The Federalist Freestyle

MC Publius turning up for Hamilton what the eff is this 'hamilton' thing blowing up my dash? faq the FFS Hamilton guide to NYC (+ appendix: kids )

[thefederalistfreestyle]

just you wait

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Smart, Funny, & Black... in Da Crib! 3.0

Smart Funny & Black in Da Crib brings the hit live show created by comedian/actress/producer, Amanda Seales (HBO Insecure/The Real) to the house! SFB in Da Crib brings two noteworthy smart, funny, black folks together to compete, in a head to head battle of wits that tests their knowledge of black history, black culture, and the black experience! After a night of fun as hell games, a turnt up interactive audience, and of course jokes, the show ends with one guest, literally, taking the “L”, the other, taking the crown, and being inducted into the, “Illustrious League of Master Blacksperts”. The night ain’t over yet tho! After the show our Blacksperts of the night join, host, Amanda for an after show chat answering questions from you! Then it’s off to the one-on-one meet and greet to snap a pick and have a quick laugh with, Amanda! Join us online for SFB in Da Crib, where the community is the wifi that keeps us connected! 

show tomorrow night (7/31), tix only $12! (although there is a swankier ticket option if you want to do the post-show hang-out!) get there early for DJ Reborn’s pre-show set at 8:00-9:00pm ET. the show is supporting Color of Change.

[thefederalistfreestyle]

ETC: The Hamilton Programming Project

You’ve learned the basics of Eos Augment3d. But do you have what it takes to apply your knowledge to a real production?

Welcome to The Hamilton Programming Project, a collection of exercises that use actual touring paperwork from the Broadway musical Hamilton to help you practice in Eos Augment3d – and learn how Broadway tours operate!

You will be playing the roles of Associate, Assistant, and Programmer as you finish prep on the provided show file. This will involve getting ready for focus, preparing conventional and moving light gobo loads, focusing fixtures, and, finally, checking your work with real cues from the show – all with Eos Augment3d as your virtual venue.

The Project Guide will help you through some of the basic tasks, but it is not designed to be fully instructional. This project mimics professional‐level operations, so it is up to you to figure out how to complete it with accuracy and speed! You can make magic sheets, record new snapshots, merge in your favorite macros – the file is yours to grow. With Howell Binkley’s Tony Award®‐winning lighting rig at your fingertips, what programming or design ideas will you come up with?

hey, lighting nerds! check out this free course from ETC (who is also offering their online training courses for free right now in support of industry folks who are out of work).

if you're a member of the ETC Eos Programmers Facebook group, you can also get access to a (free!) Hamilton design discussion with Howell Binkley & the lighting team on this Thursday 7/9 at 11:00am EDT.

[thefederalistfreestyle]

*taps the mic* Hey... this thing still on…?

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Hamil-weekend! 

Once upon a time, I'd thought that I'd return here if a big event happened. Something like, say, the release of a movie.

I never imagined that said big event would be entirely overshadowed by a pandemic incapacitating the country, which had in turn allowed for a long-overdue reckoning with the U.S.'s foundational racism to burst forth, and, individually, being just a week out from being surrounded by the police who, it turns out, would attack the queer liberation march literally on the day of Pride while I was taking a breather on the steps of the Public Theater, which was just one more incident in an ever-growing litany of bald-faced police overstep beyond the usual racial inequity, to the point of snatching a well-known musical theater composer from her own front stoop for having the audacity to cheer in support of protesters.

There are still parts of Hamilton that are amazing.

It's also amazing and wonderful that so much of Hamilton is NOT revolutionary. The cultural conversation is on the move. And the arts play such a huge role in that movement.

On Friday the 13th of March of this year, the NYC theater industry closed for the foreseeable future.  Theaters elsewhere in the country have followed.  On a human level, almost everyone involved in the industry is unemployed: actors, dancers, singers, musicians, stage managers, backstage crew, electricians, carpenters, stitchers, props artisans, designers, writers, directors, choreographers, box office staff, ushers, janitors, security, marketing, scenery building shops, and more. Adjacent businesses, whose clients are theatre workers and theater audiences, are affected as well: restaurants, bars, the bodegas with the cute cats, materials suppliers, and more. On a cultural level, even if there were enough "other jobs" for everyone to go to, what will be left when performance is able to resume? I fear that the "unpaid internship" will become writ even larger than normal: the people who will have the means to stay in the industry will be reduced down to an even more exclusive class than they are currently.

This has not been the case globally. In some countries, the pandemic is sufficiently under control for even professional productions in big cities to continue with safety measures in place (e.g., The Phantom of the Opera in Seoul). In some countries, the government is giving robust financial support to the arts (e.g., Britain announcing a nearly $2 billion stimulus for the industry).

The Arts in the U.S. need your support. If you can donate, then donate. But perhaps even more important: contact your senators and other officials to encourage them to support measures that will keep artists and the arts going. And be the change within your own families and communities to help fight the view that the arts are disposable. If someone has read a book or listened to music or Netflix-and-chilled or watched a Marvel movie, then they are benefiting from the arts – not just the material that they are directly consuming, but the community theater or PBS broadcast that led that movie star to start acting in the first place. (To say nothing of: remember all of the tweets of people saying that the Watchmen series was how they learned about the Tulsa Massacre?)

& I’m sure that A.Ham would appreciate the fact that the Arts & Entertainment industry accounts for $877.8 BILLION in value and 4.5% of U.S. GDP.

ExtendPUA.org/entertainment is a good place to start. You can find information on more ways to be an #ArtsHero here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tJFHBXZYZfHG86l4jr2dFFS-KBtUkdcfewHDl9iVUyI/edit (And remember, try to personalize the subject line and at least a couple sentences of any auto-generated emails so that they don't get flagged as spam!)

Check out See Lighting Foundation to support immigrant theatre artists, who are particularly vulnerable right now. Between their specific risks/futility in applying for government benefits, the increasingly onerous visa processes, & the simple fact that theatres in other countries are not facing the shitshow faced by theatres here, many immigrant theatre artists are looking at leaving the U.S.. It will be, truly, our loss.  

There is a lot of work happening within the industry right now that isn't a product for immediate public purchase. Grassroots groups organizing for more equitable labor practices. Forums hosted to root out and start healing the racism within the industry. (The Broadway Advocacy Coalition, of which Hamilton alum Amber Iman is a co-founder, has been doing great work.) Works in the early stages of creation that hopefully have actual stages ready for them when the time comes. Be proud to support all of this.

Also: if you are a young BIPOC stage manager (or even just stage management curious!), please feel free to reach out to me if you’d like to chat about the profession, including grad school and NYC specifics.

Black lives matter. This land is stolen from Indigenous people who are still here. Stonewall was a riot. Wear a fucking mask.

[carotidartistry]

COVID and the Arts

The existence of algorithm-driven, non-chronological “timelines” is very bizarre right now. On my Facebook feed, I see posts from March 10 talking about starting the second week of previews or celebrating good box office returns. On March 12, my job ceased to exist, as did the jobs of hundreds upon hundreds of people as an entire industry shuttered over the course of one day.

The cancellations and closing of events and arts/entertainment venues, while important for public health, have left many people (who earn on a gig basis rather than salary) very suddenly and entirely without expected income. There is no work-from-home option, just their job disappearing entirely. Some people will be able to collect unemployment insurance, but many won’t even get that, as they work as independent contractors who are paid a fee for work delivered or vend their goods directly to customers at such events.

This is a tough time for arts/events organizations and those who work them (which includes not just artists but all of the ushers, custodians, etc. whose work is tied to the event itself). I’m compiling ways to support those who have been impacted (pass-the-hats for donating to individuals, funds that are accepting donations, ways to purchase people’s goods/services, etc.) and resources for those who have been impacted. The industry community is coming together in a heartening way right now, but it would mean a great deal to me if those not in the industry could take a moment to glance through and maybe even to share this information. Even if you can’t make any sort of donation yourself, it means something to have this hardship be seen and acknowledged.

Additionally, if you have tickets to events that have been canceled and don’t immediately need your funds returned, I encourage you to wait a bit before reaching out to the theater/venue/etc.. Box office workers have been overwhelmed. And particularly if it was a ticket for a non-profit or grassroots organization, if it’s possible, I’d encourage people to consider donating the cost of their ticket rather than demanding a refund.

While I’m aware that there are many people in many sectors taking a hit right now, I am putting my focus on where I am and would like to keep that the focus here. Please share any relevant updates, additional resources, etc..

Support Those Who Have Been Impacted

A general pass-the-hat for individual theatre workers (in process, they had names alphabetically from A-I up as of the morning of 3/14): I Lost My Theatre Gigs

“The Indie Theater Fund is launching this fundraising campaign to provide direct support and emergency relief to independent theaters and artists in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.” https://www.facebook.com/donate/509591526599992/509604039932074/

NYC Low-Income Artist/Freelancer Relief Fund: “We seek to provide support for low-income, BIPOC, trans/GNC/NB/Queer artists and freelancers whose livelihoods are being effected by this pandemic in NYC. Whether it’s from cancelled gigs, lost jobs, or a lack of business due to coronavirus scares, we hope to orchestrate an egalitarian approach to crowdsourcing.” [Note: their funding applications are currently closed as they make sure that they have enough resources to cover the 500 people who have already applied.] https://www.gofundme.com/f/nyc-lowincome-artistfreelancer-relief-fund

“The Philadelphia Performing Artists’ Emergency Fund was created amid the COVID-19 outbreak to assist performing artists whose income has been impacted by show cancellations, slowing ticket sales, and/or low turnout during this pandemic.” https://www.gofundme.com/f/philly-performance-artist-fund

“The Boston Artist Relief Fund will award grants of $500 and $1,000 to individual artists who live in Boston whose creative practices and incomes are being adversely impacted by Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19).” https://www.boston.gov/artistrelief

Boston Music Maker Relief Fund: “Small grants of up to $200 will be paid rapidly on a first come, first served basis to affected artists and groups. Please see grant guidelines below. Donations will be accepted from individuals and corporations in order to replenish the fund and continue making payments to eligible music makers in the queue. The Record Co. is covering all admin/processing costs so 100% of every donation goes directly to music makers in the community. Please consider donating using the form below or contact [email protected] to get involved.”: https://www.therecordco.org/relief

Durham Artist Relief Fund: “Funds donated here go directly to artists and arts presenters in Durham who have been financially impacted by cancellations due to COVID-19, with priority given to to BIPOC artists, transgender & nonbinary artists, and disabled artists”: https://www.northstardurham.com/artistrelief

Emergency Relief Fund for Artists During COVID-19 (Minnesota): https://www.givemn.org/story/Epf3ag

Opera San José Artists and Musicians Relief Fund: “This emergency cash reserve will allow us to provide support to the musicians, singers, carpenters, stitchers, designers and other hourly company members that make our productions possible and who will be deeply affected by COVID-19.”: https://operasj.secure.force.com/donate/?dfId=a0nf400000QZ7hKAAT

A pass the hat for individual SXSW workers: “Update 3/10: We have received over 400 submissions - thank you! We are working diligently to verify each submission and get them posted. As of today, the total amount of reported income lost is $2,108,835. Your stories are heartbreaking but we know them all too well. We appreciate you, we see you, and we love you, Austin. Hang in there.” https://www.ilostmygig.com/

2020 ECCC Artists Alley: An unofficial compilation of Eccc2020 artist alley online shops. Browse the goods of artists who won’t have the opportunity to sell directly to their anticipated customers: https://ecccartistalley.tumblr.com/

Artists Alley Online:  A directory for some of the artists who would have been at Emerald City Comic Con (March 12-15, 2020) had it not been moved due to the corona virus.  https://artistalleyonline.com/

Shoutout to the theaters who have suspended performances but are still paying their artists in the interim. These have been reported to include: Ars Nova (https://arsnovanyc.com/), Geffen Playhouse (https://www.geffenplayhouse.org/), WP Theater (https://wptheater.org/), Soho Rep (https://sohorep.org/), Playwrights Realm (https://www.playwrightsrealm.org/), New York Theatre Workshop (https://www.nytw.org/), Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (https://www.rattlestick.org/), the McCarter Theatre (https://www.mccarter.org/), Parity Productions (https://www.parityproductions.org/), and Second Stage Theater (https://2st.com/).  (sources: https://twitter.com/diepthought/status/1238194781437734912?s=19, direct email from Second Stage)

More who have been named are the Public Theater (https://publictheater.org/), Transport Group (http://transportgroup.org/), Vineyard Theatre (https://www.vineyardtheatre.org/), and Lincoln Center Theater (https://www.lct.org/). (source: https://twitter.com/westratenick/status/1238847988262453248)

Please consider giving those organizations (and any others who are doing similarly) your support if/when you’re able to.

Resources for Impacted Arts/Entertainment/Events Workers

Freelancers & Community Resources 2020: Resources centered for artists and those impacted by gigs being canceled/postponed: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xt1QZlGsyga_HrXagubV9O0rebV5dx4DuMOd2sWvWwc/edit

COVID-19 & Freelance Artist Resources: https://covid19freelanceartistresource.wordpress.com/

NYFA Emergency Resources: “Artists who experience personal hardship or who are impacted by a large-scale disaster, or who need funding for a last-minute opportunity can find critical resources in NYFA’s Emergency Resources Directory.”: https://www.nyfa.org/Content/Show/Emergency%20Resources

The Indie Theater Fund: “Rapid relief grants of up to $500 will be awarded to support our community, prioritizing the consortium of companies, venues, and individuals working in NYC independent theater (Off-Off-Broadway in theater houses of 99 seats or less), operating with budgets under $250,000. We will award grants on an on-going basis until our funds run out. Grants can be requested via a simple online application and will be reviewed on a first come first serve basis.”  https://forms.gle/pLm7bLhKQE8AbpDn6

Send your information to "I Lost My Theatre Gigs”: https://ilostmytheatregigs.squarespace.com/

Philadelphia Performing Artists’ Emergency Fund: Emergency Funds can be requested by any Cabaret, Drag, Burlesque, Theater, or performance artists facing a financial hardship caused by COVID-19. Performance artists who need aid can apply here: https://forms.gle/SwsMERPM1CTivFyc7

Boston Artist Relief Fund application: https://cityofbostonartsandculture.submittable.com/submit/af2153eb-2d87-4e9d-9ebc-5861eb135999/boston-artist-relief-fund

Boston Music Maker Relief Fund application: https://therecordco.typeform.com/to/w6wTkF

Durham Artist Relief Fund application: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdEJKTP91h5e7MuUITHj96J6eKWeZjgVLZjLG4Wp-WMhyQ4mg/viewform

SXSW workers send your information to “I Lost My Gig” here: https://www.ilostmygig.com/

[thefederalistfreestyle]

Just over four years ago, a friend messaged me asking if I was free the next day. I hedged. They then clarified that due to a travel scheduling mix-up, they had a spare ticket to Hamilton at the Public. I was then free as of an hour previous.

I'd been excited about the show since I'd first heard about it, since Lin-Manuel Miranda was clearly an extremely talented creator and I'd grown up being interested in revolutionary history (both American and French) and also Alexander Hamilton in particular. On top of being drawn to the themes of both that period of time and Hamilton's life, it was just part of being a New Yorker and having it be local history – hell, during my teen years, I spent one summer in an interactive murder mystery afternoon tea theatre (we couldn't afford dinner) play performed in Schuyler Mansion.

(I was an Anti-Federalist. Sorry, Alex.)

(For what it's worth, I was also the murder victim.)

The Hamilton run at the Public had sold out far too far in advance for me to know what my schedule would be in order to purchase tickets, so I'd resigned myself to not seeing it. But then all of a sudden, there I was, halfway into previews. It turned out that Javi was on that night – his very first night performing the role for an audience. Lin was, by deductive reasoning, somewhere in the house with us. There were no reviews. There were no recordings. It was all completely new.

Two days after walking out of the theater, I created a new tumblr because I feared that the commercial theatre scene might not understand this weird, whip-smart, heart-full show about things that I loved and I wanted to hype it the fuck up as much as I could. I'd been using tumblr for a whole three months (and it would take me about another year to figure out how to use the ask box), but I went full-on white man and acted based on what I wanted to be rather than what I had proof of already having accomplished, all so that I could shout this show to the rooftops and do my small part in getting ground support going.

I honestly also didn't want fans of the show to end up with some whack-ass cutesy fandom name and, well, to the founders go the spoils.

It was clear within a matter of months that this weird musical didn't need my help. But I wanted to keep shouting.

Subject matter aside, it's rare that I've seen a more tightly crafted piece of theatre, with every single note and word and tiny movement and detail of design telling a story with power and clarity, often on multiple levels. It spoiled me for a number of shows that I saw in the following months, with entire bars' worth of wasted lyric space and messy dramaturgy and unrealized potential. The brilliance of all of the artists involved was inspiring to me as a professional.

But as for the story itself: it was a legitimate turning point in my personal journey, accelerating my way around a curve toward my eventual first return to my birth country and the fullness of my own experience as someone from somewhere else. I entered the theater hoping for a good show, and I exited it with something reverberating inside of me in a new and powerful way, some shared frequency discovered.

Hamilton isn't the entirety of musical theatre or of "diverse theatre" (whatever the fuck that means), and nor should it be. I hope to hell that people keep pushing for the Hamilton effect to increase the size of the pie for everyone rather than for it to be a swirling vortex that attracts new resources but sucks them all into itself. I hope that space is held for those whom the show causes pain, whether by reason of inclusion or omission, and that a wider chorus of voices is amplified to sing out.

For me, however, the energy of creation and questions of legacy resonated. And my mind was blown by how simultaneously traditionally inspirationally and yet slyly subversive the show was. The United States of America has none of the creation myths of older peoples or nations. What we have instead is relatively recent politically history that has been mythologized and enshrined as our national civic religion. Hamilton declared that the manifestations of these nationally worshipped figures, whom our streets and schools and cities are named after, are to be found in the faces of people of color and immigrants. Hamilton made it so that you can't worship the flag, as so many like to do, without worshipping these people.

Of course, people's powers of compartmentalization are pretty strong, so there are those whose walls inside are so strong that a popular musical will never be enough to topple them. Or who put themselves in rageful opposition to the show for all of these very reasons. Hamilton isn't going to save a country or the world. But the show has still turned out to be an amazing force, and I do believe that that force pushes for good.

All of which is to say: it's been a joy and privilege to be able to experience this phenomenon with so many of you. While I stay largely hands-off in my larger internet life for the sake of my sanity, it's been amazing to have even just this glancing connection with more people than I ever would have imagined. If I had the time and energy to keep up this unpaid second job that I haven't been able to spin onto my resume yet, I would. But as time has passed, I've been having less and less space for this, and I wanted to bring this leg of this wild ride to an end in a satisfying way.

I'll be working on cleaning up tags and otherwise making this a place that you can come back to get your fix of the first four years of this show's history, through Lin's returning as Hamilton in Puerto Rico. There will be a couple of summary posts as the waves of updates are completed. But the regular postings from MC Publius have reached the end of their run.

So thank you for the past four years. And maybe see you on the other side.

[thefederalistfreestyle]

Founding Father Alexander Hamilton’s Life is Now a Hip-Hop Musical:

LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA Plays: Alexander Hamilton Hometown: New York, NY You might know her from: Broadway’s In the Heights On how this crazy idea came to him: “I wasn’t a history buff—not even a little—but I was always an English nerd. I picked up Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton randomly at Borders. I knew he died in a duel, so it’d have a cool ending. And I just fell in love with his story.” Confession: “Hillary Clinton came to see In the Heights in 2009. I used to walk around in my underwear backstage between shows, and I come out of my dressing room and there’s Hillary with three Secret Service guys because she needed to use the bathroom. She said, ‘Show’s great!’ and I ran inside to put some clothes on.”

LESLIE ODOM JR. Plays: Aaron Burr Hometown: Philadelphia, PA You might know him from: NBC’s Smash Post-show ritual: “Lin and I made up a stupid song that we sing at the top of our lungs as we leave the stage. Then we have a shot of rum in the dressing room, and I’ll grab a dollar slice on my way home.” If I weren’t an actor I’d be…“I wish I could say that I would be feeding the hungry or something. But I’ve always liked to throw parties, so I’d be a world- renowned DJ who gets flown all over the place for parties on yachts and in underground clubs.”

JONATHAN GROFF Plays: King George Hometown: Lancaster, PA You might know him from: Glee, Frozen (voice of Kristoff) First role: “I was Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz in my dad’s barn. I was a drag Dorothy.” Dream costar: “I’d love to do a play with Cate Blanchett. I saw her in A Streetcar Named Desire, and it’s my favorite performance ever.” Confession: “I was on a first date, maybe a year and a half ago. We ate dinner, then he came back to my apartment, and I don’t smoke, but he smoked a cigarette. We were making out, and he’s smoking. So I took a cigarette and also smoked it, and then five minutes later, I projectile vomited because I got so nauseous from smoking. That’s probably the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened.”

read more profiles in the article! on newsstands on July 14.

[thefederalistfreestyle]

took a cash collection just to send him to the main man [x x x x]

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GOOD MORNING, AMERICA

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SEABURY’S FREESTYLE

[thefederalistfreestyle]

‘I went from couch-surfing to starring on Broadway’ (NY Post):

“Sure beats your old place,” Daveed Diggs’ brother joked when he saw the “Hamilton” star’s Washington Heights apartment.

That’s not saying much— Diggs’ “old place” was the No. 2 train.

Ten years ago, the aspiring actor and rapper was fresh out of Brown University and going on open-call auditions in the city. With $100 a week in unemployment benefits, he was couch surfing, but when there wasn’t a friend’s pad to be had, “I’d ride the subway all night,” he says.

Last stop: Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre, where “Hamilton” — Lin-Manuel Miranda’s historically based, acclaimed hip-hopera — started previews Monday. And Diggs is again breathing new life into two dead white men: the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson.

[thefederalistfreestyle]

July 2, 2002, after a routine quarterly blood test, Javier learned he was HIV positive. He’d been living on the West Coast after college, before his parents got sick, hoping to find the growth he’d seen from his friends who’d left New York for somewhere else. Like a good New Yorker, he hated it out there. He missed that “grungy, rusty thing about New York that like makes sense to my soul.” But he met a man there, and they were in a long-term, monogamous relationship—I’ll let him tell it. “We were in a relationship,” he says. “And it was an adult choice to not be safe because I was with my partner.” The man knew he was HIV positive, according to Javier, but didn’t say anything. That’s why Javier is so public about his HIV status; if it weren’t a terrible stigma to have HIV, the man might have told him instead of withholding it from him. Javier spent three days in deep depression after he learned his diagnosis. But then he realized he had to take care of himself. He got up, he sought help, he found support groups, but also: He went home. In New York he told his parents and let them support him emotionally. He found a doctor who gave him an aggressive course of medication. He took pills that tasted like rust and made him break out in hives. He itched so badly he had to stand under the shower to get any relief. Within six months, HIV was undetectable in his blood. Now, he says, he’s pretty sure his T-cells are better than anyone else’s in the room. He’s had long-term relationships since his diagnosis—not right now, no time for that now—but before the show, a lot of times when he’d tell a guy about his status, they’d beat it fast. “There was such ignorance about what HIV even was,” he says. “I mean the fact that someone could say, ‘You have AIDS.’ 'No. I have HIV. Do you know the difference? Right.’ The fact that the behavior that was permeating at the time was men would ask each other their status and one of them could easily lie and just say I’m negative and they would have unprotected sex. But here I am coming at you saying I’m fully HIV-positive and I’m letting you know that and there are ways to be safe. But you’re gonna shun me but then be unsafe with someone you’ve just met?” But listen to what happens next. Two years after his diagnosis, Javier confronts his old boyfriend. Flies across the country and tells him that he’s HIV positive, that he’s angry and wants an answer. But the guy just sits there and says nothing—he says nothing. And right then, Javier took a breath and felt overcome by compassion. He didn’t yell at him. “I realized how much pain he must be in.” And so Javier forgave him, with his words and with his heart. “I don’t know where it came from,” he says now. “I can’t tell you where it came from.” We’re done eating, and Javier asks if I’d like to see his garden. He keeps one on the roof of the marquis of the Richard Rodgers theater, so that he could be alone for a few minutes on performance days, and so that he could watch things grow. The rooftop garden sits on a balcony that faces 46th Street, and sometimes he walks to the edge and people scream that they love him, and he screams back that he loves them, too. But mostly he likes being alone, watering a big vat of soil and talking to his plants. Late last year, just as Miranda won his Genius grant and began thinking about leaving the show, Javier found a lump on his body, and when he had it investigated, and learned he had cancer. After all that, cancer. Just like the last time he got sick, he experienced all the things that come along with a thing that is plenty hard enough already, thank you very much, only this time he was a prominent figure. Organizations reached out to him, some really nice ones, but some with the obvious, unsubtle intent of binding his name to their PR emails. It happened so often that he has decided not to say publicly what kind of cancer he had, because he doesn’t want to be the poster child for a particular cause—just a general one, one in which you don’t keep secrets about your health because there’s no real reason to. There are still the people, he learned, that think you shouldn’t tell anyone if you have cancer. And there it was again, a stigma against the thing that is happening to so many people that literally no one benefits from keeping quiet about it. Patients don’t feel better, and people don’t know how to treat them. We don’t know what to say when we finally learn what’s going on. We don’t know how to help. “Say the damn thing out loud,” he says now. “Talk about the thing. We gotta talk about it. We gotta talk about it. It’s not gonna change. They’re not gonna learn. I’m not gonna learn. We’re not gonna grow.” But Javier didn’t do any of that at first. At first, he didn’t say a word. He performed for six weeks, knowing he had cancer, not telling the cast yet, just trying to process it. He kept looking for the reasons—what had he eaten or exposed himself to? Was it where he lived? Was it his diet? He blamed himself for everything. He took two months off from the show. He wanted to return, but what if he didn’t recover? “I didn’t know,” he says. “I didn’t know.” He did his treatments, he meditated, he listened to his doctors. “I just focused my energies on it, and finally when I started seeing progress, I started to believe there was hope that I could be back.” By the time he took the stage again, he’d lost so much weight that the costumes hung loose on him. He doesn’t doubt himself often, but that night he did. It was the rest of the cast, he says, who got him through the performance, who loved him and were lifting him somehow. He felt their hands on his back. “There was no one who didn’t believe in me in that moment.” In the show’s final scene, Hamilton, now dead at the hands of Burr, reaches out to help Liza over the threshold of her own death 50 years later. He takes her hand and walks her to the front of the stage. Javier cried through the whole scene. He looks straight ahead into the middle distance as he tells me this with his forearms on his thighs and his hands folded; it’s the only time during our conversations that he doesn’t look me in the eye. Finally, he snaps out of the memory, and he looks at me and says, “How do you describe the feeling that you’re alive? That’s what it was. I was still here and…wow.” You couldn’t seem to die, I say to him. But he shakes his head and tells me I don’t understand. No, he says, “I’ve died several times already.” That’s what it feels like to him. He is not the person he was when he went into that clinic to hear his routine HIV test results; the person he was died right there, in that chair, and he walked out someone different. He died again when the oncologist told him that, yes, the lump was something they had to talk about, and things were about to change once more. Another quick and irrefutable death. The human brain cannot keep on encountering and surmounting such things, and so each time, to survive, you become another person. And each night on stage you die again and you take a bow and you find out who you are again, because now you know what it is to live. In his garden on the roof, there’s a purple orchid, a gift from someone who attended the show, and he potted it among his other plants a few weeks ago, and when he brings the watering can near it, he notices something new: a tiny bit of green in the purple. “Look,” he says. “A sprout.”

Javier Muñoz of Hamilton Has Been Reborn, Over and Over and Over Again (GQ)

beautiful profile piece – read the full article

(via thefederalistfreestyle)

never back down [x]

[thefederalistfreestyle]

To an insane degree, the best shows are the student shows, because they’re prepped. They know what they’re coming to see. You don’t realize how much life has beaten you up until you see a bunch of kids see a show. The things they react to wouldn’t occur to you to react to. There’s a moment where an American spy passes another spy a letter and a redcoat comes and just twists her neck and pulls her away. It’s not on the album, it’s a physical moment, it’s just before “Right Hand Man.” Adults watch and they go, ‘oh, this is a transition, it’s a stage transition, this is information we needed to know.’ When kids see that moment they go “OH!” Honest. Life hasn’t beat them up yet, they can actually be surprised and afraid and annoyed. It’s such live ammo to have an audience of students but it’s so much more rewarding because they’re there for all of it. They’re there for Anthony being gorgeous because he’s gorgeous, so when he says “Let’s strip down to our socks it’s like, “Aaah!” – ten kids just started puberty. Twenty girls just started puberty and ten guys just figured something out. ‘Oh. Oh this. I know this about myself now.’ The inverse is true for Jasmine. Jasmine did one of our video Ham4Hams and the overwhelming comment was from teenage girls saying, “I’m so gay, I’m SO GAY.” That’s because they’re in love with her. All this is to say the student matinees are just thrilling because the reaction is completely unguarded. When our characters pass away there are honest to god hitching sobs. We get that from adult audiences too, but its harder to get to you. It comes unbidden from these kids.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: “Life’s a gift, it’s not to be taken for granted” (HESherman.com)

[thefederalistfreestyle]

& just like that

...the And Peggy Tour has finished its run in Puerto Rico. life conspired to keep me from composing the goodbye that I wanted, so you’ll be getting a week’s worth of greatest hits reblogs until @thefederalistfreestyle writes its last page after four years of screaming about the ten dollar founding father.

let’s go!!

[thefederalistfreestyle]

see you on the other side

[thefederalistfreestyle]

it’s only a matter of time [x x x x x]

[thefederalistfreestyle]

This is not a moment it’s a movement. We’re so happy that we were able to tell our story to the people of Puerto Rico. We hope that our #HamiltonPR run has served as a reminder to the rest of the world that Puerto Rico is open and ready for business.