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[0:13] Robert W. Schneider: Hi, I'm Robert W. Schneider and welcome to Fifty Key Stage Musicals: The Podcast, a companion piece to the Routledge Press publication, Fifty Key Stage Musicals, which is available for purchase by going to Routledge.com or clicking the link below in today's show description.

[0:28] Robert W. Schneider: Today's episode focuses on chapter 49, Hamilton.

[0:32] Robert W. Schneider: And with us today is the author of that chapter, Jerome Stevenson.

[0:37] Robert W. Schneider: Professor Stevenson is an instructor of performance at the University of Oklahoma and serves as adjunct theater faculty at Oklahoma City and Oklahoma Universities.

[0:46] Robert W. Schneider: His numerous directing credits include Hairspray, Green Day's American Idiot, Crowns, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

[0:54] Robert W. Schneider: In addition to a variety of work in radio, television, and film, Professor Stevenson was the recipient of the 2018 Oklahoma Governor Arts Award for Community Service.

[1:04] Robert W. Schneider: Professor Stevenson, I am so happy that you are joining us today.

[1:23] Jerome Stevenson: Please just start with Jerome. Let's make that the first one. Okay, just all right.

[1:33] Jerome Stevenson: Wow, in my opinion, there's so many things to that. I think primarily because this was one of the first real successful blendings of these uniquely American cultures of the American musical and American hip hop. We take this musical style and we bring it to the forefront and we bring it to audiences that are not unique to this music. This is an American musical and about an American figure, and therefore the audience had to be broadly American. And so it's unique when you see the show and you're watching it in a completely diverse audience that is listening to references from George Hamilton, George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, but at the same time listening to references from the Notorious B.I.G. and Mobb Deep.

And this is sort of what makes it so fundamentally unique for the American musical. But I also think one of the things that makes it key is that we take this idea of the American founding, and we place it in the hands of different storytellers, right? We're talking about people of color, we're talking about women, we're talking about this is not a story that is being told through the same lens as 1776. And it gives a diverse audience a sense of ownership over this great American experiment, which is pretty extraordinary. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's had such a fundamental effect on audiences, and not just here, but abroad.

[3:11] Jerome Stevenson: Now, you know, on paper, it feels like this is a show that shouldn't quote unquote work, right? Which is they're gonna take the story of a pretty obscure figure from the American history books. I'm gonna be honest with you, the only reason I think I know Alexander Hamilton was because of the Got Milk commercials. Yes, um, yes. That's that's the only reason I think, and I majored in political science, so I feel pretty bad about saying that. So it takes that, and it's gonna use a musical idiom that is not at all familiar to a majority of the new quote unquote New York theater-going audience. So then why does it work? Why does this thing that looks like on paper it shouldn't succeed succeed brilliantly?

[3:52] Jerome Stevenson: Oh, that's I think that's a really interesting question. And as I've dug into the show and spent a lot of time listening to it, obviously when I was writing the chapter, but even prior to that, I was sort of a fan of the idea of the original Hamilton mixtape when they were just sort of fleshing out the first act and sort of figuring out that this could be done musically. I think Lin-Manuel has a real interesting way of bringing the audience in, even if they're not caught up. And what I mean by that is if you listen to In the Heights, I'll use it for example in the beginning, right off the top of the show, he sort of finds a way to talk to both audiences. We've got this bodega owner who is essentially rapping with this Latin beat in the background, but he immediately says, "You can take the A-train," and the audience goes, "Hey, I know that reference."

That's something I recognize, even though he's rapping, he's brought us into this. I think a lot of that happens with Hamilton in the same way. He finds ways, whether they're big ways to sort of introduce us to a culture through things that we already know. We talk about the founding father, we talk about the five, what is it on the $10 bill? So he's already sort of establishing a language that we understand, even if it's through a medium that we're not familiar with.

[5:15] Jerome Stevenson: Now, you blend that together with the fact that he is also referencing things that are unique to hip hop culture. So when you get one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, it's the ten dual commandments. Well, many of us will recognize that as a Biggie Smalls song from years and years ago. And we're gonna go, "Whoa, what just happened?" That's not supposed to be happening in a theater. We shouldn't be sitting here, it should be very, you know, Guinevere at the end of Camelot. It should feel very much like, you know, where we have to keep ourselves from nodding off, or, you know, men sitting in the audience going, "I don't understand why they just start singing out of nowhere." He's saying everybody's welcome, and I've got a little bit of a way to bring anybody into the fold if they're willing to suspend their disbelief, which is what theater is supposed to do, right?

So the audience knows their contract, and it's just a matter of will they buy in. But I think thankfully, he's done such a good job of making sure we reference from all across the spectrum. I mean, we've got Beyoncé and Destiny's Child being referenced, we've got hip hop records being referenced, we've got the Beatles being referenced in King George, and so there's all of this way of saying there's a place for you in this melting pot, wink wink, nudge nudge of musical ideology. Just like there's a place for you in this melting pot that is America. And I think that is one of the reasons that it gets past the hurdle of, well, how is this gonna fit? How is this gonna fit in the American musical?

Because this is not typically what the American musical does. Well, he finds a bridge for so many of us. I'm sure there are folks who listen to it and go, "Oh, I didn't recognize that," or "that didn't necessarily resonate with me." But I bet you it's far less than it would have been had I written a rap musical about Alexander Hamilton. I see it, I'd see it. He understands that bridge really well, and it sustains us through.

[7:13] Jerome Stevenson: Not to mention that the big turn is that, you know, we start with these narrators, and specifically this single narrator in Aaron Burr. And then in a really wise move, and I think it's a move that we don't see coming, and a move that is really well earned, he turns the story over to who really tells it, which is his wife, which is Eliza. And she, in the Ron Chernow obviously takes center stage at the very beginning of the book. And here she doesn't really take center stage until the end of the book, where she fundamentally explains why this figure, tragic as he was, is not only important to the American story, but to the lives of immigrants, to the lives of children, and to our financial system and where our nation's capital is and where our financial business is done, why the financial district in New York makes so much of a difference because all of this was set in motion by works that he did in the competitive part of his life.

[8:30] Jerome Stevenson: You know, it seems to me that so many musical idioms that are invented in the pop culture sphere make their way to Broadway pretty fast, but hip hop doesn't do that. So can you explain to me why did it take so long for Broadway to recognize one that hip hop is a true art form, and second of all, a really effective art form? What causes that huge gap?

[8:58] Jerome Stevenson: Wow, that is, you know, and that's kind of an interesting question. But I think I'm a kid of the 80s. I was a teenager in the 80s, and so I remember very much that there was this sort of stop gap. Typically pop culture music finds its way into the zeitgeist because kids decide to listen to it when their parents don't want to, right? And we had that similar experience in the 80s where hip hop was taking a real hold in suburban households. The difficulty, and maybe the difference was, is that in addition to that, there was a whole country of people going, "This is not just violent, it's dangerous to our children." You know, there was N.W.A., there was Public Enemy, all of this stuff is happening.

Everything wasn't Will Smith and the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. So, you know, there was a real serious push among adults that said this is dangerous. So much so that Tipper Gore sort of created the notorious parental discretion sticker warnings on records. And so it took a back step in how easily it was gonna transfer to radio and music videos at the time. I don't even know if that's a thing that still exists, music videos, but excuse me. But kids absolutely, excuse me. But kids lost a little bit of access to it. It became the Richard Pryor era records of its era. It became you have to listen to this clandestinely in order to really get a sense of what's happening. And now we're talking about something that wasn't being talked about in suburban households and about what's happening in urban communities and, you know, police interaction with people of color.

All of this stuff was being discussed in these hip hop records, and therefore it was sort of pick a side. I think that's part of why Broadway chose for so long to stay away from it. I don't think that Lin-Manuel Miranda was the first to sort of say it has a validity in our art form. But I think we needed a little bit of time to remove ourselves from that stigma, from that fear that we were gonna bring, you know, violence into the theater, that we were gonna bring a lack of, forgive the phrasing, lack of culture, which is absolutely incorrect. But the validity of the fear was there for a lot of producers, for a lot of musicians, for a lot of writers. And then the other thing that I think that happened is that while, you know, thanks to Raisin in the Sun, we had integrated the writing process and the directing process for Broadway in plays, you know, in the 60s and 50s, but we really hadn't done that in terms of the American musicals.

There weren't a ton of musicals being written by people of color and bringing that unique perspective. So much of what happens in theaters, what happens now, unfortunately, is that we want to train artists to be. I would love you to be an artist of color if you can be just like us. Like, write a show that sounds like our shows and that'll be acceptable. We're not gonna be bringing something that's gonna fundamentally rock the boat. And I think Lin-Manuel was able to successfully navigate that in In the Heights because we all sort of went, "What?"

[12:44] Jerome Stevenson: It's gonna be in Spanish, there's gonna be a lot of Latin music, how is that gonna work? And he bridged that gap beautifully. So now that he's got a chance to do this second project and bring a little bit more of his culture and his experience to it, there's a little bit more of a, all right, we'll trust you. We'll see what happens. Um, and the violence that's in the show, interestingly enough, there is violence in Hamilton, but it's American violence. It's American violence being portrayed by people of color, which that's the funny thing. So much of what I hear about Hamilton or what I heard in that first couple of years is, I don't know, because George Washington wasn't a black person. George Washington wasn't, you know, he didn't look like this, and you're gonna go, oh, you're missing the point so much, but that's okay.

Well, we will get to that. Um, do you think that because, you know, everything that's successful always has imitators, which is a lot of what this book is about. Um, so my question is this: do you think that hip hop is going to be the primary form of imitation when people try to imitate Hamilton later on? Or do you think there's another element of Hamilton that people are gonna gravitate towards, and that's what they're gonna imitate in their own projects?

[14:00] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah. I think hip hop has certainly been given license and room to make its way to Broadway. Um, I think that mixture of current R&B pop music is gonna, is now been freed up a little bit to work in coexisting with a Broadway libretto, um, much in the same way that I think rock music sort of got an entree with Jesus Christ Superstar, and then ultimately we end up with American Idiot in that kind of a show. Yeah, I don't think it'll be the sole thing. I think this, I think it'll be probably the big thing. Um, but I also think that there's gonna be, there sort of already is this new way of thinking now that's happening in small, you know, enclaves within the community, but people are going, why does the character have to look like that?

The whole idea of a play is to suspend our disbelief and to tell the story of this character with a more empathetic lens. So why can't 1776 have a diverse cast? Why can't we look at a production of Phantom or a production of Wicked that's not just a green girl but an African American girl or a Latina woman? Um, I think that's gonna be sort of what is gonna be the long-living imitation is that we can now see these shows with a little less restraint.

[15:42] Jerome Stevenson: No, I was gonna say, do you think Hamilton initiated that conversation? Or do you think something happened prior to that? Where, like if you had to put it on a timeline, where would you say that goes?

[15:53] Robert W. Schneider: God, I would say that it was a conversation that was happening for a really long time. It was happening, and by little bits and pieces, it's happened successfully. You know, Rent, when the producer sat down to do Rent originally, Tom Collins was not supposed to be a person of color. Um, but Jesse Martin walks into the room and they go, wait a minute, this might be the guy. So maybe we rethink the way we've written that role. And I think it's happened little bit by little bit by little bit. I think Hamilton gave it a major leap forward. And then when you jump forward into 2020, you know, there was this level of activism that was meeting theater in a renewed way. There was a renaissance of this level of activism, and we realized, or I think a lot of theater folks realized that we're not often, as much as our community feels more diverse, we're not often at the forefront of that.

Because more often than not, what we're trying to do is reflect the life that is prevalent around us, as opposed to setting the terms. And we in theater had to go, boy, we're big talkers, but we haven't really done much in the way of setting the zeitgeist. We've followed it. And so here now I think we're seeing where people are going, no, no, let's get ahead of that. What does Oklahoma look like? Why does this character need to be that? What do you mean she can't be in a wheelchair? What do you mean the leading player has to be a man? What do you mean? And so we start rethinking the way we've seen things time and time and time again. I think we now are looking at, is there a more inclusive way to tell this story that opens up our empathy, that gets us to see these characters in a different light, or gets them to realize that they're more than just one thing.

[17:44] Jerome Stevenson: Even with Hamilton, one of the sort of interesting takeaways for me when I first saw it was, boy, it's hard to separate Thomas Jefferson from Sally Hemings and from that legacy. But there's something to be said about the skill of his writing, the ability he had to sort of build and define the two-party system. Um, that character resonates with me in a different way that's not outside, that's not outside of the history books, but works in concert with it. They're humans, not just person equals racism, or this person equals, you know, bigotry, or this person, um, you know, is sort of a one-trick pony. No, they're just like the rest of us. They're human, they're complex. Um, they live in a society that has rules and flaws and weaknesses, and that's part of what we're made of. And it's not, that's not a thing that exists only in the past. We're not flawed in 1776, but thank God in 2022 we've got all of our problems solved. No.

[19:01] Robert W. Schneider: By no means whatsoever. Not at all. Can you tell me a little bit about the origin of the Hamilton musical, the Ron Chernow book and all of that stuff?

[19:12] Jerome Stevenson: Yeah. Um, my understanding of it from research and listening and sort of being aware of the project, Lin-Manuel was in the middle of doing In the Heights. He, in addition to writing the show, he played Usnavi, the bodega owner, and on a vacation, got a hold of the Ron Chernow autobiography, or the biography of Alexander Hamilton, and is reading this book on the beach. In fact, I think he posted, because that's the language of our day, posted a picture of the book and the beach and sort of said, hey, enjoying some time out. Um, but got fascinated with the story and specifically the idea that this guy is this character, Alexander Hamilton, who again we know from that got milk commercial. Yes. We know from that, but he figures out first of all, this guy's an immigrant.

He comes to America with a lot of big ideas, and a lot of the folks around him are going, slow it down. You're getting in over your skis. He gets into these conflicts with major founding fathers, including Madison and Jefferson, and to a certain degree, because of rumors, even with George Washington. And so Lin-Manuel is like, so he's got beef with the other founding fathers. He's got this incredible gift of gab as a writer. He's extraordinarily deft at taking language and making it understandable to the common man who doesn't have time to read, you know, intricate pages of explanation, which also I think he used to his benefit because what he wanted things to be more complicated than it needed to be, he made them long so the common man wasn't reading them.

[21:06] Robert W. Schneider: Um, and so he's hearing this. Lin-Manuel is hearing this and reading this and thinking, this feels like street culture. It feels like, you know, how you get stuff done in the neighborhoods. It's like this guy's got the gift of gab, and he's a good writer, and he's hip hop. And so this random idea comes to him where he's not even gonna write a musical, he's gonna write a series of songs, sort of a song cycle called the Hamilton Mixtape. And most of my understanding, most of the people who come into contact with the idea early on sort of go, what? That's ridiculous. That doesn't make any sense, and nobody's gonna listen to it, and we don't find history interesting. You know, it's sort of like doing a, like who's gonna do a television show about the West Wing of the White House?

That's ridiculous. Nobody's gonna watch that. Um, except for if you put it in the right hands of the right writer, and they find a way to humanize them and to take our contract as an audience and say, suspend your disbelief, let us entertain you while we're also giving you a different perspective of the way they think.

[22:11] Jerome Stevenson: So they're working on this, he's working on this album, some of which takes, you know, two years. And this is just working on the first act, um, working on, you know, kind of the first portion of the book, as it were. Um, you know, "My Shot" takes him forever to write. He literally is trying to figure out how do you take somebody whose very gift is the fact that they are more vocally dexterous than and lyrically dexterous than the people around them, and communicate that without putting a sign up that says, I don't know if you noticed this, but these guys use really simple lyrics, and this guy really is really complicated. But he's so he's writing internal rhymes and he's writing these long arch narrative rhyme schemes against sort of 1980s, I'm the best in the world.

Well, what you're gonna do? That kind of a flow. Um, and giving these characters a chance to go, whoa, has everybody heard this guy? This guy's something special. We need to get this dude up in front of a crowd. And so when he's writing the kind of earlier expositional stuff, he's finding that the flow of the musical actually really works. The storytelling really works. And he thinks, what if I could get the rest of this stuff in? Because people don't know that he and his wife really went in hard on serving orphans. They don't know that they lost a child in a duel, they don't know that he essentially has an affair, and instead of making it private or saying, I have no comment, he goes the opposite way and tells it all to the public, and it destroys their marriage, essentially.

[23:54] Robert W. Schneider: Um, and that marriage, that destruction of that marriage is exacerbated when his son is killed in the duel because he has a hot temper, the son has a hot temper. There is speculation that he encouraged the boy to go to the duel. I don't know if that, that it was clear that he encouraged the boy to duel, but, um, but he did encourage the boy to go to the duel and try to talk it out with his enemy, and the boy was killed. Um, so there's all this sort of historical framework that can be delivered in a narrative, and obviously, to make a two, two and a half hour musical, you're gonna have to adjust and fix facts to make them sort of serve your intent. But now he's got this first act sort of framework that says, I think the whole show can work.

Um, and then you add to that, you start getting young producers like Jeffrey Seller, who was an original producer on Rent, who says, yeah, I'd be curious to see what you do in the Heights with this big deal. Why not just support the guy and see where he lands? Um, you add Tommy Kail to the mix, you add Andy Blankenbuehler, the incredible choreographer, who again takes this idea of no choreography is not separate from the narrative, it's informing the narrative, it becomes part of the staging.

[25:16] Jerome Stevenson: Um, you surround yourself with a list of talent who basically follows the show from inception or from conception to Broadway opening night, including, you know, Daveed Diggs and people like Leslie Odom Jr. and Christopher Jackson, and they've got this extraordinary thing that's building. Meanwhile, you add this unprecedented element in that he is invited to the White House to do a piece of poetry. And he says, well, if there's ever been a place to see if you can float the idea of a musical about a politician, it's the White House. They had no idea what the response was gonna be. But from the moment he said, I'm gonna do a musical about a person who is at the core of the hip hop, and it's Alexander Hamilton, and the audience responds sort of like, uh, no, that's not right, and then he delivers the song and has the entire audience with him in this journey instead of going, wow, that's real, that's true.

That's what happened. And if you put it in that framework, it does start to sound a little bit like street culture in hip hop. Now he's just gotta finish it. Because there's no way to not take that story that's gotten that kind of response, like it's that level of internet interest. Because I mean, I don't know how many of us even knew that the White House had an arts and poetry thing until that happened, right? But now we're all listening to this opening number and going, what could that musical be? And then about two years later we find out. Um, why do you think that, you know, there's been lots of successful shows in Broadway history, but this is a show in which it seems like everybody in the world seems to know it.

An entire creative team was awarded the Kennedy Center honor. Right. When does that, and they're all young? Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, there's a list of people that I think are on their way out that haven't received the award, but all these young, but these young guys are best. Why? Why? Why is there something in the culture? Is there something happening politically in the world that's helping this show along? What's going on?

[27:43] Jerome Stevenson: I did, I think you're right in the idea that it's something in the culture, there's something in the water, there's something in the time. Like we feel the need to move our collective story forward faster. Um, and to some degree, I think that's really beneficial, and some degrees I think sometimes we better, you know, pump the brakes and just sort of see where we are, because I think we know we've seen this activism that is George Floyd and police interaction. We've seen this activism that is wait a minute, our LGBTQ plus brothers and sisters need our support. Um, we have to speak out about making our world right, particularly our younger generation. They're seeing it there, and they almost, there are times when they're almost so far ahead that the rest of the nation can't catch up, and that we're obviously actually sort of working in a bubble that's unique to arts and entertainment.

Sometimes I think that's great. Sometimes I think it's worth taking a moment to try to bring other folks along. It's again that you must take the A-train. It's okay for you to come with us and not to be afraid that we're gonna lose you in translation. I think we see with this show, and we saw with this show that there are new ways of telling old stories, and that they don't become less valid in their origins, but more accessible, and anytime we can find a way right now to make things more accessible, I think we're on that. We're on, we're in interested, we're invested in that idea. I hope that what happens is we also keep in mind that making something accessible doesn't just mean making it accessible to folks who are always or often marginalized.

Yes, we want to absolutely bring those folks in, but the goal is not to do a different form of isolation. So now all the marginalized people are on this train and everybody else gets left out. No, the goal is to put everybody in the room together and have them nodding their heads and going, oh no, that happened to Hamilton. And when that happens, we start to see ourselves collectively as a we. It's our story. This is an American story. And it doesn't matter if the actor portraying George Washington looks like Jerome or looks like Robert. It matters that we find a little bit of ourselves and a little bit of our personal journey in that story, and we can share in it and want the success of our nation to be built on the us factor, the we factor, as opposed to you guys over there, we over here.

And I think that that's what it's meaning is this moment where people are looking, they're looking to not erase, but certainly build a bridge that's a little bit stronger and build it a little bit faster. Hamilton did that in a way that nothing else has, I think.

[30:52] Jerome Stevenson: You know, and it's for me, and I know this is your area of expertise, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I find it so interesting. I also feel that Hamilton is probably one of the first musicals to be democratized, if that makes sense. Um, because what I mean by that is, you know, it's so expensive to go see a Broadway show. And Hamilton, the ticket prices were, you know, extraordinary. You have to, you know, do anything possible to get in. But the fact that if you listen to the cast recording, and yes, you'll miss the visuals, brilliance of Tommy Kail and Andy Blankenbuehler, you still get the whole show right by listening to it. And the fact that it was given out on Disney Plus, um, and that way, so I what I find so interesting about it is even if you could not afford to get in to see it live, it's being offered to you in so many different ways. I don't know if that's something you agree or disagree with. I just find that really fascinating. That might just be a tangential point.

[31:54] Robert W. Schneider: Sure. I absolutely agree with you. Um, and it's not something that I'd really put a lot of thought in. But you know, interestingly enough, my wife and I talked about that once. Um, because idea of because it's available to us in other mediums, doesn't mean that we're gonna stop seeing it. If Hamilton comes through tomorrow, I'm probably gonna get tickets.

[32:15] Jerome Stevenson: Oh, absolutely.

[32:16] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah.

[32:17] Jerome Stevenson: Yeah, because there's something unique about being in the room and having that shared human experience with an audience and with an audience that would never, that I would never find myself bobbing my head to, you know, the 10 Dual Commandments or whatever it is, but and yet it's happening, it's happening right there in the room. It's the room where it happens, right? Um, there are people of color sitting in an audience, there are people with limited socioeconomic means, there are a diverse gathering of individuals all sharing a story together. And if we can share a story and share our sense of, oh gosh, that breaks my heart that when she does the burn song, it breaks my heart to watch him struggle with this affair, you know.

He desperately doesn't want to, and yet, oh no, now they think they've got him when they go back in the room and says we’ve got all the information about your accounts. There's something really unique about sharing an experience like that with an audience. It doesn't mean I don't turn it on on Disney Plus every time I come across it and go, well, I got a couple of hours, why not watch it again?

[33:27] Robert W. Schneider: Yeah, exactly.

[33:28] Jerome Stevenson: Um, because there's more to unpack. There's more to, and I think you're right. I think, and I hope that's another thing that gets taken away from Hamilton is that making it exclusive, that sort of idea of, well, I'm in the exclusive, I've seen a Broadway show club, isn't as big a deal as I'm in the exclusive, we've seen the show together, and we've all responded to it, and all had our hearts and stories moved by the experience together. So no, I think you're right. I think democratize is a good way of putting that. Um, it belongs to a little bit of our all of the people. You know, this is something that I know a lot of my students struggle with. And one of the things that we talk about is the question I'm gonna ask you, is it a student's responsibility to explain this?

And you know, a lot of one of the criticisms I've heard about Hamilton is what you mentioned very early on, which is, you know, George Washington didn't look like this, or, you know, Alexander Hamilton didn't look like that. Um, and a lot of students want to look at those people and go, it doesn't matter. How do you explain to people that if that's what you're focused on, you're kind of missing the point of the show? Or do you just not even begin to pick that battle?

[34:43] Robert W. Schneider: Well, you're an educator, so I don't know. I mean, I'm sure students come to you all the time with how to handle this, Professor Stevenson? And is it something that we even need to worry about handling?

[34:56] Jerome Stevenson: One of the things we talk about in that class, and I'm glad that you said it happens a lot for you because it certainly happens a lot for me in my classes. We talk a lot about that everybody's not at the same place in their journey. Right? And that's okay. That is an okay thing. The worst thing I think you can do then is to say, you're not where you need to be. You're not where I am. Catch up. You know, like for those of us who were on board with this thing when it happened, and I certainly have a different stake in it than some others, because yeah, I want to have a chance to play George Washington, or I want to have a chance, I want to have a chance as soon as it looks like me to play Alexander Hamilton.

Um, that's great for me. That's where I am in my journey. I know that that doesn't limit my ability to fully invest in a play. I don't get lost in the idea that, oh, George Washington doesn't look like that, and therefore I can't follow this narrative. No, I'm looking at it through the lens of this individual playing it, this director shaping the story, this writer, and they're gonna help me see it in a way that I hadn't seen it before. I hope that not only do I recognize the shade of the person, but I recognize the influence of their experience and their culture in building empathy towards this figure. Um, but there are people who are not there yet. There are people who, for them, plays still need to be the family has to look the same.

Um, and a lot of that has to do with I'm not ready to give up what I'm familiar with. But part of the beauty of being an audience of art is that you very quickly learn that no, I don't only want to give it up. I want to release myself to a brand new experience because that's what pulls me forward in my journey. Um, but I think the combativeness of if you don't get there today, then you can't be an ally, or if you don't, if you don't understand it the way I understand it, then why am I even talking to you? It's sort of the Facebook equivalent has become, I think this, I'll fight you. Like if you don't agree, it's sort of like, no, I think this, that should be the end of it. That's fine. That’s your opinion.

It in and of itself explains that it's what you think, it's what you, it's your opinion. It doesn't make it a fact, but it also opens up a discussion to say, well, why do you think that? Or share with me how you got there, or whatever that is, because that's what the process should be. We don't, and we don't do that anywhere else in theater. We don't watch a production of Death of a Salesman and go, well, you have to understand this, that, and the other, and that's why he's so tragic to me. Well, I don't have to understand that. I understand it from this perspective, and that's why it's so tragic to me.

[37:55] Jerome Stevenson: I understand it because I grew up in a generation where there were door-to-door salesmen. But I do understand that sense of planned obsolescence. And so when I think, boy, you know, you think about all of the things that existed in my youth that simply don't exist now, that simply aren't the way we operate now. And as much as I'm saddened by that piece of my personal history going away, I understand it, but it also makes me have empathy for Willie Lohman in a way that I might not have had it, or lens that let me into that show that's unique to me. It's my experience. So I think you're right in that there is a lot of that sort of pushback from more often than not, a generational audience or very privileged audience that's used to walking into a theater and saying everybody looks like me I'm comfortable.

But it's interesting too because it happens all across the zeitgeist and it's not just with older folks. It's Star Wars. No, no, no, the Star Wars is about a young guy and he's going on his journey and that's Luke Skywalker. The new ones are all about this girl and I don't know how that's going. It's like, well, join the party. Yeah, that's where it's the story has advanced to. You have to catch up to where we are in our journey. But that's the reality. Do you think that future productions of Hamilton, because eventually it'll get licensed to community theaters and educational theaters, is it okay to say, all right, our Aaron Burr is gonna be Latin X and our Alexander Hamilton's gonna be a female to go against what was done with the original casting, if that makes sense?

[39:45] Robert W. Schneider: Sure, is that, is that, yeah, that'll be okay. People won't go, what are you doing?

[39:50] Jerome Stevenson: Yeah, that'll be, that's an interesting question. You know, my feeling about any of that stuff is always what is the best way for us to tell this story and not pull the audience out of the play in order to understand what we're doing. So, you know, there are places where I've got questions as a director where I would say, okay, Eliza and Hamilton have this baby, and this is where we are historically, and so what best creates an environment there? There's also something really beautiful about, you know, telling the story of progression of this is all about Alexander Hamilton, who's not even a citizen of the United States when he first arrives, and Eliza gets pushed to the background, and then bringing her forward to the foreground has such a revolutionary spin on it.

Does that mean that Alexander Hamilton can't be played by a woman? Absolutely not. But it means we have to be conscious of how do we tell this story to the audience in a way that they can follow it if they suspend their disbelief to include X, Y, and Z. And that is open to whatever interpretation they have, as long as they remember, or at least I think, as long as the audience remembers that ultimately this isn't about serving us, it's about serving the audience.

[41:27] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, that's, can you say that one more time, please? Because I think that's such a great takeaway.

[41:31] Jerome Stevenson: Theater is an act of service, man. I mean, we're doing it for, we're doing it to share the human experience with an audience. But it has to be about them first. And so I think that's another reason why it's done. Hamilton was done originally the way it was. What greater piece of service than to say to the audience, no matter where they sit in the spectrum, that this country belongs to us. It belongs to all of us. It's a shared experience. And speaking of belonging to all of us, Hamilton is one of these shows where it came out, it was incredibly highly praised right from the get-go, specifically, or as I should say, is one of the many elements of its praise for the diversity of its casting. And then within a couple of years, it sort of became highly criticized for the lack of inclusion of black characters within the narrative, not actors, but characters within the narrative. Can you talk a little bit about that and why did it take a while for that issue to arise?

[42:33] Jerome Stevenson: Hmm. Yes, I, wow, I'm just trying to see how to say this without—

[42:35] Robert W. Schneider: You say whatever you want.

[42:44] Jerome Stevenson: Well, I'm gonna liken it to other scenarios as we talk about this. One of the things that happened, I think for me, is that they were addressing a singular issue. They were like, why aren't the people in plays representative of the people who are our country today, who are our audience? And so that became the issue. But he was still telling the story of Alexander Hamilton and trying to find a two and a half hour way to do it. And a lot of those figures are white men, right? But the answer to that question was, well, we don't have to cast them as white men. Well, you jump forward, the show's hugely successful. People pick up on that element of casting immediately. Wow, all these diverse folks are in the cast.

But as always, there is a, we're not moving fast enough towards whatever the goal is. And I don't know that that's an understood universal goal. It is the goal of individuals. And so, in addition to praising it for its success, we also start to find places where it's flawed. Well, it's a singular entity, right? Like it's only one show about one thing, one moment in time. And so addressing all of those issues in the one singular event, while we understand that this hasn't been addressed, I'm not sure that it needs to be responsible for solving every social ill at once. It's sort of akin to In the Heights, the film, which is why I said I would relate it to something else. In the film, Lynn Manuel, when Lynn Manuel wrote the musical, he was writing a show because he hadn't seen himself in very many musicals and wanted to write a show about his neighborhood, Washington Heights.

Well, fast forward to the release of the film, which like it, love it, hate it, whatever you want, it's fine. Then the criticism becomes, well, there are not enough dark-complexed Latinos, there are not enough dark-complexed folks, and it's a criticism that I think was taken very seriously, but I think it addressed a single issue at a single moment. Not every issue at every moment. And I think that's part of why it's taken so long for that, well, why it took so long originally for that to come forward, because people, instead of saying, let's celebrate the success of Hamilton in this particular way and build on it, we now want to hold Lynn Manuel responsible for fixing all the ills rather than I want this to propel us into doing shows that have more of these people in it.

And if it's okay for us to do George Washington this way, then why can't we tell a story about George Washington's slaves or freemen of the time? Would that be a story that would resonate with us? At first, we didn't think we'd be interested in the story about Alexander Hamilton. And now that says that's false if you create it in an entertaining way. So what's next? What other story could we include? But I wonder if it's a mistake to hold the single writer responsible for solving every social ill, rather than pulling up our sleeves and saying, all right, I want to build on that.

[46:16] Robert W. Schneider: When an audience member sees Hamilton and they leave, what do you think the author's intention is? What do they want the audience to leave with? Is there a message? Is there an idea? Is there a hope that you'll appreciate something that maybe you didn't appreciate before? What do you think the send-off message is?

[46:37] Jerome Stevenson: Yeah. Um, I think it's hard to deny that it's about an unlikely success story. We start with this, 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 and squalor, grow up to be a hero and a scholar? This idea that this guy is the marginalized, even if he doesn't look like Lynn Manuel, he's still from a Caribbean nation, he's still from this, you know, he's still from an island nation, he's still been brought here by the donations of citizens. He doesn't have their access to money and power, and yet he finds a way to absolutely change the course of America. That's hard to deny. That's right up front. And if we watch it, particularly when we watch it looking at Lynn Manuel Miranda in the role, we go, if we can do that, why can't I do that?

Why can't I have that sort of impact on the world around me? Not gonna be easy. But that idea of you can change the world. But also I think there's something really beautiful about the complexity of the person who does that. Hamilton is flawed as a character in the show. And we acknowledge that. But as my mom would say, a broke clock is right twice a day. You know, you don't write off the contribution he makes because of the flaws he has. Because the truth of the matter is we all have flaws. That's what humanity is about. And if we can get past our ability to judge people for their humanity, which we share, then we open up a whole plethora of possibilities. We open up this idea that even while we're screwing up, we can be making a positive impact.

We can be making a difference. We can write a financial system and still be unfaithful. We can get involved in something as stupid as a duel, but then write something as complex as the American financial system. Now maybe for us individually we won't have those lofty aspirations, but even the little contributions that we make in our lives can be made through flawed individuals. And I think that's ultimately the thing I take away from it. I think I hope that people find a myriad more of wonderful takeaways, but that's certainly on the top of the list of mine.

[49:07] Robert W. Schneider: Oh, Professor Stevenson, thank you so much for joining us today. Jerome, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. It was worth the waiting. Oh, I'm so happy you're here. Friends, please make sure to purchase a copy of 50 Key Stage Musicals by visiting routledge.com or by clicking in today's show description. If you want to learn more about Hamilton, please also review the links in the below description. I'm Robert W. Schneider, and thank you for listening to 50 Key Stage Musicals: The Podcast.