Who Tells Your Story

This is a safe space, right? Because I’m about to get pretty honest and pretty darn nerdy. I am a musical theatre nerd. Super nerd. In general, I try to avoid letting folks know how much of one, because whooey do they snicker. I’ve re-watched the PBS history of Broadway with Julie Andrews more times then I can count, and still manage to learn something new. As also a lover of history, the idea of a new musical hip-hopera about a founding father? Yeah, last year I was giddy. And then the soundtrack dropped. Which is currently on a no-play list in our house as some (Mr. Beth Ellen) claim that they can only listen to it so many times. Guess what commutes are for!?

So anywho when I found out that Mr. Miranda was writing a book on how the beauty that is Hamilton came to be, well… I got the audio and hardback versions. Again, safe space, right? I currently don’t have a lot of time to read books in hand so I needed the audio, but also I wanted the pictures/libretto/etc so now I have both. Totally worth it.

Mr. Miranda with Mr. McCarter work there was through the creation process of the show as they work through explaining the writing of the song numbers. The show was written fairly sequentially so this makes a lot of sense. Along the way you are introduced to all of the cast and the heads behind the scenes. It makes, overall, a fascinating picture of many talented people coming together to make something special.

If you’re at all interested in how a musical comes about (and realistically how long it takes) then this is a great little starting point. It’s also about a show that’s taking the world by storm. The only question that remains is, “How do I convince Mr. Beth Ellen to spend a small fortune on tickets to see the original cast?”