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THE MADELEINE PROJECT makes the TimeOut Chicago Holiday Gift Guide. "Techy bookworms will appreciate this endearing tale—told through tweets translated from French to English—about what Clara Beaudoux discovers in a storage space left behind by a previous tenant." https://www.timeout.com/chicago/shopping/chicago-shop-owners-pick-top-holiday-gifts
I think that one of the things that really knocked my socks off about Hamilton as I read Chernow’s biography is how much of a writer he was, and about how, you know, writers, whether they're hip-hop artists or novelists, you kind of can create your destiny if you're good enough and you work hard enough. And this is a guy who literally wrote his way out of the Caribbean, wrote his way into Washington's good graces, and wrote essays about freedom when he was still a student, ratified our Constitution by writing the Federalist Papers in defense of it. And we don't think of writers as action figures, right? We think of action figures as action figures; we think of soldiers, we think of sports stars. But this is a guy who wrote three lifetimes’ worth of work, and that is really both what got him success and also what got him into trouble. The fact that this guy couldn’t stop writing, as both his biggest strength and his biggest flaw, is the other exciting thing about him. You know, the nice letters I get from my heroes and my fellow writers are all, ‘Oh my god, this is about writing!’ How writing can save you and can also kill you. That notion of the pen being mightier than the sword sort of really holds true for Hamilton. So that was the other sort of challenge I set up for myself: I’m embodying this, but I'm trying to conjure the spirit of this great writer, who changed the world with his writing. That’s no easy feat, so I’m proud that that’s come through as well.
Lin-Manuel Miranda on Hamilton, the action figure (TimeOut Chicago)
When I call Chicago native [Jose] Ramos early on a Friday morning a week before rehearsals begin for Hamilton’s Chicago company, he’s eating breakfast in New York’s Bryant Park before heading to his last shift at his day job—promoting Broadway shows in Times Square. Ramos attended high school at the Chicago Academy for the Arts and moved to New York soon after graduating. “I was like, I've gotta do something, I know where Broadway is, so why not go where Broadway is,” he says. He first auditioned for Hamilton's Off Broadway run at the Public Theater; though he made it through a couple of callbacks, he didn’t get the gig. “So then I had to wait and see it become the monster and the awesome thing that it is. It was crazy because I do work in Times Square, so I would literally see the buzz of Hamilton happen. And I kinda made a promise to myself: You are going to be a part of this, don't worry, just wait, wait, wait.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda on recreating Hamilton’s success for Chicago (TimeOut Chicago)
Lin-Manuel Miranda on recreating Hamilton’s success for Chicago (TimeOut Chicago):
People would say the same thing about Hamilton’s election-year resonance in 2012 as they would in 2020, Miranda thinks. “Because the things we fight about as a country, they’re just our things. It’s like when you fight with members of your family; you’re not having a new fight with your brother or sister. You’re having variations on the same fight you’ve been having since you were 8 and 10 years old, right?”
Those fights, as Miranda enumerates them, do sound like never-ending ones: federalism versus states’ rights; the legacy of slavery versus how it reverberates. “The notion of finances, of who pays your taxes, of how involved are we in the affairs of other countries—for them the French Revolution, for us: Name a country.
“And the notion of immigrant having both incredibly positive and negative connotations in American society,” he continues. Hamilton, the show, was famously inspired by Miranda’s reading of Ron Chernow’s hefty biography of the man who became the country’s first Secretary of the Treasury but began life as an impoverished kid propelled from the Caribbean to New York City on the strength of his striving and smarts; Miranda saw a hip-hop narrative.
As the Burr character asks in the show’s opening lines, “How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a / Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a / Forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence / Impoverished, in squalor/ Grow up to be a hero and a scholar?” But the show also depicts another side to the idea that Hamilton “Got a lot farther by working a lot harder / By being a lot smarter / By being a self-starter.”
“We love the up-from-the-bootstraps narrative, but there’s always a point in which it will be used against us, to arouse suspicion,” says Miranda. “Those are all things that happened to Hamilton before they happened to anyone who’s alive today.”
[. . .]
Hamilton has developed a community of deeply invested fans who’ve yet to set foot in the theater. “What’s wonderful about most Hamilton fans is they fall in love with the show the same way I used to fall in love with shows; it’s the cast album,” says Miranda, recalling rifling through his parents’ collection of Broadway records as a kid. “I can’t tell you how many hilarious Tumblr posts I’ve seen of, like, ‘Hamilton as I picture it in my head since I haven’t seen the show.’ People imagine the show, and I love that because I thinkHamilton is gonna be around hopefully long enough for most people to get a chance to see it. But also, I’ve never seen a production of Camelot, but I can tell you the version in my head, and it’s incredible.”
Those who do get in to Hamilton in Chicago will see a cast that includes Tony winner Karen Olivo and two-time Tony nominee Joshua Henry, alongside a raft of lesser-known actors, such as Miguel Cervantes in the title role.
“It’s a really thrilling mix of people you know and people you don’t who we think are stars. Which was kind of how we felt about our Broadway cast—there were names you’d recognize and names you’d never heard of that you know now because of the success of the show,” says Miranda. “I’m confident that’s going to happen again in Chicago.”
Lower Dens (Jana Hunter)
I had the craziest day yesterday. Between all of the rain at Pitchfork and capturing the pageant, making an attempt to maintain monitor of all the things and hold it dry, I felt much more scatterbrained than traditional.
I have been listening to Nootropics fairly steadily these previous couple of weeks and photographed Lower Dens earlier on within the day for Timeout Chicago
(photoset right here:
Posted by kirstiecat on 2012-07-14 15:06:11
Diamond Engagement Rings
Navigate the eight-day Chicago Sketch Comedy Festival with these 20 must-see comedy troupes from around the country.
168 groups are performing at Chicago Sketchfest! Only 20 were picked by TimeOut Chicago and Baby Shoes was one of them! OH YEAH!!! "One of the Magnet Theater's longest-running sketch teams transports their fucked and funny sketches to the Midwest."
Recapping The Recaps
Thanks to everyone who came out this year to Tomorrow Never Knows! Take a look back at what you saw (or what you missed) with these recaps from Chicago Tribune, Consequence of Sound, Gapers Block, and Timeout Chicago.
Full Fest Recap
Cayucas Recap
Oneohtrix Point Never & Tim Hecker Recap
Weekend Recap
The Rural Alberta Advantage Recap
The Lone Bellow Recap
Superchunk Recap
John Newman Recap
2013 Eat out awards
