Hamilton
This year, all first-year Northwestern students will be given the opportunity to watch the Tony Award-winning musical, "Hamilton: An American Musical" on Broadway. Students will attend a matinee on either October 4th or October 11th at The PrivateBank Theatre in downtown Chicago. Transportation will be provided from Arts Circle to the venue, and then back to campus.
Further details and registration instructions for first-year students will be updated soon.
About Hamilton
Lin-Manuel Miranda's Pulitzer prize-winning transformation of Ron Chernow's biography, Hamilton, into a hip-hop musical is taking the world by storm. At the center of this groundbreaking multi-award-winning new musical is the story of founding father Alexander Hamilton, whose ambition drove him from the position of Caribbean outsider and bastard child to American war hero and George Washington's right-hand man. In the process, Alexander Hamilton powerfully shaped America as we have come to know it -- and gave us all a template for what it means to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and realize the American Dream. This exploration of Hamilton's political mastermind is being called "the most exciting and significant musical of the decade." David Brooks of the New York Times declared seeing Hamilton to be "one of the most exhilarating experiences I've had in the theatre." With heart, humor, and respect, Lin-Manuel Miranda's new musical breathes vibrant, colorful life into this story of America's founding fathers.
Hamilton was written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, an award-winning composer, lyricist, and performer, as well as a 2015 MacArthur Foundation Award recipient and two-time Tony Award winner. Born in 1980 in New York City, Lin-Manuel Miranda developed a devotion to musical theater and hip-hop before attending Wesleyan University. The idea for the musical was first conceived after Miranda began reading Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton. This inspired him to began a project called The Hamilton Mixtape in 2009, which later developed into today's Hamilton: An American Musical.
Engage with the Music of Hamilton
The official cast album of the musical was released in 2015 by Atlantic Records. Listen to the Grammy-Award winning music of the Hamilton soundtrack.
Watch excerpts from some of the musical numbers in the musical.
Hamilton makes numerous references to hip-hop music. Test your knowledge in the "Hamilton's' Hip-Hop History Quiz" in the Chicago Tribune.