Blind "Hamilton' casting - Page 2

[adam.peterson44]

Posted: 11/14/15 at 1:22pm

Ultimately the treatment of women is the main reason why i found Hamilton unsatisfying when i saw it in April.  If the premise of the casting decisions was to present the story of america 'then' told by america 'now', then they missed the mark by over 50%!  They still cast the women as people whose only job was to f&ck the menz, while the menz did all the significant things and made all of the significant decisions.  LMM seems capable of correctly recognizing that while white men were making those historical decisions, america has moved on since then and that people of non-beige color now make many important decisions and do many important things, and he admirably wanted to portray that progress through his casting choices.  It's a shame he did not recognize and/or want to portray the similar progress that has been made by women of all colors, who now also do significant things and make important decisions, and instead of also portraying that progress in his casting choices, he decided to stage the show as if that fact is either non-existent or unimportant, rendering the 'progress points' nearly moot that he gets for advancing non-beige men beyond the point where they were in the historical narrative in the way that he portrays them onstage.

[Hamilton22]

Posted: 11/14/15 at 1:45pm

" It's a shame he did not recognize and/or want to portray the similar progress that has been made by women of all colors, who now also do significant things and make important "

 

What did you expect LMM to do? Hamilton is based on real people and what they did. He had to be as truthful as he could because the whole show is about history. Angelica couldn't go off on some epic  fantasy war against sexist men because that's not what happened. to the real Angelica.  

 

I thought LMM portrayed the women in the show beautifully and gave them the gumption and power they deserved while still being faithful to the real people the show is based on.

 

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Updated On: 11/14/15 at 01:45 PM

[aaaaaa15]

Posted: 11/14/15 at 3:24pm

I mean the show literally ends with a woman listing her achievements and asking "will they tell MY story?" Fact is Eliza was very dedicated and romantic towards Hamilton throughout her life. It would have been wrong to portray her otherwise. 

It's like people saying that LMM should have had a subplot dedicated to the potential same sex relationship with Hamilton and John Laurens. This musical is already almost 3 hours long... 

[adam.peterson44]

Posted: 11/14/15 at 4:57pm

To those saying that it would be historically inaccurate to cast some of the founders as women (e.g. Jefferson, Washington), it is also historically inaccurate to cast them as black men.  But Miranda has specifically said that he did that intentionally as a choice to portray the historical figures by using "america today" in the cast, but he only uses men to portray the founders, not women, thereby excluding more thyan half of "america today" from his actors who portray the founders, despite all the self-congratulatory hype about how he was trying to make his casting more inclusive rather than historically accurate.  And my point is that once you choose inclusivity over historical inaccuracy as your stated goal, then excluding more than half the population from the founder roles really kills your credibility, and it becomes a glaring omission while watching the show (at least it did for me).

[VintageSnarker]

Posted: 11/14/15 at 5:16pm

I feel like there are two conversations happening here. One is arguing about casting and one is arguing about the text. The first time I listened to the album, I did have a problem with the female characters through much of the first act but I appreciated the way LMM acknowledged the lack of information in the show and called attention to it and in doing so, gave them more of a part in the story. I agree that it wasn't his responsibility to weave a fantasy about what might have happened and doing so might have been disrespectful in its own way. As for the casting argument, it's more complicated and I think it's worth debating the implications of gender and race blind casting. Though, in this situation, I feel like such casting is less "blind" and more mindful because it carries such meaning.

[Fan123]

Posted: 11/14/15 at 5:40pm

I think it women were cast as men in Hamilton, they would still be identified as male characters and so it wouldn't be a revisionist history of what women were doing centuries ago, but rather a hint as to what women might have been doing if they had had the opportunities and social standing back then to do so. Similarly, the current multiracial casting still has the actors nominally playing white men, to my understanding.

 

In a way, it sounds great. However, I think that the idea of gender-blind casting for Hamilton is also complicated by the fact that fighting in a war figures so heavily in the plot. In fact, the main male character who doesn't fight in the war gets berated for it - "Don't lecture me about the war, you didn't fight in it!...We almost died in a trench while you were off getting high with the French." Certainly there are (and have been) female soldiers; I think Hamilton has a few in the ensemble. And women have historically always contributed bravely to, and suffered terribly from, wars. But actual fighting in battles remains one of the very, very few "men's issues" for the most part IMO. The spectre of being asked or compelled to fight in a war if something terrible happens to one's country (or, in some cases, another country) is unlikely to haunt a corner of a modern woman's mind the way it might a man's. As a gender-reversed example, I think I could buy a man playing a woman for a part like Dolly Levi. But if it was in a role that required seriously talking about or portraying the dangers and pain of childbirth, I would be all like "Oh, come on."