We’ve covered Lin-Manuel Miranda before, but we’re back with a quick update. When we last discussed, Mr. Miranda had made an appearance at the White House and performed a rap about Alexander Hamilton. The New Yorker has an extensive look at our friend, and how he has turned that one song into a full fledged musical that opens soon.
It’s a pretty amazing look at the the process behind creating this production, and worth a read. Check out a snippet below:
At a workshop production in May, Miranda had delivered a final rap in which Hamilton gives an account of his preparations—“The sun is in my eyes and I’m almost giddy / As I watch it slowly rise over my New York City”—and weighs whether or not Burr has it in him to kill. Both musically and lyrically, the song hadn’t conveyed the high stakes that Miranda sought to capture, in which Hamilton’s fears about Burr’s lack of integrity extended to broad trepidation about the uncertain direction of the country. Nor had the song fully delivered a sense of tragic inevitability, in which Hamilton’s uncharacteristic reticence and Burr’s uncharacteristic forwardness ruin the lives of both men. Miranda was still revising the song, and expected to be still worrying over the scene in rehearsals. He said, “There are things that don’t exist, and that are not going to exist, until we have actors in the room, and I go, ‘Oh!’ ” Kail, who sets deadlines for Miranda, and reacts to every draft of every song, explained, “Lin’s response to pressure is to generate more material.”
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