By Cassandra Harris-Lockwood K ’74
Lin-Manuel Miranda Returns to the Hill for Retrospective of Smash Broadway Hit
The Hamilton College campus was alive with energy and expectation. Our College on the Hill turned out to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Tony Award-winning musical “Hamilton” on Monday September 29th. Hosting the Broadway musical’s creator Lin-Manuel Miranda as the semester’s first guest in this year’s Sacerdote Great Names Series was indeed a celebration.
The crowd had stretched across the entire campus from College Hill Road to the Margaret Bundy Scott Field House, standing for hours waiting to see and hear the Puerto Rican standout artist, composer, creator and original star of the college’s namesake who made famous the name Hamilton on Broadway and around the world.
The unprecedented success and popularity of the show’s pro-immigration message, tells the story of one Founding Father of the United States, Alexander Hamilton, and how he made his mark in American politics as an immigrant. It also confronts the hypocrisy of our nation founded on ideals of liberty and equality while simultaneously perpetuating systemic racism and slavery. And Miranda did it all in the musical language of Hip Hop.
Prior to Miranda’s entrance there were a series of trivia questions on the two jumbotrons related to Hamilton’s life and legacy. With plenty of surprises in the mix relating back to the College. It was truly a multi-media experience.
Then there were a series of notable choral performances by Hamilton’s a Capella singers, Tumbling After an all-female group, Special K, another all-female group, (K for Kirkland, dressed in shades of green), The Buffers – all male, Duelly Noted, The Hamiltones and finally the Hamilton College Choir that provided the backdrop for the impressive quartet of students and alumni, Isa Cardoso ’25, Alejandro Sosa Hernández ’26, Kelvin Nuñez ’24, and Benjamin White ’26, on the main stage who regaled the audience in an impassioned and original Hip Hop opening remix of “My Shot.”
Their ‘shot’ introduced the man of the hour, who emerged to a roaring crowd of loving onlookers in thunderous applause as he shouted back, to his appreciative audience, “What’s up Hamilton?”
As is the nature of the Sacerdote, the honored guest was seated comfortably across from his interviewer, Eric Kuhn, Hamilton class of 2009. Kuhn is himself an impressive three time Tony Award winner as Producer for Best Revival of a Musical, Oklahoma! in 2019, Tony Award as Producer for Best Play of a Musical for The Inheritance in 2021 and Best Musical in A Strange Loop in 2022. Kuhn began his career in media at the Hamilton College radio station, WHCL. He established his place as a major media executive by launching the social media platforms for CNN, CBS News and the NBA!
Though Lin-Manuel addressed the entire Bundy Field House, he spoke directly to the artists there. He spoke to inspire, encourage and instruct the emerging, developing even struggling artists in the audience. His first message to artists in waiting was, “Are you cool with doing this (for the rest of your life) if you never make any money from it and if no one ever sees it till your dead?”
His esteemed presence as a Latino silently spoke hope and lit the hearts and minds of the non-White foreign students there in the Field House that night.
Miranda went on to explain that, “My great-uncle was a really wonderful actor in Puerto Rico. He was a beloved theater actor on the island, but to be a theater actor in Puerto Rico is to be broke. So, he was sort of the cautionary tale. Very talented but never had any money. So, my dad was like you’re very creative, you should be a lawyer.”
Much laughter followed. We’re all very happy he didn’t listen to his father’s advice. Lin-Manuel explained that he fell in love with musical theater as a school boy where everything is fair game. From high school into college, this artistic genre was home to him. Understanding that your “audience’s attention is a finite resource” and you don’t want to waste it” has been a carry through theme throughout his creative process.
There were many one liner nuggets full of wisdom and advice to the aspiring, practicing and possibly starving artists in the attentive and responsive crowd throughout his delivery.
“Create the art you want to create and no one can tell you what to create.
“Be really vigilant… Experience, enlighten and inspire… Answer to your muse and your muse alone…. Reach for it while you’re here. When you see art that you don’t, like analyze what it is you don’t like so it doesn’t end up in your own…. Don’t put your stuff out there until you’re ready.”
As a Puerto Rican, Miranda explained some of his early life. At home he was Lin-Manuel. At school he was Lin Miranda. He was what we Black folks call a ‘Code Switcher.’ He lived between two worlds, that of the fluent brilliant American school boy and that of the immigrant at home in his community.
He also went on to recognize the importance of those being a first generation college student and the burden for that it bears. The stakes are really hard and high for your financial success. “You carry yourself, your parents, your family, your community on your shoulders and you do what? You audition for theater production?”
It was at Wesleyan, his alma mater (a fierce competitor of Hamilton in sports), where he lived for the first time among people like himself who were as comfortable embracing their Spanish culture at home and functioning at a high level in an American academic setting.
Theater productions throughout his high school and college career taught him the importance of working with a team, editing and rewriting your work, asking for help and being open to criticism yet holding to what you know you want to see in your production or your art. “Be constant in your projection… And you don’t want your audience ahead of you.”
It was at Wesleyan where he crafted his expertise in leading a troupe, a company, with one that is all volunteer, works for free and is student led, ‘You better learn to lead with the spirit of joy,” to keep your team with you!
On the time he was working on Hamilton he noted, “I was already with a creative team. We worked together on the Heights that embraced everything, every story I lived at home and at school. We were just trying to make the best thing possible show. There the best idea wins the day.
Miranda spoke on the other successful productions Tick Tick Boom, during pandemic, Encanto and the Heights and others in which he was a musical contributor. He explained that all of these productions reflected a portion of his reality as an artist in a multicultural environment and the value of your chosen production team.
Throughout his delivery Miranda noted his heroes in the hip hop genre and pointed out the particular songs and numbers reflected in the musical.
On Hamilton, the man, he noted, “Hamilton at the age of 14 wrote a book about surviving a hurricane. His writing transcends his origin story. To me, that’s every hip hop artist,” the connections made themselves. To demonstrate his creative breadth, Miranda performed a few verses of “My Shot,” and audience needed no cue to sing along.
On our current state of affairs of our Constitution in America, “Ultimately,” he said, “It’s about flawed people making a flawed country,” and we’re still at it. “It sucks it is terrifying. We are bigger than this moment.”
When asked by Kuhn what is the most important thing that George Washington did, his answer was, “It was to step down. The peaceful transfer of power. He cared more about the country than himself.”
Lin-Manuel explained that was a middle school substitute teacher till he went to Broadway. And on his father’s advice to be a lawyer, he explained, “I can’t get myself to care about things that I don’t care about.’
We’re all pleased that Lin-Manuel Miranda cared more about musical theater and Alexander Hamilton than the practice of law. Bravo Lin-Manuel and muchas gracias.
