wonderful things going on in cleveland these days. i think it's an important moment in history and i'm only glad is taking place here and i think it will be a great time for our city to shine. .. jeremy mccarter is next and he's ..

[inaudible conversations] >> all right. good afternoon and welcome to the 32nd annual chicago tribune printers row lit fest. i'd like to thank all of our sponsors. the lit fest is big on social media. the theme of this year's festival is what's your story, so we encourage everyone to share the stories you hear this weekend on twitter, instagram and facebook. using the hashtag prlf16. downloading the printers row app where you roll find all the chicago tribune's premium book content, and the complete litfest schedule. today's program is being

broadcast live on c-span2's booktv. there will be a q & a session at the end of the presentation so anyone with questions, please line up at the microphone to your right, so that the home viewing audience can hear the questions. lastly, before we begin, ask that you silence all of your cell phones and turn off any camera flashes. with that, i'd like you all to welcome the co-author of holiday hamilton: the revolution." jeremy mccarter. [applause] >> hi, everybody. thank you for being here on this very hot day. my name is jeremy mccarter. i am very happy to be the co-author of "hamilton: the revolution." i see a couple copies in the audience. i'm happy to be here, here, meaning because chicago has been home. since i moved to chicago with my family i have had to go back to new york to do anything about

hamilton, that's where the show has been so able i'm the advanced -- as i'm sure you know, in a couple months, "hamilton" is coming here, which is very exciting. so to help me get a sense of you use guys are -- who you guys are i'd love to know who has spine lin's youtube video when he would at the white house. a lot. who has been to new york to see the show? some. be careful. this an envious looking crowd. who has listened to the cast album? w.h.o. has -- who has heard is more than once? who listens to it once a week. who listens to it every day? has listened to it once today? okay. that's a lot of people. some of whom raised their hand. you are my people, i'm happy your here, thank you for coming. so the organizers asked to us frame the talks reasons the theme of the festival, which this year is: what's your

story? which sounded fun for about five seconds. and then when i started thinking about that and filling half an hour with that it got be unnerving. "what is your store by sounds like question about your life, and how do you talk about your life for half hour, and then if you keep thinking, which is actually even more terrify, what if you can actually get your whole story into half an hour. what kind of life are you leading? you should quit your therapist because you're repeating yourself. so what i hope liz taylor, who is going to come out to ask questions, won't mind me doing is tweaking the team. it stenof talk about your story, i'd like to talk about our story, which field more in keeping with the theme of the show, which is hamilton. so, what is our story? obviously the story that brings us all together here today is am ton. and it's not just us today that

the show is bringing together. hamilton is in my experience of being around the city this last fewerees, a rare work bringing an extraordinary number and range of people together. now, that is not always the case. there are plenty of great works that get made that people admire, and in a kind of austere way you. think its great but don't want to give it a hug. people are giving "hamilton" a hug. sometimes more than that. i've walked out of the stage door plenty of times on broadway, and right into the arms of the enormous crowd that waits to see the person who play aaron burr, and from she sound of he shrieks that is love. we even did -- lin and i did a signing at the drama book shop in new york a few blocks from the teeter, and that was an incredible afternoon. a three-hour procession of young

people, old people, every race, every color, every background, different accents, coming up to him and trying to put into words what this show had meant to them,; and i won't share them. they were really, real where private and powerful but i will never again doubt that stories can change the world. now, we should stipulate that not everybody feels this way there are people who, for one can principle or another, for that simple matter of taste, "hamilton" is not for them and that's okay. doesn't have to be universal for us to say there's something going on here. this show ha an appeal to political parties and races and ages. asked about this when i was doing the book. quest love, an executive producer of the cast album, said this nearly universal embrace reminds him of "thriller." "thriller" the most popular album ever made. he told me he loved that album and said his teachers loved the

album, the kids that have been calling hip racial slurs on the playground before the album was released asked them him to tetch them to do the moon walk, and. crazies things about "ham to be" we're not just talking bat pop album that has drawn all this attention. even a pop album that makes everybody put extra zippers on their court. is this agency his examination of the founding of the united states, about the country, and i wouldn't say our country because i don't want to speak for you. the founders in their time worked a couple of secular miracles. the defeated the british and founded a government unlike any government that had ever existed. these were not perfect men or perfect women. they didn't end slavery. they allowed it to thrive. you don't need me to tell you that the racial and economic fourses in the last 240 years that makes plenty of people file

alienitiled. the most important thing of this, that i talked about in the book, is that "hamilton" is making people feel sometimes for their first time they have a stake in the origins of this country. the story ofs her could by their story. hugh broadway musical did that and what that means for america, that's the story we tried to tell in this book, and that's what i'll try to talk about today. but to do that we have to ask the question: what is our story in a slightly different sense, which is what is the story with me and my co-author and my friend, lin manual miranda. let me take a within with that. one night in early 2007 i was the theater critic for the new york magazine and i went to a place way over on the west side of manhattan called 37 arts to see a musical by people i never heard of that it did not expect to be very good. i had before writing for years repeat lid, on 'onoxiously about the power of hip-hop as a way of telling stories.

had seen people try to use it but never the with a i thought it had the potential, way of telling stories, a drama, a kind of writing that shakespeare did and the greeks did that most playwrights did until 200 years ago. what statue were a lot of musicals how bad the record industry was, which is true. and after all these years of wait can for somebody to act on this, do the thing is saw my favorite emcees doing, imagine my surprise and my delight and my relief when, within five minutes of the start of "in the heights" i felt like here's someone who gets it, actually thinked about these things the same way i do. use hip-hop and salsa to del the story of life in upper manhattan and has a facility for writing ballads. who loved the craft of broadway as much as he like biggy small. i wrote stuff in my review and a few weeks later i found out that the experience i had of watching

the show, hough i felt, is about how lin felt when he read my review, this sense of, there's someone wholes gets this thing. the publicist for the show is a friend of ours. he fixed us up because he thought we would hit it off and he was right in 2008 we met up for drinks. this was before lin was donned the macarthur genius, the people magazine, one of the sexiest men alive, but you could tell that something was coming, something was going on. i'd like to give awe moment-by-moment account of that conversation because i guess it is directly responsible for my standing on this stage right now. the fact is we killed too many brain cells that night for me to reconstruct it. and the most important is one that it only realized much later, on the opening need of "hamilton" o. broadway, found an e-mail i had written a few days after lin and i melt for those drinks and made clear in that very clear conversation in the summer of 2008 he told me about this crazy idea he had.

he only started to tell a few people. to do a mixed tape, concept album, about the life of alexander hamilton to told through hip-hop. a crazy idea. objectively a crazy idea. this was few days before his famous mexico location when he took -- he had the title that night that we met. and ben franklin was a key in and a kite and applies to his life at that point. fast forward three years, i'm on the staff of the public theater in new york. part of my job is to bring there artists, develop projects; the first person i propose told my boss is lin, my friend, i say, prompt missing talent. he told me this great idea he had. so as soon as i say lin, what oscar hears is, lin, that guy that competed against me for the tony award three years ago and won.

in the heights hat won best musical at the expose of a musical that oscar had developed. so i convinced oscar to take the meeting, and i e-mailed lin to tell him how thrilled oscar was to get to meet him. and they hit it off quickly and completely, and i think for life. during one of those early meetings lin hand me a cd. you have to ask your parents. a cd is this plastic disk that in the old days we used to hand each other music on. i understand before that it was vinyl but i don't believe it. and on that cd was -- were the demos of the first eight or ten songs he had written for "hamilton." i wish i could remember that night when we met for drinks. remember precisely what happened when i heard those songs. i was sitting in the apartment in brooklyn, popped it in. the third or fourth song on the album was "helpless" which, if you heard -- owl you people who raised your hands to whose heard

it this morning, you know that" helpless "is a song that eliza skylar, hamilton's soon to be wife sings in act one the version you heard is close to the one i heard back then. the difference is you hear -- i got lin singing it himself in facet to -- falsetto which i tour for different reasons, and i knew at the end of the song, i knew at the end of the song, if he -- anyone who could do that, write a pop song that was as catchy and potents as crazy in love which the beyoncé, j seasoning which is it and still have that kind of precise story telling power to land it on a dime, listen to its again. see how much territory it covers. anybody who is capable of doing that. if he can put this project on stage instead of a record, it's going to be the best musical of our generation. that does not mean to say that i expected all of this that has happened round the show.

lin didn't expect it. his director didn't expect. no one expected it because, again, it's insane. no one can even dream you land the cover of "rolling stone" and the cover of "time" and your heroes wants to meet you when you go to the white house the first liedy said the show you made, quotes, is the best piece of art in any form i have ever seen in my life. that cd is important to me for other reasons the context of my marriage because three years after it was handed to me, i brought my wife to opening night at the public, and at intermission she turned to me and said, oh, this is why you have been talking about this show all these years. the party that night is when lin promotioned the idea that we write the book, and after everything i said you probably think my reaction would have been this immediate exuberant yes mitchell actual response was closer to, eh, because it was one thing for me to see how this incredible show was developing

the work that lin and his director were doing, but writing a book was something altogether different and what it forced know do is ask the question again, with a different perspective. how do you get this down on the page? it's funny to see the descriptions people say about the book. a back stage look at the show, companion to the show, and those things are absolutely true up to a point. that's why people buy the book but those are also explicitly almost verbatim the thing wes knew it couldn't only be. those are the places we were starting and we knew we had to get past. this is also related to when i see that people say it's a show -- a book for people who love "hamilton." yeah, sure, we intended it be for people who have curiosity about american culture and excite hip-hop. just that at the moment, that subset of people is essentially

the same subset of the people who love "hamilton." i went off and did some thinking and found myself asking, as i usually do in those appropriate -- what would steve sound home do. he is want influence on lin as he is an influence on all composers working in broadway today. he is an influence on me because of how gutsy he is and how brilliant, the chances he takes, how regular rouges he is. i was thinking about one thing that is crucial for tall story tellers, books, songs, doesn't meeter. the sandra day o'connor -- -- you figure out the story you want to tell and then figure out the forum. if we are going to do this book we can't tell the story how the show was made.

you want to tell about what the story is doing, the change it is effect neglect world, hough is it changing the lives of the people who made it and the people coming to see it? finally at some point it clicked. and this this short version from which this entire book sprang. "hamilton" doesn't dramatize the revolution, it us the revolution, it changes the abroadway sounds and changes who get thursday tell the story of the founding and changing the lives of the people making it, and since content dictated form, then it can't have the same structure as all the other books about broadway shows because those are trying to do something else. can't have the oral history 0 at the top and have the side bars with the little features about people. can't tuck the libretto away at the back of the book and seems the creation of the show was the end result. we came up with a new structure, new kind of book to tell a new kind of story. we had to tell two storiesed in tandem. there's the show tracing

alexander hamilton's incredible life, and then the book, following the same arc, telling the story howl he show got made. how to do that. turned to someone i don't consultas often as son heim, j hsieh. -- jay -- jay-z. he complains where you understand better because of the chapter that preceded it. thought that could be a useful structure make itonnologial. we could begin with a night in 2009 when lin performed the opening number at the white house, the youtube clip. we could end with opening night on broadway six years later. lin i could already tell would probably have just finished the last numbers in the show. so in between those two that's the trick, then, how to space out the story of how the shot got made, the impact it's having, while "hamilton" and the other characters on stage are going through their adventures

and having are their trials and crises. the final influence on how the book came together and the thing that goss us royalweight the federalist papers, that figure in the show, that were largely hamilton's doing. they gave us the idea for the old timey title. my edition. and they show you how you can vary a theme and keep driving a point home. they were making the argument for the constitution. wanted to make an argument not exactly on behalf of the somehow because the show didn't need me to argue -- argue on its behalf. anyone -- any show that didn't need a lot of nices a jecktives, hamilton. wanted to make an argument about stores. i wanted to make an argument how stories can change the world. and the thing that gave me permission to do it was a quote i found when i was doing some research. henry cabot lodge edited the first collection of hamilton papers and made a point that the

dominant person of hamilton's life was not creating the national bank, not being a hero at the revolutionary war. wasn't diving in a dual with aaron bur. i was creating a national consensus, to get americans to think about themselves in a new way, think about the country in a new way. think of themselves as a union and then keep driving that point home as much as he could while he had time on this earth. thinking and feeling, that to me might bev what alexander hamilton did but thinking and feeling is the theater's wheelhouse. that's our specialty youch get people to feel differently about themselves elm that's why we're in business. when i thought about hmm ton roz lifestyle if thought was was happening around show show. the way people react ode song tri. what was trying to tell the store of not two revolutions they were two aspects of the same revolution. a grandiose claim to make on behalf of a show. to about it next to the legacy

of a founding father. you can make arrangements on behalf of this moment or that show. here's one for me. bust arhymes, a rapper, scheme see it one night. he told his team when he went on stage the next night for a concert he wanted to have a costume like the one the king wears in holiday pam ton." when you -- "hamilton." wedge you can second him on stage as king george iii you have trend the limit of the possible. two aspects of one american revolution, that's the israel we were going to tell and we would call hamilton. hough how did we do it? we had to work really fast. not alexander hamilton fast but at least as fast as the people that lin collaboratessed with to make the show. they're coming to town and might get to spend time with them so i should warn you that the director, the music director and the choreographer, the core four

artists who made the showing. if you're going to talk to them, caffeinate heavily in advance because they think fast, talk fast, they even move fast. the creative metabolism of the people who methods this show is light speed and that's one of the things that is essential why it works. there are 32 chapters in the book. had seven weeks to draft them. i do not recommend this as a way of making books, for the record. there was head start of me having been around a lot to see things that were happening in rooms where no writer belonged but then i wasn't there as a writer. i was there as sun someone on the staff of the public theater. lin couldn't have had much longer than if to write the annotations in the book. he was doing this while he was performing seven times a week and unbee meant to to everybody was writing the music for the cantina scene in the new "star wars." i would send him with apdf file, asking questions and opinion ought places where i remembered

there once having been a variation on something, trying to figure out while he made the choice he made. and he surprised me. again and again. as well is a i newell the guy he surprised me by digging into his past, his life, showing me things in the show that were more autobiographical than i expected. he was my first reader and i his. that's hough it had to be on our crazy timetable to make these pieces snap together to tell one story, which was at the end we had to ten up the space. we wanted to add scans from the notebook. you can see the actual pages where the tough is coming out of hit brains and he is trying to get to the page. the only way to find the right page was for him before he went on stage to leave me with a big stack of those note books, which is then unvarnished look into the guy's brain, and i had the same peopling. had to get -- the same feeling,

i had to do things to quickly, and then i shared' -- where i was writing my chapters which i don't let anybody see that stuff. but it was the only way we would get it done. if we weren't on the same wave length we wouldn't have started the book and if we didn't trust each other, we want to of wouldn't finish. there was no help from other writers and we didn't want help. we didn't want outside experts weighing in. content dictated form. if the store of hamilton is the story of different peoples from different backgrounds coming together to make something together, then the challenge was to get the most different kinds of content, the most different episodes, essays, profiles, things like that, and fit them into the smallest number of pieces. so, no side bars. no things awful the side unless they're primary sources. e-mail exchange, cut lyrics from the show. historical documents.

now, content dictates form is the principle but there's also something that we took from the spirit show itself. tommy kale, the show's brilliant director, realmized early on the only way the work is is not to apologize for the fact he has broken with all convention and made the actorsors who are were playing the roles actors of color, and what he says is either the audience is 0 going to come up to you or they're not but nicer not go to be a wink at the audience. it's going to be immediate, going to be unfiltered. the book, like the show, is something that we wanted to have you be only a mill meeter airplane -- millimeter away from the action in the we cans of writing, that perspective of being an eye witness to something incredible, was not a stretch. tommy was brilliant at fine-tuning the show and at least as brilliant in creating the conditions that ail loved his collaborators to thrive. that's a very delicate thing to do. you're talking about the

psychology of 40 or 50 people. and you're trying to give. the what they need thatso they can do their best. even if it's not always the same from one to the next. he kept everybody cool, made the cast some the designers think the stakes were low so they could play and take chances and believed this and would walk outside into total pandemonium, because as the show got closer to opening night the fever in new york kept building. it was a hurricane around the show and tommy hat contractedded an eye. -- created an eye. the audience reaction at the first performance was so crazed. some of the actors weren't sure they were going to get through it. afterwards on stage they all rallied together and some of them were crying. this is going to sound a little exploitative but if you want to know why it was important to tell the story the way we told it, that crying that the actors were doing was as important to us as the fact that the show happened on a certain date, certain theater, and it was received in a certain way.

the reason why hamilton is a historical drama that feels as if its happening to people that we know is because when lin and tommy talked about stories, the capital t, cap -- cap cal s, they minute that they wanted to create -- evoke the emotional reality of these men and women who lived in the 1770s and 1890s. the room where it happened is the great second act show stopperrer is not about the dinner at which hamilton and madison and jefferson trailedded the location of the u.s. capital for a bank. it's a song about how he feels from the fact he is excludessed. his envy and angst. it dramatizes the pressure of needing to put the new nation on its feet. it's about fatherhood. it's not just in the book that lin add read song or tommy found an actor. we wanted show how it felt.

i got to write about beautiful things and write about painful things. their personal achievements here and dreams coming true, also sickness and death. a lot of pain happened in a couple of years we were trying to re-tell in the course of this book. so, sure, on one hand we're writing for fans now. we want people who love the show to have a better sense what it is you're hearing and listening to but we were aware of writing for people who look back on this weapon want them to know how lin and tommy their brilliant collaborators did it but also went them to how it felt to be doing and it also want them to know what it cost. this idea of look can back from someplace in the future is important to understand this moment, i think. the story that we're telling is one that started before us and going to continue after us there are a couple of moments in the eight years that i was very privileged to watch this show happen when i had this feeling

that it can only liken to vertigo but in time, instead of space. this historical vertigo of seeing past and present crash together. it's hard to write about this without sounding like your high. trust me. i've tried to do it. when we learned that president obama was coming to the show it was technically after we were supposerred to be done writing it but when president obama is coming you -- we add an epilogue. to see president obama walk on stage at richard rogers after a performance of the show, to see him stand about six feet from where clays jackson who plays george washington, just sung the word washington's farewell address, then to hear president obama look back on the incidence of his own administration with the past and present starting to shimmer next to each other, and the distance between them to collapse. biggest moment of this kind happened after the -- when i was very lucky to go with the "hamilton" company to the white house and perform for president

and mrs. obama, vice president and mrs. biden and an incredible array of dignitaries in the east room and i thanks the theater god is didn't have to write that on a timeline. i tried to write about it in an essay for buzzfeed about this but if you want to understand what is special about the show, it's in here. the last song was "wound last time" a song in which chris jackson sings the words washington's farewell address. imagine this. you're seeing chris jackson, an african-american man from illinois, singing the song, directly in front of him is president obama, who is african-american, his wife behind him is the gilbert stewart portrait of george washington. the first president, a character that chris jackson is playing who owned black men and it felt like all of american history was

condensed into this one little tab blow. didn't have -- tab low. i didn't have to turn my head to see it. what is most exciting about the show is knowing people who were just behind president obama when this performance was happening. there were 100 students from local schools. there's a chapter where i talk about what some of these students, some of the reactions they were feeling. in earlier performances when students had come. but the place where the two revolutions intersect, where -- is that those kids sitting there were seeing two george washingtons and they're both valid. the gilbert stewart washington minute something in the 1790s when it was painted. the lin manualmer rain -- -- when i spoke to actors when i was making the book most powerful interview l withwith actors who plays bur and the one

who plays jefferson and they were very candid with me about how their lives might be different if, when they were the age of those kids, they had seen a black man playing george washington. or if they had had the opportunity to step into the shoes of these men who had felt remote from their experience, felt lyme like they were living a story they had nothing to do with. this is the last generation of kids who won't have a chance to have that experience because of this show. lin has reimagined the past in writing historical drama that worked the way this one does but also seeing the future inch 20 years this will be a much different country than today. we know the racial makeup of the countries is changing the expectations what it means to ben an american are going to change. what's exciting is i think about how this is a chapter in one long american story that hamilton, like the obama presidency, are both in a a prefiguration of what is to come.

the best reactions i have gotten from the book is, i had no idea it was that hard. people didn't know quite how much effort and toil went into making this thing that looks, i think you agree, pretty effortless. it seems though it was natural, bound to be what was. of course that's not true. and once you step back a little bit and look at it you realize there's a lesson. think how many fluky little things had to happen just right at the just the right time for me and lin to meet or become friends, let alone write this book together. think of the show. seems perfect and inevitable but wasn't anymore than the book wasment to. tommy told me something, a great insight into the process, i wish i'd been able to use in the book but you get the benefit today. he said he was looking back over the whole process and said, if lynn had shanked that performance at the white house back in 2009, what would have happened? it is flawless. he rips it could have again

sideways so many different ways and didn't. the amount of things that had to couldn't spire for this to happen to make it more a miracle than anything else. if the book wasn't inevitable, the showsshow, then what does that imply about the subject of both of those which is the american revolution of the 18th century, hamilton's revolution. it seems like that must not be inevitable either. the americans had to win the war, something that no colonial colonials haye evidence didn't half. s to found a government without real precedent and to make them stick, knowing that we take the show's success for granted and shouldn't, makes me want to stop taking the american experiment for grantedded, too. it could have failed at any moment. we need to do what the show says, to look around and feel how lucky we are to be alive right now. if as the show is helping to us see maybe we're all part of the american stories, then all of us have a role to play in making

sure it continues. one of the last things that that lin and i add was my favorite page of the 288 between those covers. it's the dedication page. it's the most perfect collaboration because it's two lines long and i had the first line, which was why don't we dedicate this back to our children, and he hads the served line, which is, because it's lin, perfect. and it was, who will come of age with our young nation. now, that line, on one hand, is two fathers expressing hopes for their young son and daughter and also two americans expression the same kind of hope for the country. what i'd like to do now, before we start taking questions is read a chapter of the book. this is one that touches on some of these things. it is chapter 14, for those who have -- i don't think anyone should read along. that would be creepy. if you insist, keep me honest if

i drop a wore -- please don't do that. this is chapter 14. this is about the american experiment and when it really began. this is the chapter that sets up the songs that are the final battles of the revolutionary war, guns and ships, history has its eyes on youy york town. this is the day of firsts, says tommy, may 9, 2014, and he would looking at the 150 people who packed the theater of the 52nd 52nd street. a program that specializes created for and by kids and sometimes offers spaces to shows like "hamilton. "hey came for what the called, quote, the first time we will have ever done the first pack and the second act back to back. he site you're the first audience in the history of the world to have seen that. the show's title was another first that day. jeffrey sellers the lee lead producer, persuaded lynn to drop mixed tape as the title. he joked it might by the most important contribution he made

to the show. quote, hamilton sounds like blockbuster, jeffrey says, at least it does now. tommy warned the audience that lin had been adding and changing things nell night before. quote, you'll hear things even he has not heards out loud. lin could not help himself. finish, a tune at 10:30 for actors learning it at 11:00 he tweets during a workshop, horrible, horrible, when will i stop can do my homework on the bus. i'm 33. the company has spent five weeks experimenting with different ways to move people and furniture around the stage. five weeks was an unusually long time but not long enough to figure out how to stage this show. tommy had been feeling stressed out about how to speed up the process when the music director reminded him that nobody was forcing them to do anything. they decided to stage act one and fall fact to music for act 2. the biggest first of the workshop and it's real

revelation is what the cast wore, looking back now the costume choice were obvious. nobody thought son may 14-inch. no even the man who made enemy. paul tazewell designed costumes for shows like the colonel purple and dr. zhivago, when he heard the dem notes he nudes that hamilton needed to combine both sensibilitieses but as the -- the question was how. the challenge was figure ought where the two areaes me and what percentage is hip-hop and what is 18th century. he look at street fashion from our time and from hamilton's time and styledded the work of two stylists who tried to mash the times. everybody has done an 128th 128th century at one final 0 -- 18th century at one tim or another. despite of his experience, the tool kitt and research, paul cooperate locate the right point of intersection between the past

and president. luckily he and tommy collaborate owned five productions before, developing a mutual trust to remain untroubled by the fact they weren't sure what to. quote, we thought the only way to figure this out is to try it, says paul. since they knew what the cast looked like in contemporary clothes, apology used the work schupp to experiment with an intense live thaw ten tim time. period from the neck down, modern from the neck occupy. i didn't want to she christ in a powdered wig. wanted to see him for whom he was. that choice by itself doesn't constitute a first. joe started putting black and latino actors more than half a century ago. more than recently visual artists, have painted contemporary black men in the trap is of old masters. still, the sight of this cast in paul's costumes made the show seem doubly, tripley audition in

action one when the actors came on wearing blue coats with red trims unmistakably the uniforms of george wafer's army. for that day, odd mence members halt the odd expose of watching black and latino actors,. people went at intermission. they screamed at the finale, and the lobbyafterwards -- you could hear euphoria, aspiration, from people would want to invest in the show. four preparations between this and saturday which maintenance that 600 penal fanned out that weekend to the their friends what they had seen. by monday, "hamilton toy had become the most talked about not quite show in new york. for tommy, the experiment of

putting actors in period costumes hads been a complete sense. one choice that seemed like a confession, the spare nature of workshops. owl the actors in pear. ment tone clothed and adding clotheses only when they distinguished themselves as the characters carried to broadway. paul had received five tony award nominationness this career and still wanted to get this one right. the piece is so humbling he says, tears rising in his eyes itch didn't want to f it up and get in the way of it. there are certain places where i remember, oh, yeah, i'm a part of this. not this production. i know what bring to this production. being an american. i'm part of it as opposed to being re -- re searched for the right word -- afterthought. when the battle of yorktown sequence ended that the largely black and latino cast, singing a son within by a puerto rican

process pourer costumes by an african-american designer, and celebrating doing the impossible. they would spend the next 16 months trying to recapture how exhilarating it felt. it took him until opening night on broadway to make him feel he succeeded. [applause] >> that was wonderful. thanks so much. i'll ask a few questions and then please start getting up at the microphones and think of your own. we're talking about the -- this is an important cultural moment. the play, refer luigsizeed theater. the book, which is just extraordinarily beautiful, sort of revolutionized bookmaking,

but, jeremy, how did it revolutionize you? >> that's a big question. i guess -- good question. like i said at the end, towards the end there, it does make me think with more concern and more loyalty about the united states of america. i think a chapter i'd eventually wanted to read about this, some of these -- it was just way too long is the one that makes the point that you can look at the founders and how you sort of needed all of them in exactly the right position at exactly the right time too get the united states to be formed in the way it was and it's exactly the same way as when the guys who made the show had to be in exactly the right place at the right time to do it. once you start looking at things that way, look at how contingent all these things are, it makes you treasure what you got

because you know how tenuous a lot of it can be. so, that's been on my mind a lot and also, you know, the one experience of this that i didn't have, the whole time i was watching my friends go through this insanity, oak, who plays madison, and all these guys, who had very different lives and very different careers before this show, well, when you get that famous, it changes your life a lot. i'd been watching the big spotlight swing around to them, one after another but only been watching. when this book came out thed are adoration around the show, assaultedly the spotlight is on the show and i had no idea what that felt like. watching them i never could have guessed that love, that intensity of affection that people have for the show. you just can't really understand it until it's chasing you down 46th street.

>> actually, i have a question that was texted to me a few minutes ago by a seventh grader. i don't know if she is in the audience o. not. but alana if you're hearing. seventh grader. she writes: could your words be as eloquently put about politics today for another time in history or is it something that stand. out about the story of hamilton that made the book so beautiful? >> the stakes were higher in the 1770s and '80s. wait question of life or death for the characters if the revolution was going to work. and if they would be able to make it last. the stakes are still high today so it would be a little trickier, i suppose, to find that kind of subject. but i think the fundamentals of the story-telling in hamilton, how rigorous lin and tommy war

and got all their collaborators to be about telling the story, thick just for me as a person who writes and puts projects together, just watching -- this is a whole other question about artistic form i will not bother you with today but hit me up at the table and i'll tell you. this idea that the content rick tates form principle and how that really works in practice, if you get that right, then you can find subjects anybody and you can make them. >> i was talking to a third grade teacher in the audience and she said there's some explicit lyricses and she is trying to think about how to bring into it her classroom. do you have any thoughts. >> this will teach a whole generation of kids how to swear. there are already moments when my wife and i are listening with our daughter and question start

going la la la at various point show doesn't hear what is being said. we'll get there. i don't know. i don't know exactly what level of foul mouthed eloquence is right for what ages but i will say that jeffrey seller, the producer of the show, has made a really admirable commitment to making sure that students get to see it. in new york, funding came from the rockefeller foundation in a program with a syllabus that was assembled by the gilder institute or american history to make sure that 20,000 students a year, high school students, will get to come see the show from the kind of schools they probably wouldn't have been going to see broadway shows otherwise. that to me -- when we put revolution on the cover of this book, people can -- if anyone is skeptical of that claim, as i would have been skeptical of the claim i hadn't gone through

this -- that is this last line of defense know the experience the kid have been healing. i'm talked to their teachers the world is good together be a different place because of what comes out of the kit's brains as a consequence of having seen the show. >> we have a question. >> hi. i just want to say, aim a huge "pam ton fan" listened to the cast recording before it came out on nbr. turned my dad into pa broadway fan. so good things in this direction. what i find most amaze about the book you wrote, the characters of the musical. the right people at the right place at the right time. can you imagine the american revolution is if george washington wasn't at that miss in his career. and amazing this diverse cast is telling the story of the founding fathers when every day on the word we hear about diversity problems we still have in the 201st century. my question do is you think that

"hamilton" could have been this successful on broadway if it came out ten, 15 years ago, with the cal it has now? >> i don't know. i don't know. to imagine a world -- it's a great question. don't want to answer it too quickly. ten years ago it was 2006. those are great songs ump think great songs -- the fact he channeled all of the power, all of the stuff we love about really great pop music into telling a story with this kind of precision and rigor, that's going to work anytime. would it have ban hugephone? phenomenon. how important it was michelle obama came to see it and freaked out about how much she loved it. >> or that barack obama was our president. >> right. exactly. the fact that it is so coincidence with the obama administration seems important to me and hard national it

otherwise. and in terms of how it intersects with the news there's at least one moment when that intersection was close together. as its happens the company went back into rehearsal after the run downand before they re-opened on broadway. well, right the night before they re-assembled was the shooting in charleston, when the white supremacist opened fire and killed nine worshipers at the church and it was in the room the next day. chris jackson place washington and if talked about it. very difficult f fog their him to stand there singing this new song that lin jut wrote about washington's hopes for our country where everybody would be saf ay and nine people were killed. tony talked about this because tony keeps writing plays that seem prophetic. he writes a show that begins the line, there's no underground in

louisiana, only underwater. and then hurricane hurricane katrina happens. how does that happen? his answer is, if you write about the world we live in if you write about politics, write about government, write about society, and a really disciplined way, then you're much likelier to have thing that intersect with the new and i think that's the case herement lynn could have pulled a lot of punches and he didn't. >> thank you very much. since no one else is asking a question, i want to know what you're doing for at the tony. >> i will be at the hamilton tony party. [applause] >> i'll be watching the screen and crossing my fingers and drinking champagne. we're having this program on saturday. >> a saturday program, not a sunday. >> anybody else out there? here comes one. so, what about historians?

have you had any historians who sort of quibbled with the take on, say, aaron bur, or any of the others? >> there's -- burr is an interesting case. one of the great villains of history now. lin seems more kindly of burr than almost anybody i'm aware of. certain my more kindly about the guy than, say, ron cher now, who wrote the book that inspired lin to write to the show lynn said to ron turnow when he first asked turnow to help him, he didn't sale i want historians to like it. he said i want historians to take it seriously. that means if you're a historian and you want things to be taken seriously, then you pull on it, push on it, challenge it, look for the ways the argue. is weak or strong, fit into it the context of the conversation that's already going on. there are historians who wish that lin had written things differently or fault him for

this or that. to me it's the fact that there is a genuine historical dialogue happening about a broadway musical is one of the most science fictiony things about the whole science fiction experience. >> does absolutely transcend time. you don't what peered you're in when you're watching it or listen. >> what do you think maye made "hamilton" such a popular musical as opposed to "in the heights" even though it shares the same musical styles. >> another really great question. it's the same team. jeffrey seller produced both shows. lin wrote both show with a co-author, and the same choreographer and same actors. what happened? one thing for sure is he matured as an artist. they all did. they had one under their belts and were able to defend e deachen what they could -- each

of them could do and what collectively they did. and this is my sort of theory that neither of the two gentlemen involved quite see it as crucial also i do, but another thing that happened between height and hamilton is that lin did two shows with steven sonheim. he appeared in a production. he was doing lyrics on stage and he did the spanish language translations of the shark's lyricses for a revival on broadway. not that he is studying these things. he has to put them in his brain and do something with them. there is to me a sense that son home is the proto hip-hop figure of broadway because if you listen to the precision and the density of what he is doing with his lyricses, some would kill to write a song like kris san them

mum tea which is wonderful, player, cleverly string of rhymes. that is happening offstage, everthing else, lightning strikes sometimes. i think it just had to be everything lining up exactly right, and it did. it just happens almost never but this time it did. >> thank you for talking. i have a comment and a question. my comment is that i'm old enough to remember when "hair" opened on broadway and i remember thinking is theirs my music, these are me people singing and that's the very same way i felt about "hamilton." so important to these kids because it's their show. it's their music. my question, however, is how much time did you spend with the show itself before you started

writing the book in the theater, with the actors and the characters. >> right. let's see. some of the episodes that are in the book are things that are written from my direct observation, like renee's callback. her audition when everyone in the room was freaking out how great she was. i watched that happen. about some of the -- i can't remember what i wrote now -- it's hard to say. wayns script meetings, in design meetings, i was the chapter 16, the one about tech week, how difficult that was because it's so complicated. was in the room watching them try to deal with the fact they didn't have enough time to do what they needed to do. and then once i knew i was going to write this book about it, then i just started showing up much as is could get back to new york because i knew that in any moment something important might happen that i'd want to

preserve, and sure enough, gravity moments like when lin heard the roomy it happens, the showstopper for first anytime -- first time it happened in a broadway theater and his reaction to that. he was sitting right there. so, it's always like a -- if i'd known in 2011 that i was going to be writing a book i would have taken better notes. instead of just trying to pick this up on the fly. >> thank you. >> hi, thank you for your talk your wonderful book and this incredible musical. one of the thing is love about holiday -- "hamilton" is the strong female characters and i wonder if you considered in the future projects where the strong female characters are not only the wives, of the really

prominent men who were involved in history but people who are making history themselves? >> well, lin's very next project in fact its milan na. a disney film, female protagonist that will be out later this year. so absolutely. in terms of collaboration, his next project, i don't know if i'll work with the guy again. hope with get to but he has that and my next -- i'm working on a book now i'm trying finish. a book about young american radicals during world war i, one of my protagnies eggs alice paul, the absolutely fearless incredibly inspiring suffragist leader who gets the sues ban b. -- susan b. anthony amendment across the finish line. >> one more question. >> everything i've read about lin or seen on his twitter, just seems like his pace is so frantic and almost like nonstop,

like, in "hamilton" and says in the book someone asked him are you ever going to slow down yourself, write like you're return ought of time. he said, well, i. a do you share that sort of same work ethic as him o. wars it kind of hard to keep up with his pace when you were work with someone who never stops. >> we do kind of share the same work ethic. we both sort of -- we had to hit a deadline they set for us wimple had tone could churning out words. but lin is a very rare specimen. i have got top work with a lot of very talented people, and there's something unique about that guy. about how closely he listens, thing you don't think he is picking up, the speed his brain is moving all the time, even when you think it's not. it comes out when he does improve improv. he is part of a hip-hop team and

is funny and comes up with things that are moving. so, yeah, you sort of have to be on your toes when you're with the guy, but he is also a friend. so that's part of the -- one of the thing is love about the guy, it just never stops. thank god because if it stops we wouldn't have holiday "hamilton." >> thank you. >> i have to say that everything that jeremy just said about lin, i would say about jeremy. really. he is remarkable, and i'm so honored to know him and that he is here to tell our story. so, thank you very much. [applause] >> and jeremy will be signing books. these beautiful books. right outside. thanks. >> you can find out more