burr’s “i want” song coming so late in the show is so clever to begin with bc it’s so fitting for him as a character to delay actually letting you know what he wants
and then it’s DOUBLY smart because even the song itself doesn’t immediately identify itself as his “i want” song – it takes almost the whole song for burr to actually SAY “i want to be in the room where it happens” and finally make his motives clear and DAMN i’m so!!!!! angry about how intelligently this show is constructed!!!!!!
it takes the rules of musical theatre and doesn’t break them but bends them as far as they can go and THIS is how innovation happens and how theatre can continue to exist without getting stale and basically, i am going to build a shrine to lin-manuel miranda
What I can tell you is that works of art are the only silver bullet we have against racism and sexism and hatred. Joe Biden happened to see Hamilton on the same day James Burrows was here. James Burrows directed every episode of Will & Grace, and remember when Biden went on Meet the Press and essentially said, “Yeah, gay people should get married”? He very openly credited Will & Grace with changing the temperature on how we discuss gays and lesbians in this country. It was great to see Jim Burrows and Joe Biden talk about that, and Jim thanked Biden and Biden thanked Jim because that was a piece of art changing the temperature of how we talked about a divisive issue. It sounds silly. It’s a sitcom, but that doesn’t make it not true. Art engenders empathy in a way that politics doesn’t, and in a way that nothing else really does. Art creates change in people’s hearts. But it happens slowly.
Lin-Manuel Miranda, ‘Hamilton’s’ Lin-Manuel Miranda on Finding Originality, Racial Politics (and Why Trump Should See His Show) (The Hollywood Reporter)