An emotional opening for ‘Hamilton’ in Puerto Rico
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico: With Lin-Manuel Miranda once again as its star, the celebrated Broadway hit “Hamilton” opened for business in Puerto Rico this weekend - that business being the bolstering of the hopes and finances of a beleaguered US territory mired in debt and still reeling from the devastation wreaked 16 months ago by Hurricane Maria.
The first performance on Friday night of the Tony-winning musical at the Centro des Bellas Artes in the heart of the island’s capital city betokened one of the most extraordinary events in the history of the nation’s performing arts. Here was a show arriving not merely to entertain, but also to serve a humanitarian mission: raising money for the relief effort. But the quest was also to draw the world’s attention to an American outpost that has long felt neglected by the country that owns it, and especially so in the aftermath of a disaster that traumatized the island.
Miranda’s mission achieved an emotional crescendo as a new “Hamilton” touring production - the musical’s sixth incarnation - celebrated its official opening to the hurrahs of an exuberant sellout crowd. When the actor made his entrance, during the introductory number, “Alexander Hamilton,” it was the audience that stopped the show, with a prolonged, thunderous ovation. At the curtain call nearly three hours later, Miranda once again brought down the house, with a teary speech that ended with him pulling a large Puerto Rican flag from under his costume and holding it aloft.
“I just love the island so much,” he said during a post- show news conference, “and I just want it to be proud of me.”
The special 23-performance visit of “Hamilton” to Puerto Rico, a Caribbean island of 3.5 million people that’s not a normal stop for Broadway productions, was indeed a labour of love for Miranda and his father, Luis Miranda, a Puerto Rican native who made a name for himself in New York City Democratic politics. They prevailed upon the producers and investors of the show - which brings in as much as US$ 4 million a week on Broadway alone - to donate the entire proceeds of the San Juan engagement, after operating expenses, to a fund for struggling Puerto Rican artists and arts institutions. The fund, administered by the local Flamboyan Foundation, which also has a Washington arm, stands to receive US$ 15 million from the “Hamilton” run, according to Luis Miranda.
“I’m so happy that he brought us this art, which means so much to us as Puerto Ricans, not just as Americans,” said Roberto Ramos Perea, a wellknown playwright and director here and president of the Ateneo Puertorrique, the island’s oldest theater and a repository for its dramatic literature through the centuries. “This guy,” Perea said of Lin-Manuel, “has made something difficult to do: to capture the attention of the whole world for us.”
It’s difficult to come up with a precedent for a Broadway musical undergirding a movement for disaster relief and political recognition of a problem in quite the way “Hamilton” has. As Luis Miranda explained, his son already had spearheaded the raising of US$ 43 million in disaster relief for the Hispanic Federation, a nonprofit group that seeks to strengthen Latino institutions. Devoting an entire run to addressing the crisis raises the stakes in a way unheard of in commercial theatre. “He’s bringing to the forefront of the political agenda the issues of Puerto Rico more effectively than anyone else is doing,” Roberto Prats, head of the Democratic Party here, said of Miranda.
Or as Brad Dean, chief executive of Discover Puerto Rico, the island’s tourism organisation, put it: “The grand opportunity is to turn LinManuel’s gift into an impact that goes far beyond the three weeks of the