Hamilton and Me

Last weekend I took advantage of an opportunity and it helped clear some things up for me. 2025 marks the 10th anniversary of the musical Hamilton (HamtilTen, if you will), and I treated myself to the 9:40am showing where they have heated recliners in every seat.

Straight up, I genuinely believe that Hamilton, whose book and lyrics are written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, music directed and supervised by Alex Lacamoire, choreographed by Andy Blankenbuehler, and directed by Thomas Kail, is the singular greatest musical written in my lifetime, possibly in history.

If you aren’t familiar, Miranda wrote this masterwork based on the 2004 biography of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. His first public performance was the White House in 2009:

It premiered on Broadway in 2015, and in 2016 in the Richard Rogers theatre, the original cast would be recorded for the screen version. That version is currently available on Disney+, but recently it was released on the silver screen with remarks by many of the original cast and production team.

Where are the original cast members of Hamilton now? BroadwayDirect.com wrote an article about it here.

I’ve never listened to a soundtrack ad nauseum like I have Hamilton (but KPop Demon Hunters is closing in fast, lol). So I like to say I’m more than fairly familiar. This allowed me to watch the movie theater version differently. I paid more attention to the choreography, costumes, set, lighting, and with the giant screen, facial expressions and eye positioning. (Shout out to Ariana DeBose in her ensemble role as The Bullet.)

Watching the actors look at each other and connect. Watching them react to each, really listening to each other. My theatre-loving heart swelled. Watching the facial expressions of Leslie Odom Jr., Daveed Diggs, and Miranda was a show in itself. However, the connection between Phillipa Soo as Eliza Hamilton and Anthony Ramos as Philip Hamilton wrecked me in the best way a show could. How she reacts to her son’s passing was startling and beautiful.

Somewhere in Miranda’s rendezvous with Jasmine Cephas Jones as Maria Reynolds the facial expressions, eye contact, and connection clicked for me.

I don’t miss doing theatre anymore, and I know why.

Most students of theatre have heard the Sanford Meisner principle that theatre is “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances,” and I still hold onto that today. That’s the exact reason I fell in love with theatre — not the applause, or the costumes, or the magic, but because you step into another world. More specifically, you step into a world where you know the outcome, that you’re safe in in everyone does their job correctly.

Coming from a tumultuous childhood filled with emotional and physical abuse, I hated being at “home” (term used loosely). I loved being at school, being the jester, being in arts classes and performing. I loved bringing joy to others and having it appreciated. I couldn’t manage to do that in the house where I slept every night.

And so, as I became a teenager and entered high school, theatre became the safe haven where I could pretend to be someone else and live a life that wasn’t mine. I often joke that being an altar boy in the Catholic Church was my start in theatre: put the costume on, follow the script, say the same prayers every time, in order,  kneel, stand, shake hands. The combination of structure and story stuck with me. When I joined the Navy my senior year of high school, I subconsciously lengthened my journey filled with structure and story to be repeated time and time again.

After I was honorably discharged from the Navy, I came back to California and started at Diablo Valley College focused on one goal, my first professional love, the theatre. Through the alcoholism, the opioid addiction, and being angry at God I found connection with others through the theatre. I found peace when I was on stage. When I was living someone else’s life and living truthfully under the predictable circumstances but still acting like everything was unfolding in real time.

I acted in multiple shows through college, even directed a couple showcases and a full-length play. After I graduated, I moved to Indiana where I would act in shows with the South Bend Civic Theatre and The Acting Ensemble, as well as direct with each of them as well.

In the fall of 2017 I became a dad, and in the summer of 2018 I acted in what has, so far, been my last stage show. There was a summer production of In the Heights and I was fortunate enough to be cast as the Piragua Guy (the same role that Miranda would play in the movie version, so we have that in common).

At rehearsals, my infant daughter would be chilling in her car seat or someone’s arms for some snuggles and bounces, and my son, well, he was still in utero that summer. It’s the only time their mother and I shared the stage in the same production.

Late that December, after Christmas, my son would be born, and less than a week later, in January of 2019, I would be admitted to a mental health facility after I made an attempt on my life. That was where I would finally be diagnosed with Bipolar 2 and Major Depressive Order. I was prescribed Lithium Carbonate among other meds, and my life would be forever changed, for the better.

This was the first time I felt, for lack of a better term at the time, normal. I wasn’t experiencing daily thoughts of self-harm or violent flashes in my mind. The lithium did exactly what they told me it would and truncated my emotional range, knocking out the radically extreme lows and the wildly extreme highs. The noise started to go away and I started to see things differently. This is also where my POV of theatre changed. All of a sudden, I wasn’t manic as often as I was, and the thought of the commitment to a stage production seemed less than worth it when I compared it to spending time with my new children. I just couldn’t picture a show that would want to make me take several nights a week away from my kids and multiple weekends away from them for performances.

The next major shift in perspective happened in January of 2024 when their mother and I finally separated. At this point in my life, 5 years medicated and with a dog I could call my own. We sat on the couch in silence and I breathed in a way I had never breathed before – peacefully. As I became a co-parent and focused more on myself and my kids. I began to feel like someone living for themself more than being a people pleaser. I came out as pansexual, polyamorous, queer, and non-binary and I started living truthfully under real circumstances.

And this past weekend as I watched Hamilton on the big screen it dawned on me. I loved the theatre because I made genuine connections on stage in a safe environment. And that’s why I don’t miss it as much as I thought I would – because now, living truthfully under real circumstances, I’m making genuine connections with those around me as my real authentic self. I’ve been living life for myself and my kids, not for a partner. And I did that for longer than I care to admit. So, 16 years after the first performance of the song “Alexander Hamilton” in the White House, 10 years after its Broadway premiere, Hamilton continues to change my life.

And so, with LIT Comms I look to connect with others: businesses, artists, families, as many people as possible, and tell their stories with them. I look to establish genuine connections by living truthfully, and I will continue to encourage others to find their truth as well. We can learn from our own stories, so why can’t we learn from each other’s? In the words of one of my favorite former employers, This Is My Brave, #StorytellingSavesLives