Latest Posts by amongpresidents - Page 5

High School Hamilton

*Jefferson runs down hallway at full speed*

Hamilton: What’s up with him?

Laurens: They’re serving Mac and Cheese at lunch today.

Eliza deserved better

Amen

I love this? So much???

hamilton: washington is watching from the other side!

washington, distantly: stop fucking up son

hamilton: Im nOT YoUR sOn SToP iT

when you see a hot guy wearing gray sweatpants

Hamilton: I catch a glimpse of the other side… Laurens leads a soldiers chorus on the other side.

Hamilton: They’re off-key… It sounds terrible… My ears are bleeding.

Lin Manuel Miranda hosting SNL (October 8th, 2016)

Listening to Hamilton on shuffle is a bad idea because one minute Philip is 9 and singing to his father and the next he’s 19 and dying in his arms

All of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Saturday Night Live bumpers!

when alex goes to get some fresh air at the bar

Hercules: John, tell us a secret!

John: Okay, I have a crush on Alexander!

Lafayette: Non, he said a secret.

Oh my FREAKING GOOOOOD 😂😂😂

Shout out to Anthony Ramos whose role was basically to call Lin-Manuel-Miranda “daddy” in both acts

Lin-Manuel Miranda Is Ready For His Next Act (GQ):

Has it felt weird leaving Hamilton behind?

I was ready. My kid was born two weeks before rehearsals started. So we went from a newborn child at the beginning of this to complete sentences by the time I was leaving the show. That’s a hell of a thing, and that’s a marker of how fast it goes. I had so much stuff I had to do that was not getting full expression, because my life was built around 8 p.m. Performing Hamilton through two hours and 45 minutes, when you’re in it, was the most relaxing part of the day. Because I didn’t have unanswered e-mails, or family stuff I wasn’t doing. I was just supposed to be Hamilton, and I know the script on that one. Playing Hamilton is like taking the nozzle off your id and letting it fly. It’s walking into the room and going, “I’m the smartest person in this room—and you need to listen to me!” It’s getting to go out with your friends. It’s getting to flirt with everybody, male and female, as Hamilton did. It’s getting to experience joy and grief. It’s a 14-course meal of a role. So I leave very tired, but very fulfilled, every night. So I miss that. I miss the cast and crew. But I also had enough stuff going on in real life that I didn’t need this to be the rest of my life.

What’s been the high point?

Obviously, going to the White House was a very big deal. But often, it’s the little things. I’m such a pop-cultural junkie. Alex Trebek came backstage, and the first thing he said in that voice was, “Answer: This is America’s favorite play.” “What is Hamilton?” And I was like, “Did that really just happen? Is that how he starts every conversation?”

And the Hamilton mixtape we’re working on has been incredible. I’m a fan of every single person who’s working on it. And that’s from the newer kids like Chance the Rapper to Busta Rhymes, who was the first rapper I thought of for this project when I was still reading chapter 4 of the Chernow book. I came upon the character Hercules Mulligan, and I said, “That’s Busta Rhymes!” So to have him participate in the mixtape is fucking insane! The best way to describe the mixtape is that I drew on all my heroes to write Hamilton, and the mixtape is me taking Hamilton to all my heroes and saying, “What does this inspire you to make?” It’s my heroes in the hip-hop sphere, and favorite songwriters of mine, like Regina Spektor, Ben Folds, Ingrid Michaelson. It’s all over the map.

Did you have containment issues playing the lead role every night?

I didn’t. I genuinely didn’t. Like, I lose a son every fucking night. I get to cry over that. I get the catharsis of forgiveness. I get the catharsis of dying, and then at the end of the day I just wanna chiiiiill. Sometimes I have trouble coming down. My go-to calm-down music during the craziness of Hamilton was The Crane Wife by the Decemberists. I’d just listen to that suite of songs and lie down. And that’s about 15 minutes, and it was the perfect comeback to yourself, comeback to the world. It’s a beautifully told story, and you’re done. And by the time it ends, you’re like, “Okay, I can be myself again.” That was like a big thing I clung to.

I find that, for me, the work is a safe place to put all the stuff you don’t want to put in your real life. I don’t want to be a crazy, manic asshole. I don’t want to have an affair. I don’t want to have a fucking gunfight. But! There’s a part of your brain that wants to experience everything, and so work’s a safe place to explore it all. Both in the writing and in the performing. I get to write about an affair. I get to have the guilt and the feeling of that without having to fuck my life up. [laughs] Art is the place to safely explore all those other sides of you, because the side you want to bring home is the side that wants to be a good father and be a good husband and be a good son. In art we can be fucking nuts. So I didn’t have any depression left to play outside of the theater. I was like a dry sponge at the end.

The role was something you had to shed, too, right? What was it like to cut off your ponytail?

It was like returning to myself, to me, who I’ve always been, after two years of wearing it. I couldn’t take the train for a while. I’d see people recognizing—and you know what it’s like? It’s like in Inception, the moment when you’re aware in a dream and everyone walking down the street goes [looks slowly around, wide-eyed]. Now that my hair is off, and I look less like The Guy in the Thing, my life’s been a little easier. Yesterday I took the train uptown, and I’m in this crowded 1 train, and this teenage girl next to me goes, “You look exactly like Lin-Manuel Miranda,” and I go, “I know. I get that a lot.” And she goes, “You even sound like him.” And I go, “I’ve been getting that all year.” I felt bad about lying to her, but it was a really crowded train and there was not a lot to be done.

[…]

In the play, you have Hamilton rap, “I imagine death so much it feels more like a memory,” and called it the most autobiographical line that you’ve ever written. Are you really that death-haunted a person?

I’ve gotten better. I was very preoccupied with it my entire childhood, my entire teens, you know, and it was sort of the dark side of me. I would get in a serious relationship, and I would imagine the ten ways my date could have died on the way home. Which, to my mind at the time, was like, “Well, that’s realistic. Nothing’s fucking promised.” Which happens to be true, but you don’t have to live your life picturing every horrific scenario. And I think I spent a good amount of real estate in my youth doing that, and it’s still a habit for me. And to me it’s a Spidey sense gone bad. Just dialed up to the nth degree. I remember when I wrote that line and articulated it out loud, it felt—I felt a little naked saying it, because it bares something very true. But it also applied to Hamilton. I felt good giving it to him, because it made sense.

At what point were you able to take some of that darkness and rather than let it paralyze you, make art from it?

I mean, it’s a mix of growing up and going to therapy and realizing you’re not alone. After I broke up with my high school girlfriend, I spent the summer in therapy. There was no stigma in that. My mom is a psychologist. My parents met at NYU grad school for psychology. So I only regret that I waited so long to do it, you know? [laughs] I should have done it at 14, not at 19. And the best thing about going to see a psychologist is you say, “I’ve never told anyone this,” and you unload your deepest, darkest thought in your head, and they go, “Okay.” And you go, “But you don’t think I’m the worst person in the world or I’m the best person in the world or like a crazy person?” And they go, “No, that’s really normal. A lot of people feel like that.” And, you know, my preoccupation with death was one of those things. You work out the stuff you’ve built up in your head, and you talk it out until you can lay it on a table and look at it and go, “Well, that’s fucking crazy.” And that’s true, but I don’t have to sit with it all the time. It doesn’t have to rule me.

Do you feel like being in England is going to hinder your ability to comment on things in America, to be as socially relevant?

I never meant to be socially relevant. [laughs]

What about your Tony-acceptance speech?

I don’t see myself as chasing these moments. The Tonys were scheduled on Sunday, and that shit [the killing of 49 people in an Orlando nightclub] happened in the morning. I would have liked nothing better than to thank all my peers and the hundreds of people who went into making Hamilton possible, but this thing happened that morning, and you have to meet that moment. I think a lot about trying to meet the moment as honestly as possible, because I don’t pretend to have any answers. In fact, I have infinitely more questions than answers. You know, the opening line to Hamilton is one long run-on fucking question,* which we puzzle out but never really answer. That’s all I control: I can control how I meet the world.

I want to be friends with the hamilsquad

phillip hamilton things, for people who haven't or can't see the show.

-during his rap in take a break, he starts out nervous and then kid gets WAY IN TO IT, bending his knees and flexing his arms and yelling. alex hugs him and looks so proud and phillip is so pleased with himself. it’s precious.

-during reynolds pamphlet, jefferson, madison, and burr take him up front, surround him, and show him the paper. they point and say “at his own house? at his own house? damn.” out loud to him and oh my god his face, he’s shattered. you can physically see his father get taken down a peg in his eyes. I can’t even describe it. it was heartbreaking.

- I always pictured his argument with george eaker happening up close, like he pushed past a bunch of people and was up his face. but no, eaker is up on the balcony and in true hamilton fashion, phillip is making a scene and shouting at him from below. the actors in the “play” even stop to watch, and you’re like damn this really is alex’s son.

-when he’s telling his dad about the duel, alex is standing with his arms folded (and using his “dad” voice) and phillip looks so sheepish but also defiant and it reminds me so much of “meet me inside.”

-“stay alive reprise.” tore. my. heart. out. which I knew it would but jesus. no mercy. I was full on sobbing. (eliza screams at the end of it and I can’t even describe that. it’s so horrible and your breath catches in your throat and she sounds so worn down and destroyed. she’s held it together throughout all the shit alex put her through but in that moment it all comes crashing down and you can hear so much pain. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful. the acting is amazing.)

something they can never take away  [x x x x x]

#LETANTHONYLIVE2KFOREVER

What Hamilton Taught Me

When the revolutionary war started and ended

How to count to ten in French

Who Alexander Hamilton even is

Being the older sister is hard

Lafayette was the real MVP

If your man don’t treat you right burn the stuff he gave you

Things don’t go very well if you wait for it

When the French Revolution started and why

How the French and American revolutions were connected

You can write your way out of anything if you try hard enough

I will never be as successful as Alexander Hamilton

I will also never have the motivation to write like I’m running out of time

Who the ambassador of France was in seventeen se-se-seventeen se-se-seventeen, seventeen eighty nine

Don’t assume anyone is “truly a man of honor” because you’ll probably die

Actually just don’t duel. Like, ever.

ah urban dictionary, you do complete me

things i learned about anthony ramos from his interview on the room where it's happening podcast

-he used to be a baker then he was a preschool teacher -he’s the youngest member of the cast -he was laid off of a $64 million job at radio city music hall before being cast in hamilton -he pronounces ambulance as “am-buh-lance” -he thinks lins and jasmines kiss in say no to this is TOO LONG LIN ITS TOO LONG -as a side note: anthony and jasmine started dating during rehearsals -“you know what im sayin” -his favorite hamilton song is wait for it (“leslie comes in with those smooth sultry vocals. stick a fork in him, he’s done.”) -he calls leslie “les” -he admires his coworkers so much -he kept calling the obamas “mr. barrack” and “mrs. michelle” -he’s adorable and a cinnamon roll (not that this is news or anything but he just really really is okay)

Hamilton Crack (1/?) Because we all know it’s true! lol. (x)

Bonus (I couldn’t resist):

well my life just ended

Philip Hamilton: I gotta be my own man,like my father but bolder

Philip Hamilton: *Organizes a threesome,Challenges a stranger,and dies in one song*

Philip Hamilton: Nailed it

jasmine and anthony @ joe’s pub

@_robertdnero: Cute moment between Jasmine Cephas and Anthony Ramos of #hamilton

jasmine and anthony ❤️❤️ he also gave her a mini christmas tree at the end of the show and all i can say is GOALS

i sketched these out real quick for u anon!!

What the heck did you do?

Hamilton Characters as 21 Chump Street Lyrics

(Another in my series, see my blog for Hamilton as Hairspray, HSM, Starkid)

Alexander Hamilton: Light skinned, puerto rican dominican long hair mature in the body like woah

Aaron Burr: In other words, Justin had made an irreversibly bad decision.

Eliza Schuyler Hamilton: Next thing you know we're texting day and night, I trust her right away...you know I never met anyone like her bro.

Angelica Schuyler Church: What the heck did you do?

John Laurens: There are kids you remember, the ones that you think about after you're gone

Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette: New York, where dreams are made!

Hercules Mulligan: For a certain someone some girl he wants to be touchin'

George Washington: Seriously these kids need to learn there are consequences in life.

King George III: Who do I have to be for you to be with me?

Samuel Seabury: LOLOLOL

Peggy Schuyler: a very pretty girl showed up

Thomas Jefferson: Are we supposed to trust him?

James Madison: There's nothing I won't do for you, I'll come through for you, every time. Just in time

Maria Reynolds: I'll find a way to repay you Justin ;)

Phillip Hamilton: He's our blood and we love him, awh little Justin is crushin!

General Charles Lee: smiley face

Jefferson: But who’s waiting for me when I step in the place? My friend James Madison, red in the face! He grabs my arm and I respond ‘What’s going on?!’ Madison: