The Start of the Hamilton Mixtape, Right Here in Poughkeepsie

Creator of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda, performing his starring role of Alexander Hamilton in the hit Broadway musical. Photo by Steve Jurvetson via Flickr

Seven microphones lined the stage as the anticipation in the crowd built. Sprawled across bleachers, the audience packed tightly together to make space for those on the waiting list outside the door. The energy was tangible in the crowd as the original cast of Hamilton: An American Musical walked onto the stage to an uproar of cheers. They began singing the show’s music to an audience for the first time. 

Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton was introduced to the world at Vassar College & New York Stage and Film’s Powerhouse Theater in 2013. At that point, it was called The Hamilton Mixtape. Each year, the Powerhouse Theater holds workshops for new and work-in-progress plays and musicals. The workshops are a springboard for some of today’s most well-known Broadway shows, and Hamilton is just one of them. 

Many people previously heard Hamilton’s opening song, “Alexander Hamilton,” when Miranda first performed it at the White House Poetry Jam in 2009. But Poughkeepsie experienced the genius of the majority of the first act and a few songs from the second act in the summer of 2013, including “What’d I miss?” and “Cabinet Battle #1.”

The Alexander Hamilton Awareness Society (AHA) was in Poughkeepsie the weekend of the mixtape performance to celebrate New York’s 225th anniversary of ratifying the Constitution. AHA president, Nicole Scholet, was one of the lucky few to snag a ticket to the show. 

“Everyone was in plain street clothes, but the guy playing King George was this jolly, huge, effervescent person,” Scholet said. “He had grabbed a paper crown from Burger King when he started singing for the role of King George.” 

Since the musical began as a mixtape, the technical aspects of the musical had not yet been written. So the actors brought their voices. After the mixtape came to a close, Scholet spoke with Alex Lacamoire, Lin Manuel Miranda, and other cast members, finding everyone in the cast to be kind and genuine.

Scholet later attended the opening night of the musical on Broadway. Surrounded by Hamilton experts, including the author of Alexander Hamilton, Ron Chernow, who inspired Lin Manuel Miranda to write the musical. 

“The mixtape was just them in their plain street clothes singing. It was so powerful in this format with just the songs. I thought to myself that they cannot top the basics,” Scholet said. But top it they did. “I thought [the Broadway show] would be cheesy, but they were able to match it and enhance it with the magic of the choreography and the rotating set.”

Nothing beats the atmosphere of opening night, as Scholet describes it. The AHA held a dinner for the authors they invited to the musical, filling the audience with Hamilton enthusiasts. The energy was unparalleled. When Miranda came onto the stage as Hamilton, the audience gave him a standing ovation, forcing them to restart the music to continue the show. As experts, they were able to identify inside jokes that only a true Hamilton scholar can catch. 

“The laughter was so intense, the joy was so intense, I thought to myself that I was never going to have this experience again in my life. And it made me realize how powerful theater can be,” Scholet said.

Miranda humanized the founding fathers, proving that compromise has never come easy to American leaders. He was able to help people connect to one another, from history scholars to hip-hop listeners to musical theater lovers. The AHA took many of the cast members on tours to Hamilton monuments to help them understand his struggles, including Trinity Church and the Capitol building at the time. 

“We have the power in our hands to do something to the political process, it is not reserved to the one generation,” Scholet said. “By making the founders so relatable and understandable, Lin gave power to those who felt disenfranchised from the founding.”