Friday, March 04, 2016
Hamilton casting call wants women to play Washington and Burr
EW.com: Hamilton will soon be looking for a mind at work… a female’s mind, in particular. A casting call from Backstage details that the hugely popular musical, known for its diverse casting, is looking for men and women to play two key roles, George Washington and Aaron Burr, in upcoming productions in Philadelphia.
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This news makes me so, so happy, and so grateful for the boundary- breaking show that is Hamilton. Considering how much success Hamilton has received by telling a founding father’s story with a race- blind twist, it’s no surprise that they are also open to gender- mixing within roles. They are proving everyone who ever cried “Diversity wouldn’t work for this show because it wouldn’t be historically accurate!” horribly, horribly wrong. Once productions throw out these arbitrary ideas of what kinds of roles need to be played by what kinds of people, amazing and successful products are possible. Also, I think that any opportunity to carve out more of a space for women of color in theater performances should be taken advantage of. I’m not very familiar with the technicalities of vocal ranges, so I’m sure it’d be difficult to adapt the score for a slightly higher voice, but other than that, since Hamilton has already crossed so many boundaries in terms of their casting, I can see only good things that can happen by including more women in these leading roles. I think the amazing Ham4Ham video they linked to should be enough to convince anyone that this casting decision would be an incredible opportunity to make Hamilton even more of a ground breaking theatrical achievement.
I was definitely somewhat surprised when I saw this headline online today but I don’t think it is that outrageous when you think about it. A big part of Hamilton and its casting is about who is telling the story and how that affects the story or not. In some aspects, it doesn’t matter who’s telling an amazing story, if the story stands on its own. The storyteller’s identity can also inform or breathe life into a story, or give it a greater context. Lin Manuel-Miranda’s decision to have a multi-racial casting of Hamilton acts as a reminder of who America is composed of today, and how the country got to where it currently is. The fact that Burr wasn’t a black man doesn’t actually interfere with the storytelling. My only concern with casting women in these roles would be that they maintain the story. This year when CMU’s production of Lord of the Flies cast two male characters as women, the parts were highly sexualized or influenced by the gender of the actresses. If this were done with Hamilton I would be greatly disappointed; actresses have more to offer than playing out common stereotypes and tropes, so I would hope that they could direct the parts as has been done with the multi-racial cast playing a bunch of dead white dudes. I think female Burrs and Washingtons could work well given that they continue to stick to the story.
I think this is really awesome, even considering casting women for the roles of Washington and Burr is such a cool thing for Hamilton to bring to Broadway. When it comes down to it theatre is about telling a story and the cast of Hamilton is constantly proving that your race doesn’t affect that ability to tell a story and I think it would be really cool to have them do the same thing to gender. Theatre opens the door for us to break out of the box of needing someone who looks like a historical character in order to play them because of the way the story is often stylized. By taking advantage of this Hamilton has been able to bring a really fantastic new perspective to many of our founding fathers. On a side note the Ham for Ham video was awesome although I think the performance was truly sealed by Lin’s awkward swaying in the back.
This is pretty dope. Some of the comments on the real article think this is farfetched, but they already have African Americans playing people who once owned African Americans, so I don’t see this as a stretch at all. I think Hamilton’s color blind and soon to be gender blind casting is a great way of showing actors as a portrayal of character, like Christopher Jackson looks nothing like George Washington, but it doesn’t matter because he is showing his personality, giving you everything you need. That’s theatre, the entire thing is representation or imitation. I think the right women would own as any of the founding fathers. I also think this is setting a great example for other casting agents, about not excluding whole groups of people because of what they look like. Imagine what Hamilton would have been if they had only auditioned people who looked like the founding fathers! Booorrrring.
Opening your mind will always be beneficial.
This article honestly surprised me a lot, but this is really really cool. It had never even occurred to me that a gender swapped Hamilton could happen, but looking at it now, it makes total sense. Hamilton's cast clearly does not look like what the actual founding fathers looked like, so it is a very small leap to have those characters played by women. I am also really impressed that Miranda is able to be that open minded about his characters. Just another thing that makes him even more incredible. If this does come to pass, and there are productions of Hamilton with female founding fathers, I think it will be extremely interesting to see how the role changes, as well as how audiences react. While it does not seem that crazy for us, theatre students in a very open minded environment, it will probably seem like a lot to most people. I wonder how much this would affect ticket sales, and if they would ever do gender swapped roles in the actual Broadway production, since that is their main money maker.
I regularly follow Backstage (obviously for the casting call advice), and when I first saw this article I figured it was misinformation. But now that it's on the ptm blog, it must be real (except for the fact that the only source this article cites is, in fact, Backstage). I don't really trust Backstage as a credible source, due to the "Gossip Girl" tone of many of their articles, but if this is true, I am delighted. Diversity is one of the major challenges our world (and the theater, to an even greater degree) faces. This was made extremely clear during this year's Oscars. This is 2016, it is ridiculous that this is still a problem that our society has. Maybe, if we had more diverse casting in all shows (especially in film and television) we, as a culture, could finally accept that everyone is equal, and deserves equal treatment. Maybe the rate of sexual assault could go down (by the way, 34% of CMU's students reported being sexually assaulted, this is over 10% higher than the national average). Maybe people could learn to drop their bigoted opinions, and policemen could not shoot and kill innocent men, women, and children for the color of their skin. Wouldn't that be nice? Good for Hamilton for having a diverse cast, more please!
Yes!! Thank you Hamilton. This was one of my gripes with Hamilton (though I still really like it, don't get me wrong). All these people were talking about how progressive of a show it was and how it was such a good show for women, but it only had three female parts? And both are centrally focused on their desire to be with Hamilton and that alone? Some vague feminist lyrics don't make up for that! If this show is truly supposed to be a representation of what America looks like today, having the only women focused 100% on getting the guy is not a good message.
But, this makes me a lot happier. I think it could be very interesting to play with the idea of gender especially in Aaron Burr's case - instead of a man living in Hamilton's shadow and using caution as a weapon, having a woman do that makes a lot of sense. Women, especially powerful ones, are constantly under attack for the simplest of mistakes. It makes sense for women to be more cautious than the brazen Hamilton because he does not face the same discrimination a women would. And with Burr's relationship with Theodosia, it would be interesting to see them hide their relationship (not totally sure how they would then conceive their daughter, but we can just pretend they had in vitro fertilization in 1776).
I think that this is a great idea, one that I hope will come to fruition in some versions of Hamilton. Having a women play any of the roles would be really interesting to see, as I feel that it would open up new doors for actresses and women. The show already has people of color playing old white men, so why can’t women join the founding fathers? It will also introduce new aspects to the characters, with new tensions and motives that could be unearthed by switching the genders. Watching the Ham4Ham video at the end of the article only solidified this for me. I know that the article specifically said that casting call went out for Washington and Burr, but I think that it would be cool to see a woman playing Hamilton as well. Whatever happens in future casting for Hamilton, I excited to see whoever is cast in it and what they do with their characters.
Good for Hamilton for leading the industry to an even more diverse casting process. If one or more women are cast for Burr and/or Washington, it will be very interesting to see how the show changes. Surely, there will have to be some tweaking of the score so things sound better, as Miranda noted. Even more interesting, though, is how the dynamics will change onstage. Having a female Washington, will change how Hamilton acts and how the audience responds. It will open up a whole new bag of dramatic possibilities. Hopefully, other directors, producers and playwrights will start to realize that the industry can only benefit from more diverse casting. I believe most of that responsibility is with the playwright, due to their direct control over the story. In the case of Hamilton, Miranda realizes that the actors who play his characters need not look exactly like their historical counterparts. They only need to embody their spirit and personality.
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