Check out the essay I recently published in a special issue of Studies in Musical Theater entitled, “Blackout on Broadway: Affiliation and audience in In the Heights and Hamilton.” The special issue dedicated to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical, Hamilton, was guest edited by Peter C. Kunze.
In the essay, I argue that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights (2008) and Hamilton (2015) find their inspiration in a generative conflict between individualism and community, freedom and property, whiteness and blackness, and empathy and complicity. The contradictory thematic pressures organizing Miranda’s musicals are the product of a complex negotiation with the institution of Broadway and its historic (mis)representation of people of color.