For $10, New York City Students See ‘Hamilton’ and Rap for Lin-Manuel Miranda (NYT)
The 1,300 students who saw “Hamilton” on Wednesday, most of them 11th graders enrolled in classes about American history, are the first of 20,000 who are to see the musical under a program sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. The program, which focuses on students in schools with high percentages of low-income families, is intended to make it possible for younger and more diverse audiences to see a show for which tickets have become hugely expensive and difficult to obtain.
“I hope I can be inspired and motivated,” Yeliz Sezgin, a 15-year-old junior at Fort Hamilton High School in Brooklyn, said as the daylong events, which included a question-and-answer session with the cast, began. Ms. Sezgin designed a T-shirt for the 159 Fort Hamilton students, with her school’s mascot, a tiger, posed with the upstretched arm of the musical’s logo.Photo
In preparing to attend the show, Ms. Sezgin and her classmates had read love letters between Alexander and his wife, Eliza, and she compared them to text messages; she said she was also impressed by the realization that Mr. Miranda spent years developing the musical: “He didn’t know what this would be, and yet he kept at it.”
After seeing the show, some students said they were especially struck by the cast, which features Hispanic and black actors playing the founding fathers. “I was thinking about the diversity while I was watching it, with all this controversy in the entertainment industry,” said Amber Montalvo, a 17-year-old student at the High School for Media and Communications in Manhattan. “It’s inspiring.”
Kaye Houlihan, the principal of Fort Hamilton, said her school had an annual unit on Hamilton, because of its name, but had intensified its study in anticipation of seeing the show. She said the exercise of asking students to produce skits — of two minutes or less related to the history — had prompted various takes on the material, including girls exploring neglected women of the era.
Some students said reading the history had made them more curious to understand how the musical was conceived. “I want to know why Burr killed Hamilton,” said Raekwon Edwards, a 17-year-old junior at Bronx Engineering and Technology Academy. His schoolmate Valentin Dinaj, 16, said, “I want to see how they bring history alive.
The students were, not surprisingly, an extraordinarily enthusiastic audience. They shouted “I love you” at Mr. Miranda. They cheered for belted notes, laughed at sexual innuendo, cheered trash talk (“Daddy’s calling!,” a dig at Hamilton’s dependence on President Washington, and “We know who’s really doing the planting,” a jab at the South’s dependence on slavery, drew particularly loud reactions) and gasped at the shooting death of Hamilton’s son Philip.
Two of the cast members who addressed the students, Mr. Miranda and Anthony Ramos, are alumni of the New York public schools. Mr. Ramos said that by participating in school musicals, as well as sports, he was able to “find that part of me that I didn’t even know I had.” And he urged the school officials present to do more for arts education. “The public school system has neglected the arts a little bit,” Mr. Ramos said. “Y’all think you don’t have the money — you better find it.”
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