ayy

[linmanuelmirancla]

you guys realize that when a show gets professionally recorded (which btw, lin never promised. he was referring to the cast album in that one tumblr post everyone keeps talking about, but let’s pretend it’s about an actual video), it almost never gets publicly released right? it’s in an archive in the nypl (new york public library) which is only accessible to those who live in ny state, have a valid state ID + library card, and it’s not a dvd you can take out of the library and return in 2 weeks like you would with a book. you have to make an appointment to go in (and sometimes you would have to do this waaaay in advance) and watch it. walk-ins are available but there’s no guarantee. even then, you need a valid reason for a streaming of the show. you can’t go in there by saying “oh i just want to see hamilton i know the soundtrack forwards and backwards!” you’d have to be a theatre student who needs it for actual school work, with valid proof. the reason they have this archive is for research purposes, not for fans who can’t afford to see a show. (sources [x] [x])

the only time it could possibly be publicly released is when every run of hamilton is over. this means every tour (national/international), the broadway run, regional productions, etc. this would take YEARS, even if it gets recorded this year. for example, if i wanted to go see a pro-shot of wicked or book of mormon, i would not be able to because they are still running on broadway/west end/etc. this goes for the library as well. the recordings are not available until all productions are over.

if you’re willing to wait for it (pun intended) for god-knows-how-long for the possibility of an official recording being released or if it’s coming (or has a chance of coming) to a city near you, awesome! (wow!) i, personally, don’t have that kind of patience, but I am fortunate to have seen the show live because of the lottery (which i’ll talk about a bit later) i don’t care what your stance on bootlegs are, but for the love of god stop shitting on people who watch them and rely on them to have some actual access to theatre as opposed to the tiny 2 seconds clips we get during promotional shots. if you don’t want to watch it out of respect to lin, that’s perfectly valid! just don’t shame others because they don’t have the mindset! no one would ever choose a shitty bootleg over seeing it live (and trust me, the boot is nothing compared to the show. it misses a LOT. seriously, why is it so zoomed in during hurricane?! but i digress) but i would say a good 95% of hamilton fans don’t even have that option, whether it’s because of money or living too far away or whatever else. you are not doing your “lord and savior/biological father/jonathan groff’s future husband” (seriously, i see this in the hamilton tags on twitter/tumblr all the time. ya’ll know he see’s these right?) lin or any of the cast any favors by yelling about how much you respect them enough to not watch a bootleg.

you can argue that you can just save up money to buy a face value ticket, but (and trust me, i have witnessed this trying to buy my own tickets), scalpers camp outside of the theatre and wait in line to buy an entire row of tickets the second they become available (because there are some tickets you have to buy in person that aren’t available online, such as box seats) and just recently, when november 2016-january 2017 tickets came out, they were sold out within seconds. lin, of all people, understands this and he has said that it is awful and that he wants to do something about it, but there is nothing that he, or the legal team within their union, can do. once somebody pays for their tickets, the theatre/the union/whoever else are not allowed to ask “so what are you gonna do with this ticket?” because in the end, it’s all about money. yes, they know it’s shady as hell that the first 20 people on line at the box office are buying entire rows of tickets, but legally, they are not allowed to say/do anything. it’s a liability issue and it fucking sucks for both fans and workers. (i have a friend who works at jujamcyn who told me all of this) no one should ever have to pay more than $100 for the last row of rear mezzanine, but the resales go for $300+. that’s fucking ridiculous. if you wan’t to save up $300+ for the last row of mezzanine, go right ahead (beware of scalpers though, i’ve seen people get kicked out and it’s actually heartbreaking) i’ve heard stories (and i don’t know if this is entirely accurate) but even the cast can’t reserve seats for their families/friends because of how booked this show is. i’m pretty sure most hamilton fans (like a solid 90%) that I see on twitter, tumblr, instagram, etc are around the ages of 13-25, give or take. do you know what kind of people i see when i pass by the theatre when the show is letting people go in? rich old white people who don’t exactly know anything about the show, but are going just because “it’s a hot ticket!” and then they come out of the show confused “i didn’t understand/like the music why is it all rap??” of course there are exceptions; i have seen some of them come out and they fell in love, but that doesn’t happen that often as far as i’ve seen.  

if you have the patience, freedom, and money to do cancellation line, that has worked out for a lot of my friends and i plan on doing it when I have enough money, but even that is a very difficult option (if you want more info on how it works, feel free to message me!) also, i appreciate the lottery so so so much, especially considering how elitist broadway is (shout out to all of the shows with rush/student rush/lottery policies! yay for making theatre accessible! more on that later) they obviously don’t need to do this, but they understand how hard it is for fans who aren’t billionaires to see a show. i have my criticisms about the hamilton lottery being online, but the lotto is honestly an amazing thing and for $10, too. they could’ve easily made it around $30-50 like almost every other show (which isn’t bad compared to face value, obviously, but still) and having ham4hams and the program for disadvantaged students and everything is incredible. i respect lin/the producers/anyone involved so much for these. HOWEVER, for those who don’t have the chance to go to these lotteries and try their luck and can’t wait in line for an entire day just for the chance of getting a ticket because they’re too far and it costs too much to fly in (because honestly, if i were flying into new york for a limited time, i wouldn’t want to sit on a line all day, but thats just me), it fucking sucks and it’s just not fair. yeah, it’ll go all over to a national u.s. tour and it’ll go to west end, but will it go to south america? asia? australia? africa? i don’t know the theatre demographics of those places, so as far as i know, the show isn’t going there any time soon. and who knows how expensive those tickets will be when it does start moving around? i’m assuming there will be scalpers at every tour stop/production because of how popular this show is (and that brings us back to the whole liability issue!)

[ham voice] ONE MORE THING

bootlegs, as shitty as the market is for them (just the fact that it is a market and you have to buy/trade bootlegs is ridiculous but whatever thats a different point), have contributed a lot to the theatre community. theatre would not be as popular as it is now if it weren’t for bootlegs. how many of you have ever watched/downloaded a tv show or movie online that wasn’t on netflix/hulu/a streaming service that you pay for/watched live when it aired on tv/at the movies? how many of you have listened to songs on youtube on channels that are not vevo or “official [whatever artist]” channels and/or downloaded songs/albums without paying for them? because essentially, it’s the exact same thing as watching a bootleg. the only difference is lin has said that he doesn’t like them. andy mientus said the exact same thing when the deaf west spring awakening bootleg came out, but no one batted an eyelash at that. maybe because andy didn’t create SA (this happened with les mis as well), but still: it’s the exact same thing. i’m sure any artist, whether they’re singers, dancers, actors, etc, hates the idea of their work being “stolen.” do i like the idea of bootlegs/recording a show and going against the rules? absolutely not. but theatre is so inaccessible and it is not fair to anybody except those who are rich and that is exactly why bootlegs for theatre exist in the first place. there are shows that i would have never been able to see if it weren’t for bootlegs and i’m not just going to settle for some commercials and a tony performance. sure, i can listen to the cast albums from musicals, but what about plays? those are even more inaccessible than musicals. you cannot put the blame on fans who ask for/watch bootlegs or the brave souls people who record these bootlegs. put the blame on the theater union(s) and production companies. if they really wanted to, they could release these pro-shot recordings after a shows run is over and sell them. they would make money and quite honestly, more people would probably be interested in actually seeing it happen live. it’s like when a book gets made into a movie. i would KILL for a proshot with the obc of in the heights or next to normal or any of the hedwigs in their last broadway run or heathers or spring awakening (both obc and dw) or great comet or hand to god ok ill stop now you get the point. (I remember lin said he wanted to professionally record and release In the Heights but they ended up not doing it, i don’t exactly remember why) it’s time to stop making broadway exclusive to the rich. bootlegs are not about losing money (because trust me, hamilton isn’t losing a fucking cent over this bootleg). they’re are about keeping theatre exclusive to the elite and it’s awful.

i repeat: no one would ever choose a bootleg over seeing it live, but that is just not an option for most people.

[linmanuelmirancla]

now that lin said the show is being filmed soon, i want people to remember we won’t be getting that footage any time soon (aka, in lin’s words, “probably not for like 20 years”) because it will be in a theatre archive in the NYPL :) 

also side note since it’s been a while since i’ve looked at this post: yay about the ITH movie announcement!! 

[thequintessentialqueer]

I love Hamilton, but something about the way white fans engage with the musical really bothers me: a lot of them are posting in the tag about the actual, historical revolutionaries and founding fathers in a way that makes them seem like funny, sweet, good people. They weren’t. I don’t just mean “Jefferson was a piece of shit”: none of them were good. Every one of their asses saw black people as inferior, even if not all of them supported slavery. All of them participated in genocidal policy against indigenous peoples. If you’re watching/listening to Hamilton and then going out and romanticizing the real founding fathers/American revolutionaries, you’re missing the entire point.

Hamilton is not really about the founding fathers. It’s not really about the American Revolution. The revolution, and Hamilton’s life are the narrative subject, but its purpose is not to romanticize real American history: rather, it is to reclaim the narrative of America for people of colour. 

Don’t romanticize the founding fathers and the revolution. They’re already romanticized. It’s been done. Your history books have already propagated those lies. The revolution is romanticized as an American narrative because it was a revolution lead by and for white men. Their story is the narrative of the nation and it is a narrative from which people of colour are utterly obliterated. 

Do you understand what it’s like to live in a nation where you are made marginal and inconsequential in the historical narrative that you are taught from your first day of school? In the Americas, to be a person of colour is to be made utterly inconsequential to the nation’s history. If you are black, your history begins with slavery, and your agency is denied; they don’t teach about slave rebellions or black revolutionaries. You learn about yourself as entirely shaped by outside forces: white people owned you, then some white people decided to free you and wasn’t that nice of them? and then you’re gone until the civil rights movement. That is the narrative they teach; in which you had no consequence, no value, no impact until less than a century ago. If you are indigenous, you are represented as disappeared, dead, already gone: you do not get to exist, you are already swallowed by history. If you are any other race, you are likely not present at all. To live in a land whose history is not your own, to live in a story in which you are not a character, is a soul-destroying experience.

In Hamilton, Eliza talks, in turn, of “taking herself out of the narrative” and “putting herself back in the narrative.” That’s what Hamilton is about: it’s about putting ourselves in the narrative. It puts people of colour in the centre of the damn narrative of the nation that subjugates them; it takes a story that by all accounts has been constructed to valourize the deeds of white men, and redefines it all. 

Why was the American Revolution a revolution? Why were slave revolts revolts? Why do we consider the founding fathers revolutionaries and not the Black Panthers or the Brown Berets or any number of other anti-racist revolutionary organizations? Whose rebellion is valued? Who is allowed to be heroic through defiance? By making the founding fathers people of colour, Hamilton puts people of colour into the American narrative, while simultaneously applying that narrative to the present. Right now, across the United States, across the damn world, people are chanting “black lives matter.” Black people are shutting down malls and highways, demanding justice for the lives stolen by police, by white supremacy. And all across the world, indigenous people are saying “Idle No More,” blockading pipelines, demanding their sovereignty. And “No One is Illegal” is chanting loud enough to shake down the walls at the border; people are demanding the end of refugee detention centres, demanding an end to the violence perpetuated by anti-immigration policies. People of colour are rising up. 

…And white people are angry about it. White people are saying “if blacks don’t want to get shot by the police they shouldn’t sag their pants”; saying “get over it” about anti-indigenous policies of assimilation and cultural genocide and land theft; Jennicet Gutiérrez was heckled by white gay men for demanding that president Obama end the detention of undocumented trans women of colour. White people see people of colour rising up and they tell us to sit down. Shut up. Stop making things difficult. The American Revolution was a bunch of white men who didn’t want to be taxed, so white history sees their revolutionary efforts as just; they killed for their emancipation from England; they were militant. That, to white people is acceptable. But those same white people talk shit about Malcolm X for being too violent–a man who never started an uprising against the government leading to bloodshed. Violence is only acceptable in the hands of white people; revolution is only okay when the people leading the charge are white. 

Hamilton makes those people brown and black; Hamilton depicts the revolution of which America is proud as one led by people of colour against a white ruling body; there’s a reason King George is the only character who is depicted by a white man. The function of the visual in Hamilton is to challenge a present in which people of colour standing up against oppression are seen as violent and dangerous by the same people who proudly declare allegiance to the flag. It forces white people to see themselves not as the American Revolutionaries, but as the British oppressors. History is happening, and they’re on its bad side.

So don’t listen to or watch Hamilton and then come out of that to romanticize the founding fathers. Don’t let that be what you take away from this show. They’re the vehicle for the narrative, and a tool for conveying the ideologies of the show, but they are not the point. Don’t romanticize the past; fight for the future. 

[linmanuelmirancla]

i feel like this should be obvious but don’t buy bootlegs... they are made so people can watch shows for free if they don’t have the access to physically see it, not for people to make a quick profit. yeah, it’s cheap but in this case it really is not fair to the creators/cast that somebody else is making money off of their work. trading is one thing bc it’s not about money in most cases but giving somebody money for it is unfair. if you feel bad about watching bootlegs because they lose money (they don’t but I get the idea) you can use that money to buy official merch if you want to support the cast! 

[linmanuelmirancla]

you guys realize that when a show gets professionally recorded (which btw, lin never promised. he was referring to the cast album in that one tumblr post everyone keeps talking about, but let’s pretend it’s about an actual video), it almost never gets publicly released right? it’s in an archive in the nypl (new york public library) which is only accessible to those who live in ny state, have a valid state ID + library card, and it’s not a dvd you can take out of the library and return in 2 weeks like you would with a book. you have to make an appointment to go in (and sometimes you would have to do this waaaay in advance) and watch it. walk-ins are available but there’s no guarantee. even then, you need a valid reason for a streaming of the show. you can’t go in there by saying “oh i just want to see hamilton i know the soundtrack forwards and backwards!” you’d have to be a theatre student who needs it for actual school work, with valid proof. the reason they have this archive is for research purposes, not for fans who can’t afford to see a show. (sources [x] [x])

the only time it could possibly be publicly released is when every run of hamilton is over. this means every tour (national/international), the broadway run, regional productions, etc. this would take YEARS, even if it gets recorded this year. for example, if i wanted to go see a pro-shot of wicked or book of mormon, i would not be able to because they are still running on broadway/west end/etc. this goes for the library as well. the recordings are not available until all productions are over.

if you’re willing to wait for it (pun intended) for god-knows-how-long for the possibility of an official recording being released or if it’s coming (or has a chance of coming) to a city near you, awesome! (wow!) i, personally, don’t have that kind of patience, but I am fortunate to have seen the show live because of the lottery (which i’ll talk about a bit later) i don’t care what your stance on bootlegs are, but for the love of god stop shitting on people who watch them and rely on them to have some actual access to theatre as opposed to the tiny 2 seconds clips we get during promotional shots. if you don’t want to watch it out of respect to lin, that’s perfectly valid! just don’t shame others because they don’t have the mindset! no one would ever choose a shitty bootleg over seeing it live (and trust me, the boot is nothing compared to the show. it misses a LOT. seriously, why is it so zoomed in during hurricane?! but i digress) but i would say a good 95% of hamilton fans don’t even have that option, whether it’s because of money or living too far away or whatever else. you are not doing your “lord and savior/biological father/jonathan groff’s future husband” (seriously, i see this in the hamilton tags on twitter/tumblr all the time. ya’ll know he see’s these right?) lin or any of the cast any favors by yelling about how much you respect them enough to not watch a bootleg.

you can argue that you can just save up money to buy a face value ticket, but (and trust me, i have witnessed this trying to buy my own tickets), scalpers camp outside of the theatre and wait in line to buy an entire row of tickets the second they become available (because there are some tickets you have to buy in person that aren’t available online, such as box seats) and just recently, when november 2016-january 2017 tickets came out, they were sold out within seconds. lin, of all people, understands this and he has said that it is awful and that he wants to do something about it, but there is nothing that he, or the legal team within their union, can do. once somebody pays for their tickets, the theatre/the union/whoever else are not allowed to ask “so what are you gonna do with this ticket?” because in the end, it’s all about money. yes, they know it’s shady as hell that the first 20 people on line at the box office are buying entire rows of tickets, but legally, they are not allowed to say/do anything. it’s a liability issue and it fucking sucks for both fans and workers. (i have a friend who works at jujamcyn who told me all of this) no one should ever have to pay more than $100 for the last row of rear mezzanine, but the resales go for $300+. that’s fucking ridiculous. if you wan’t to save up $300+ for the last row of mezzanine, go right ahead (beware of scalpers though, i’ve seen people get kicked out and it’s actually heartbreaking) i’ve heard stories (and i don’t know if this is entirely accurate) but even the cast can’t reserve seats for their families/friends because of how booked this show is. i’m pretty sure most hamilton fans (like a solid 90%) that I see on twitter, tumblr, instagram, etc are around the ages of 13-25, give or take. do you know what kind of people i see when i pass by the theatre when the show is letting people go in? rich old white people who don’t exactly know anything about the show, but are going just because “it’s a hot ticket!” and then they come out of the show confused “i didn’t understand/like the music why is it all rap??” of course there are exceptions; i have seen some of them come out and they fell in love, but that doesn’t happen that often as far as i’ve seen.  

if you have the patience, freedom, and money to do cancellation line, that has worked out for a lot of my friends and i plan on doing it when I have enough money, but even that is a very difficult option (if you want more info on how it works, feel free to message me!) also, i appreciate the lottery so so so much, especially considering how elitist broadway is (shout out to all of the shows with rush/student rush/lottery policies! yay for making theatre accessible! more on that later) they obviously don’t need to do this, but they understand how hard it is for fans who aren’t billionaires to see a show. i have my criticisms about the hamilton lottery being online, but the lotto is honestly an amazing thing and for $10, too. they could’ve easily made it around $30-50 like almost every other show (which isn’t bad compared to face value, obviously, but still) and having ham4hams and the program for disadvantaged students and everything is incredible. i respect lin/the producers/anyone involved so much for these. HOWEVER, for those who don’t have the chance to go to these lotteries and try their luck and can’t wait in line for an entire day just for the chance of getting a ticket because they’re too far and it costs too much to fly in (because honestly, if i were flying into new york for a limited time, i wouldn’t want to sit on a line all day, but thats just me), it fucking sucks and it’s just not fair. yeah, it’ll go all over to a national u.s. tour and it’ll go to west end, but will it go to south america? asia? australia? africa? i don’t know the theatre demographics of those places, so as far as i know, the show isn’t going there any time soon. and who knows how expensive those tickets will be when it does start moving around? i’m assuming there will be scalpers at every tour stop/production because of how popular this show is (and that brings us back to the whole liability issue!)

[ham voice] ONE MORE THING

bootlegs, as shitty as the market is for them (just the fact that it is a market and you have to buy/trade bootlegs is ridiculous but whatever thats a different point), have contributed a lot to the theatre community. theatre would not be as popular as it is now if it weren’t for bootlegs. how many of you have ever watched/downloaded a tv show or movie online that wasn’t on netflix/hulu/a streaming service that you pay for/watched live when it aired on tv/at the movies? how many of you have listened to songs on youtube on channels that are not vevo or “official [whatever artist]” channels and/or downloaded songs/albums without paying for them? because essentially, it’s the exact same thing as watching a bootleg. the only difference is lin has said that he doesn’t like them. andy mientus said the exact same thing when the deaf west spring awakening bootleg came out, but no one batted an eyelash at that. maybe because andy didn’t create SA (this happened with les mis as well), but still: it’s the exact same thing. i’m sure any artist, whether they’re singers, dancers, actors, etc, hates the idea of their work being “stolen.” do i like the idea of bootlegs/recording a show and going against the rules? absolutely not. but theatre is so inaccessible and it is not fair to anybody except those who are rich and that is exactly why bootlegs for theatre exist in the first place. there are shows that i would have never been able to see if it weren’t for bootlegs and i’m not just going to settle for some commercials and a tony performance. sure, i can listen to the cast albums from musicals, but what about plays? those are even more inaccessible than musicals. you cannot put the blame on fans who ask for/watch bootlegs or the brave souls people who record these bootlegs. put the blame on the theater union(s) and production companies. if they really wanted to, they could release these pro-shot recordings after a shows run is over and sell them. they would make money and quite honestly, more people would probably be interested in actually seeing it happen live. it’s like when a book gets made into a movie. i would KILL for a proshot with the obc of in the heights or next to normal or any of the hedwigs in their last broadway run or heathers or spring awakening (both obc and dw) or great comet or hand to god ok ill stop now you get the point. (I remember lin said he wanted to professionally record and release In the Heights but they ended up not doing it, i don’t exactly remember why) it’s time to stop making broadway exclusive to the rich. bootlegs are not about losing money (because trust me, hamilton isn’t losing a fucking cent over this bootleg). they’re are about keeping theatre exclusive to the elite and it’s awful.

i repeat: no one would ever choose a bootleg over seeing it live, but that is just not an option for most people.