there have been no announcements yet. Should his next project emulate “Hamilton”, or should he revisit his first success, “In the Heights”, about the largely Dominican-American NYC neighborhood Washington Heights?
One wit has recommended Miranda’s next project should take a look at a spectacularly unsuccessful presidential campaign with the title of “Jeb! An Uncomfortable Musical.” There have been some equally funny and unsolicited suggestions that you can see on this Slate blog.
I can’t wait. If you can’t wait, try your hand at the “Hamilton” lottery. Go to this link for the Hamilton Official Lottery.
