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Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Thomas Jefferson is Kind of a Jerk

I use this photo from the documentary because Chris Jackson is my favorite!
Last week PBS finally aired the Making of Hamilton documentary that they've been teasing us with for the last 8 months or so.  And as you can imagine it was a big hit with all the fans of Hamilton.  I was pretty excited to see it because it was about Hamilton, but I wasn't sure it was going to be super exciting.  I rarely like documentaries.  I prefer fake life stories to real ones.  Anyway, like I said after it aired - oh how I was wrong!  The show was fabulous.

Rather than just focus on the story of how Lin Manuel-Miranda wrote the show, they also focused on Hamilton's life and how the leads feel about playing these characters in today's world.  That's the part that really got to me.  After last week's initial viewing, I've been re-watching parts here and there (BTW - you can stream the whole thing online for free, just so you know...), and the interviews with Chris Jackson and Daveed Diggs specifically have really grabbed me.

Jackson plays George Washington and Diggs plays Thomas Jefferson.  As black men playing these old stuffy white guys, they have a lot of feelings about how the characters are portrayed and how they feel being the new face of these founding fathers.  Both actors mentioned that for all the good these titans did for the new United States, Washington and Jefferson owned slaves.  Their message was that not every good person is good all the time.  

Daveed Diggs went on to say that this helped him to realize that just because you hate something a person has done, doesn't mean you can't like something else that same person has done.  Everyone can agree that owning slaves was a hateful thing to do, however without the work Washington and Jefferson did, we wouldn't have the USA we have today. 

I really liked that perspective that these gentleman had.  To see just a little bit of the thinking that went into their flawless portrayals of these characters was really neat to see.  It's also nice to see a cast - everyone in this cast it would seem - that is intelligent and literate and kind and understanding of the responsibilities they've been given.  That doesn't happen very often these days.

I thought it might be hard to find something else to like about this production and these people, but here they've gone and given me something else.  Thanks Hamilton for changing the world again!  We really needed your optimism and creativity this year! 

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