Full Description
Hamilton opened on Broadway in 2015 and quickly became one of the hottest tickets the industry has ever seen. Lin-Manuel Miranda - who wrote the book, lyrics, and music, and created the title role - adapted the show from Ron Chernow's biography Alexander Hamilton. Although it seems an unlikely source for a Broadway musical, Miranda found a liminal space where the life that Hamilton led and the issues that he confronted came alive more than two centuries later while also commenting on contemporary life in the United States and how we view our nation's history. With a score largely based on rap and drawing on other aspects of hip-hop culture, and staged with actors of color playing the white Founding Fathers, Hamilton has much to say about race in the United States today and in our past, but at the same time it leaves important things insufficiently explained, such as the role of women and people of color in Hamilton's time.
Dueling Grounds: Revolution and Revelation in the Musical Hamilton is a volume that combines the work of theater scholars and practitioners, musicologists, and scholars in such fields as ethnomusicology, history, gender studies, and economics in a multi-faceted approach to the show's varied uses of liminality, looking at its creation, casting philosophy, dance and movement, costuming, staging, direction, lyrics, music, marketing, and how aspects of race, gender, and class fit into the show and its production. Demonstrating that there is much to celebrate, as well as challenging issues to confront concerning Hamilton, Dueling Grounds is an uncompromising look at one of the most important musicals of the century.
Contents
Introduction: "Revolution and Liminality in the Musical amilton": Mary Jo Lodge and Paul R. Laird
Part I: Hamilton and History
Chapter 1: "The Creation of the United States and the Broadway Stage" Paul R. Laird
Chapter 2: "Economics Lessons in History with Alexander Hamilton: From Adam Smith to Broadway": Christopher S. Ruebeck and Mary Jo Lodge
Chapter 3: "The Ten Dollar Opera: Hamilton as a New Modernism": Stuart J. Hecht
Chapter 4: "Musical 'Founders Chic': 1776 and Hamilton as Heritage Musicals": Mary Jo Lodge
Part II: Hamilton and Representation
Chapter 5: "Hamilton's Gendered Entanglements": Stacy Wolf
Chapter 6: "Taking Hamilton to the Streets: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Latinidad, and the Aesthetics of Accessibility" : Trevor Boffone
Chapter 7: "Hamilton, History, Historiography": Rachel B. Herrmann
Chapter 8: "A 'Model' American Musical: Hamilton and the Rise of Model Minorities": Sissi Liu
Part III: Staging Hamilton
Chapter 9: "Hamilton and the Liminal Director: Navigating the Space Between Writer and Star": Alan Patrick Kenny and Mary Jo Lodge
Chapter 10: "Revolutionary Movement: 'Non-Stop' Ensemble Choreography at Work": Dustyn Martincich
Chapter 11: "Telling the Story of Hamilton in the Twenty-First Century: the Layering of Historical and Modern Aesthetics Through Costume Design": Ella Hawkins
Part IV: Singing Hamilton
Chapter 12: "Long Live Hip-Hop: Hamilton and the Death (and Rebirth) of Hip-Hop" Cheryl L. Keyes
Chapter 13: "Words Flooding the Senses: The Tradition and Impact of Hamilton's Vocal Stylings": Elizabeth Sallinger
Chapter 14: "Hamilton - An American Musical: The Very Model of a Modern Major (British) Megamusical": Adam Rush
Conclusion: "Revelation in Hamilton": Mary Jo Lodge and Paul R. Laird
Index
