 Yeah, welcome to Community Matters. I'm J. Feidele. We start this week on Community Matters with a very interesting subject, and that is Hamilton. Hamilton, and our notion is that it has changed Broadway theater forever. It may have changed America forever, okay? And Catherine Norr on one side of me, and Stephanie Dalton on the other, and we're all ready to talk about Hamilton to play. So he was born, Hamilton was born in 1755 in St. Troy, our family that was not married, so he was illegitimate. That was very hard in those days. His mother died when he was eight. His father left town, and he was essentially alone. He worked for a shipping company and learned about international trade and finance at the age of 14. There was a bad storm in St. Troy, I say St. Troy, I think it was St. Troy, and he wrote a letter to the newspaper about what had happened. It was poetic, it was well written. He found his, his, his, his medal in writing. He was a good writer, and that lasted his whole life long. And somebody saw the letter and decided he should go to school on the mainland in the U.S., and he sent him to New York, where he arrived in 1773, and I guess that's at the age of 23 years old. And he went to King's College, now known as Columbia University, and the rest is history. So, Catherine, you have the set behind you. Catherine, you've studied the history, and I want to ask you what have we learned about Alexander Hamilton that we didn't know before? Well, I can tell you I knew nothing. And although I have to be, I happen to be a descendant of John Adams and John Quincy Adams, and that just made me more curious about the history. I, I, you know, certainly have done, you know, I was curious after watching it and, you know, certainly did a little bit of Google research and learned that Alexander Hamilton, as the show says, was a quite a writer and wrote 51 of the essays in the Federalist papers and had many roles, including attorney and politician and roles in finance, as well as others. He seemed like a Renaissance man. Yeah, I think he was mixed. He was part Latino, and it's very interesting that Lin-Manuel Miranda is, you know, he's Latino, and he writes well at Wesleyan. He learned how to, or he found his talent in writing and music. So there's a really interesting kind of parallel. You can see how Lin-Manuel Miranda would relate to a guy like Hamilton. How about you, Stephanie? What did you learn? Well, I'm a Washington, D.C. girl, and I knew almost nothing about Hamilton, and except that I, and I thought that statue in front of the Treasury Department, where I would walk by that next door to the White House, and I don't think that's Hamilton. There's another statue somewhere else, right? As I learned that that's not Hamilton, and there's another statue. But also, I learned that what sent getting back to what Catherine mentioned is in high schools. I went to one of those big Montgomery County, you know, high, you know, big competitive high schools, and one of the things they wanted us to do was read the Federalist Papers. But anyhow, now having seen Hamilton, it brought all that back. And I'm dying to read the Federalist Papers now, especially the ones that Hamilton wrote, but to help understand what went on. But nobody knew how, well, this is such a gift, you know, I think to education, certainly to history, but people studying history, I mean, to enter into the real life situation and to understand the tensions and the humanity of it, and also having all of these guys knocked out of deification and back down to human. I mean, Jefferson already had some of that happened to him, but this gets all of them, you know, on the human scale again. So I hope you'll join me in reading the Federalist Papers now. I'll join you in reading Chernow's book, too, 800 pages of history about Hamilton. I think one of the things that stuck with me, you guys, is that Hamilton had a vision that was based on his teen years where he worked in, you know, in shipping in St. Croix, and he learned about international trade from there. He learned how to count, he learned how to do finance. So when he got into a position, his big project was the National Bank and banking, and he had a vision. And were it not for that vision, the U.S. would not be what it is today. His vision was the U.S. would be involved in international trade. It would not be isolationist like some presidents we know. The U.S. would be reaching out everywhere, the U.S. would build its economy by trading with the world. And he understood the value of that. He saw the U.S. as a strong economic power. Right there, the time of the revolution and thereafter, that was his dream. And, you know, in large part it came true. Okay, well, what about the country? What about the events of the time, Catherine? I mean, we've all read about it in school. They made us read about it in school. We've heard these names, as Stephanie mentioned, you know, Jefferson, Madison was involved. She was, there were a lot of big names around that table in that famous painting where they were signing the declaration and so forth. What did we learn about the making of the country? You know, the talk bill was involved, the Frenchman, and he said, well, making democracy is tumultuous. And indeed it was, but we never realized until Hamilton just how tumultuous it was. Can you talk about that? It was truly dramatic. And you know what's interesting to me as you were talking? It occurred to me that when the Supreme Court may look at constitutional intent, and essentially what we saw was the dramatization of that, or we saw it come alive more. And so I think it's sort of like, as a lawyer, if I read, you know, if I read laws that are unambiguous, clearly you don't have to look that far. But if you have, if the Supreme Court has to look at an ambiguous, I can't pronounce it today. Anyway, if they have to look at something and they consider it to be ambiguous, then ambiguous. Okay, so anyway, then they have to look at intent. And I think we see here the dramatization of that in a lot of ways. And it was very dramatic. And using hip hop and R&B and jazz and dance to show that drama, I think that was fascinating. Yeah, well Stephanie, you know, what about that? You know, this is a lawyer's delight because these guys didn't, you know, they didn't, they were not of one mind. They came from many places, you know, 13 colonies. They had different views. They were different constituencies. They didn't all get along. They argued with each other. They were smart. You got to give them that. But the Constitution, the Declaration for that matter was a product of negotiation and compromise, right? Well, yes. And I think even more than compromise, I mean, they were ready to kill each other over this stuff, which is understandable because it was so important to them and think habits that they were because the seriousness of the intent was right to their core and they knew they were doing something really important and they were. And Hamilton's contribution, which I was astounded just to hear and is helping me understand a lot of, you know, our money situation. Is it this, this concept of debt that the entire setup of the financial system is on the basis of this debt? And that is also the driving common factor for pulling all 13 and more colonies together. So it rises above all of that, but he still had to fight like crazy. I mean, he and, and Madden were at, you know, they were at it. It's just George. And then George Washington shows up as the man that he was, which is he saw the big picture. And I don't think he was petting or privileging Madison, excuse me, Hamilton. He just saw that this man cut to the chase here and got through to a concept that was going to make this, even though George Washington was the agrarian guy, right, with the plantation and everything like Jefferson, but he could see that Hamilton was going to take this nation in a really different direction, something new and fresh and potentially very successful, which it has been. So that was. Imagine how exciting it was. You know, he was at King's College, Columbia, Hamilton. When all this started, when the controversy began, you know, when people were marching in the street protesting all that before, you know, the declaration of independence. And can you imagine how exciting it was to be involved in that a whole new world unfolding in front of me? He wanted to be part of it. He could never be president, by the way, because they required you to be a citizen. The Constitution says you have to be a citizen. That may be born, right, born. You have to be born. Natural born. I'm born, right. And born, sorry. Yeah, unless we forget. Yeah. So, you know, I think there are many great characters in this play that we didn't fully understand before. We know much more, don't we, about George Washington. We know, we know much more about Aaron Burr and the relationship between, you know, Hamilton and Burr. That is a really interesting part of the story. And of course, we know more about Hamilton's private life, where he, you know, he got into trouble, a moment of weakness. And before you know it, he was at the wrong end of things. And that became political, just like it does today. I mean, this is really a flesh and blood kind of thing. So, Catherine, who is your favorite character, you know, in the history as seen through the play? Well, you know, naturally, I'm drawn to the main character. And I'm very motivated. It was an inspirational movie to me, because when the way he solved his problems was to write and write and write. So he wrote his way out of problems. And because I'm a writer, I found that inspirational and knowing that I need to be writing every day, I thought, okay, I need to do a Hamilton and write. It's true. You must, in this world, in this country, anyway, you must be able to write to get ahead, must be able to speak also. But writing was his forte, and that's how he got where he was. That's how he was able to express his vision. But it wasn't that simple, because there were people who wanted to stop him and argue with him. What did you think of Washington? I mean, I learned a lot about Washington, aside from his false teeth, which I've always thought about. But he had wooden false teeth. Ultimately, he had teeth that came from animals or even people, but he had a problem with this dental situation. On the other hand, he was a great mediator, and he was a great leader. It's not a mistake that they elevated him. It's not a mistake that they asked him to be king. It's not a mistake that they asked him to serve more time as president. He was a great leader, and he was able to hold these guys together. That was the magic of it. I really liked him. Didn't you like him, Stephanie? I agree. I thought he was well played, too well cast, very well cast and played, because he was a big man, and that portends for some leadership contractiveness. But I mean, he's just been such a big, big person in that whole revolution. And I know in the Capitol that huge painting of him declining a third term. I mean, he was pressured like crazy to do the third term. They weren't ready to go do that, what they had to do. And he said, no, he was going back to Mount Vernon. I mean, and how huge was that? I mean, that because that was the whole essence of this thing was to get out from under the only government system anybody knew, which is the strong man and the king. And this guy just wasn't there for it, even though as a commander in chief, he was a leader and a general, he could pull men together and get things done. But anyway, I think he is a real miracle of a man for sure, and understood what he was doing in ways that you don't expect because he doesn't come out as the big intellect. He doesn't show because he's not the writer. He's not the writer. So these other guys are all over the page and blah, blah. Here's George with his. My favorite, my favorite character aside from Hamilton himself, you can guess who it was. I love George III. Oh, I love George III. Now you know the music, the music and the pentameter of the of his singing was different than everyone else in the cast. It was more classical and the choice of words was absolutely marvelous. He would say he loved somebody. Give him a little love. That meant killing. That was absolutely hilarious. I think he kind of stole the show for sure. And you know, I watched it one song at a time over a little bit of period of time. And when King George was on there, I totally focused because he was fantastic. He was fantastic. His part of it, which was not that big in terms of the minutes, you know, was sort of transfixing. You waited for him to come back. I want more. More George III. You know, the other thing is that when you get this hip hop thing and you get what Miranda wrote, it's very fast. Did you notice that it's high speed? Hip hop is the lyrics move at blazing speed. What did they say that there were something like 200 words a minute on the average in the show? They're spewing information at you and wow. And after a while, you got into it so you can hear it, you can listen to it, you can learn from it. If they had a regular Broadway show with as many words in it as as Hamilton had, it would have taken four to six hours, I recall, to do that show simply because of the, you know, the Rattat lyrics on you. So that made it great. It did. And so that takes me to another question to ask you guys. Does this show, in terms of its production and its production values, was different? And that's really why I think millions of people are watching it now. They really let it out, didn't they, and let it out into the public. So Stephanie, how was this different from the shows you've seen in your life? You know, you spent a lot of time in the East Coast. I'm sure you watched a lot of shows. How was this one different? Well, of course, the rap issue and what you said there, four times as much verbiage in the same amount of time as in any other production. But I mean, this, this grabbed everybody, I was trying to think of another example through this happen, but oh, well, I don't know, maybe Jesus Christ superstar, don't they have all different kinds of people playing all different kinds of parts, you know? So I mean, having everybody in these part, these roles who came from other than Caucasian backgrounds, you know? So just transcending, you know, the whole racial issue, status, it's status, it's not so much racist, actually status, just transcending all of that by having all different kinds of people in there to show the qualities that these guys had that are not saved or special to any particular group. I thought that that was really brilliant. And, you know, it is so trans, you do transcend all that and you're in there and not even noticing it, you know, after a while, that this is completely different from anything, you know, you've ever been taught. So that that was really, really... Yeah, that was the first thing you noticed. But then in a few minutes, you get used to it. And really, everybody in the play was with Black or Latino, everybody. I don't know if there were any howlies in there at all. If there were, you know, you didn't notice them. And they were perfect. They were perfect. Why not have George Washington as a Black guy? Why not? And why not have a Latino and a Black as sisters? Why not? And after a while, the message was, we're all in this together. It doesn't matter what your race is, you can celebrate American history as if everyone is joined at the hip. In the San Francisco version that I saw, Jefferson, I think, was a white guy. And he went big, tall, slim, just like you'd think. And he sings that song, What Did I Miss? You know, as he comes down the stairs after being away for everything. But he, in a way, was a kind of a lampoon. You know, in a way, he was really not treated in any devout way. No, no. In fact, it was clear that he had slaves. And the slavery issue went right through that play. Didn't it, Catherine? I mean, we realized in that play was a fundamental flaw in what they set up, wasn't it? Right. You know, one thing I wanted to point out regarding this last chain of conversation is that we are not used to looking at white men wearing white wigs. And that doesn't, we're not, that doesn't really, we don't relate to it. And so when we look into these faces that look like who we see in a normal day, when we look at black, Latino, and other, you know, you know, essentially minorities, I think we feel more comfortable with that and it's more relatable. And so, and also hearing more modern music, those, those elements made it something I wanted to see. If it was white guys wearing white wigs, I wouldn't want to see it. And if they were, you know, it wouldn't be that interesting to Yeah, that did make it very interesting. And you know, we have the background of the stage set behind you. And what's interesting about that is it's all wood. And it is, it has a reminiscent, it's reminiscent of shipboard life. I heard one commentator say that this was really an expression of the fact that we're all immigrants, including Hamilton himself, was an immigrant. And they reminded you throughout the play with this set that we all came on ships from somewhere. Right. And what about the, the stage production and the dancing Catherine, what did you think of that? Oh, I thought it was excellent. And it was, you know, it's interesting because I did read a lot of reviews about it. So I could understand perspectives. And clearly we all watched this on different, different devices. And because we're, you know, we're not able to go to the theater, we're not, we don't have access to this expensive production that's been closed down. And so we see it kind of in a different, different dimension than, than others. But I think the way the way the set was the fact that it was just, you know, we're looking frontal with only like, you know, maybe two cameras or something, or three cameras, we're not really used to that when we see movies. However, because we know it's a play, and we know we're kind of positioned where you would be in the front row at a Broadway show, we get it. And we're okay with that. And so I thought it was fantastic. I loved the, the dance, the choreography, the performances, I think it worked. Did you realize, Catherine, that the entire stage was turning? Did you realize that? I thought it was the lighting at first. But then I read later that the whole stage was turning. Yeah. And the stage turning was part of the choreography. So some of the dance, you, the steps were done in relation to the turning of the stage. You know, this, you know, the title of our show is, this is, you know, going to change Broadway forever. And, and what's interesting is that, I think it was 60 minutes this past Sunday. Was that yesterday? Time flies. Had a little piece about West Side Story. West Side Story was being done again before COVID. And it was about to open, I think. Then it was actually directed and choreographed by European, Dutch, or German, I forget. Some European group, a man and a woman who handled those things. And it was really extraordinary. It was, it had caught the same style of blending video and, and, you know, and live stage performance. What I mean is in that program, they are taking video and they have video clips of the action in West Side Story. And they're showing it on screens behind the players. So it's a mixed media. And this was in a sense a mixed media too, not, not the same level of video. There was no video behind them in Hamilton. But it was new. The whole way of producing it was new. It was the hip hop, the language, the whole pace of it was different than anything you've seen before. And this West Side Story coming up, you know, what it says to me is that we know that Broadway has changed. We know we have to do things that are different. We can do West Side Story, but it's not going to look anything like the West Side Story in 1957. Nothing like Bernstein. Although the music is similar. But what, so my question to you, Stephanie, is, how is this different, really profoundly different? And how is it going to affect Broadway going forward? That is when Broadway opens up again. Well, it's just totally going to change. I mean, as far as the staging was spectacular, anyways, you all were speaking of it with the round, the stage movie. But anyway, it's going to affect every single level of it. And including, you know, the kind of music and the topics and the performances. It's just going to open up the window on the possibilities for making things happen that are so imaginative and creative beyond anything. I mean, this is just what you call that, the catalyst. I mean, it's going to explode for me. I didn't know about the West Side. That sounds fabulous. Look forward to that. But the other thing that it did, and I think it's just going to have this huge effect because with all of those people cast from backgrounds of immigrant backgrounds and descendants of slaves and this sort of thing, to show those people taking over the most revered founding father roles is phenomenally important. And I know a lot of people say, well, when did they talk more about slavery? I don't understand. Yeah, well, I mean, it came up a couple times, but it seemed like that should have been. And I just was thinking about that. And then I realized, like, the whole thing was about that and how slavery is about people. And these people can do anything any people can do. It's not reserved for anybody. I mean, it just took away the barrier for me and opened that. Yeah, that's a very good point. And that's really the part of our whole discussion here. That, you know, what we saw was a completely polyglot cast. We saw, you know, the slavery was right through the program because, you know, the black and Latino players, that was extraordinary. And you can't forget it. What you begin to see, don't you, Catherine, is we have a new America. This is the America we saw in the demonstrations a few weeks ago. This is a new America in terms of the demographic, the future generations of America. And it's all shown here in Hamilton. It's all here. It reminds you. It tells you this huge message of, hey, it's changed. And it's going to be different going forward. And my question to you, Catherine, is, you know, so now we have a movie. Before, you know, there were a few hundred seats in that theater. And that's the only way you could see it. And you can pay somewhere between 500 and 1500 bucks to get a seat and more, I think. And, you know, you wouldn't get in. You wouldn't see it. And all of us knew from little pieces of it what it was like. But now we can go on, what is it, Disney through Amazon or otherwise, so we can see it. And millions and millions of people in the last two weeks have seen this extraordinary. Okay. So now what you have is a play that shows you the new America. And then you have the whole America with access to the play. So I said, no, not only does it reflect the new America, but the new America can see the reflection. That's what I'm asking you about. What does this mean in the larger sense? Well, you know, I think that our country has always, you know, obviously we've been always made up of immigrants and living in Hawaii, I do not look into white faces a lot. I'm not, I'm looking into mostly Asian faces. And so to me, that's the America that I'm used to. If you're in California, you have a different experience. However, if you're in like Oklahoma, that might be a different experience as well. But what we're, you know, we have such a diverse country. And what we're doing is bringing another level of diversity, which is diversity on Broadway stage. And you know, what's interesting, Jay, is that when I look at this production, and I compare it to Cats, the movie that was that I saw months ago, that was a movie that was made using, you know, it was made from a Broadway production. This was actually the Broadway production. So Cats was distinguishable from this because it was, it wasn't giving us a seat in the audience. So not only was this a seat in the audience, but this was put on the Disney plus channel or, you know, access. And so, you know, you're, you're allowing children that were of appropriate age to see history in this way, which is a very valuable thing and opens the door to, you know, creating that interest. And I wonder how this will impact people. You know, some people will, some children, some teenagers may be very impacted from this and it could shape their lives. I agree. I totally agree. You know, going back for a moment to West Side Story, there's part of West Side Story, for example, an intimate scene of the star, star crossed lovers, Maria, and I forget the name of her opposite, that takes place in a room, in a room above the theater in the theater building. And it's, it's video. And what you see is this very intimate scene of the lovers in this room, which is not on the stage, live through video. It is, it's sort of expanding the boundaries. Okay. And that's, you know, it's one of the reasons why I think they did this, because they realized the boundaries are no longer there, that you have to do multimedia, you have to, you have to go beyond. So we're going to see more video in more plays. But, but Stephanie, my question to you is this, you know, going to see a play, you could be in the front row for a lot of money, you could be in the last row for something less. And you can't see their faces, if you're in the last row, you can't see, what did they say, the roar of the grease bait and the smell of the crowd, whatever that claim was years ago, you can't really get the tactics, tactile experience, if you're in the last row. In this play that we saw on Disney, we all saw this, right? It was actually two productions, two separate productions of Hamilton, and they integrated it together. And they had close ups. And you can tell, because sometimes the costumes were a little bit askew, you can tell. They had close ups where you would never be able to see a close up from the last row, where you paid $500 for the seat. This time, you can see them acting, you can see Miranda acting, he's a great actor. And all the players were just fabulous. They really understood, they understood the history, the characters, they understood the music. I mean, it was marvelous. But you wouldn't see that in the theater. So my question to you is going forward, Stephanie, would you like to see it in a movie at home, in the comfort of your television room? Or would you like to schlep down to Broadway and see it? And given that question, how is Broadway going to be affected by this? Well, I certainly would prefer the front row at Broadway. So that's it. Of course, that's not going to be available for a while, or maybe at all, depending on... Well, Miranda's out of it now, yeah. But anyway, Miranda, he's the heart of it, he's out of it. Yeah. So, yeah, I just think that this is the effect of this on the next generation of the presentations on Broadway. We're going to see some wonderful things. I mean, that's what he's done too, is he's just stimulated, he's germinated the seed from what was practically dying, like said, you know, like in the 60s or 70s, it really run out till chorus line and blah, blah. So now, he's really germinated it to a masterful, much more masterful level. And there's all this talent, untapped talent out there, because you needed someone like the Lynn Miranda to get approved and get the right paperwork done and get somebody to support him so that it could be seen that there is much many more ways to go and present these... So, Stephanie, honestly, I want to ask you this last question. You saw it most recently. You saw it in San Francisco and you saw it most recently on television as a movie. Were you emotionally touched by it? Oh, yeah. I can barely get through the end of it. I am terribly emotionally touched. Yes. Well, sir, I mean, I had such a tragedy. I mean, that's a whole nother level of it. The tragedy of his losses and the capacity of those people to get through that. And the wife was going right through with him, supporting him all the way. And what they had to endure and had to endure it elegantly, I think even really then, you had to endure it elegantly, not just up on the stage. So, and the battling and the fighting over what has become... I mean, I don't know if you guys watch Bloomberg, but they're all into this heel-curve interference and who's playing with it and who's not and will the U.S. And I mean, I couldn't believe it when I watched Hamilton because I finally understood a little bit about what Sam Hill was talking about. And the fact that always this huge political argument is actually the foundation of our system. And it just just... So at that substantive level too, along with other... You know, Catherine, I am always, I'm always troubled by the fragmentation of our society where people don't feel they're connected to the government. And the government for that matter doesn't feel it's connected to the people. But I think my emotional reaction on this, as Stephanie said, was very strong because I felt that this was a statement that, yes, we are all connected. Every race, every color, every person. And that we are in this thing together. We have been in this thing for 240 years. And we have to remember that this play makes me remember that. What does it do for you? Well, it does. And it tells... It's a rags to riches story in a lot of ways because it shows that a immigrant born of a single mother who comes in and works very hard and was able to succeed by becoming one of the founders of our nation. And it raises that possibility for young people today that despite wherever they are in their lives that they can do what Barack Obama did and become a U.S. president. So it raises possibility. It gives us hope. Yeah, it gives us hope. And one of my various hopes is that they do another one. I want to do Lincoln. That's just me personally. Well, thank you, Catherine. Great to talk to you about this. And Stephanie, great to talk to you about this. Thank you so much for your thoughts about it and for watching the show and analyzing the show. It's so great to have this piece of culture among us. Thanks so much. Thank you very much.