A YEAR AGO TODAY, i saw hamilton on broadway
How did I get Hamilton tickets?
That's everyone's first question. (Always with quite textual subtext. I get it.) I spent hours coordinating dates for my family (why do the kids have to grow up and take summer internships when I want to go to Broadway?), and more hours on sites that reviewed various seats at the Richard Rodgers Theatre and, most of all, hours on the ticketing site looking for non-resale seats that dovetailed all those things into 3 seats together in the middle of row L and 1 seat way up front. (Getting 4 together was a non-starter.) I bought them in early November for the end of June show. Life intervened, despite all of my planning, and my husband needed to be in Ireland with his mum during June, so my Hamilton-loving niece joined us for summer in the city. Was it amazing? Completely. For the first half, I sat in the front row (note: not the actual front row, but the first of the rows they sell tickets for - i.e., the second row) and I turned into a bolt of pure lightness and electricity the moment Leslie Odom, Jr. came out, stood like eight feet from me, and began singing. ("Singing" seems like the weakest of words to describe his performance.) Also, Lin-Manuel Miranda kept making eye contact with me. WITH ME! It was intense. And delightful. And giddy-making. I know, probably I was imagining it. BUT, a friend of my kid's and his family were sitting two rows behind me, and they said I wasn't. Also (I maybe mention this a lot), he retweeted me after the show and said that my son (who sat in the up front seat for the second half) and I were awesome. Excuse me, "so awesome." (Chills, people.)
The view from Row L was also amazing. The whole stage was a glittering kaleidoscope of power and motion and light and such gorgeous, gorgeous sound.
My niece didn't leave her seat at intermission or after the show until she'd finished journaling. Meanwhile, my younger son - the one who split the front row with me - waited at the pit and got a signature on his songbook from Alex Lacamoire. (Both sons were Hamilfans, but the younger, who is a budding composer, was the greater, so the seat split went to him.) The four of us floated out of the theatre and into the Greatest City in the World.
At any rate, to celebrate that amazing night, and also because it's very much in line with everything I want the world be, I donated today to Lin-Manuel Miranda's latest Prizeo campaign (benefitting the Immigrants: We Get the Job Done Coalition), and made an embarrassingly inept speech as I screened an adaption of the Hamilton song "Dear Theodosia" the sons performed for my Mother's Day gift last year.
You should donate!
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