What Do Hamilton, Hermes, Usher, Celie, Evan, Benny, Haywood, and Bonnie & Clyde Have in Common?

Publishing a new book is like Opening Night, except without watching the show, and without seeing anybody afterward.

Last November, I decided it was time to write about some of the amazing musicals of the last decade or so, which I have not yet gotten the privilege of working on. With my past several analysis books, every chapter was about a show I had directed here in St. Louis with New Line Theatre. And I wrote about the shows as we worked on them. Not only was it fun to write about our shows, it also helped me enormously as a director, to force myself to work out and verbalize my ideas and problems.

But I really wanted to study and write about Hamilton. It is a masterpiece of our art form. I also really wanted to dig into The Scottsboro Boys and Dear Evan Hansen. And there were three other shows I thought I should write about, but I didn't know them well enough. Once I got to know them, I had to include all three, Hadestown, The Color Purple, and A Strange Loop.

As I thought about what shows to write about, I noticed that they were all very recent. My last book, Idiots, Heathers, and Squips, explored a bunch of shows that had opened after 2000. So I decided this would be a book about shows just from the last decade or so. Which also meant I could include a couple shows I had worked on, Frank Wildhorn's Bonnie & Clyde and the genuinely wonderful Hands on a Hardbody.

So I went to work, and now I'm done, and it's out in the world. I called it Hamilton and the New Revolution: Broadway Musicals in the 21st Century. (Have you noticed that nonfiction books always have subtitles now?)

It took me about seven months to write, and it was a very weird experience for me. Every time I finished a chapter, it felt like I was closing a show, and I got post-production depression each time. But it was soooooo much fun getting to swim around in these wonderful musicals, and in the accompanying research.

Before I started work on my Hamilton chapter, first I gave myself a three-week crash course on the art of hip-hop writing. I found some really wonderful books, most notably the incredible Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop. And I found a bunch of great documentaries; my favorite was a series produced by Questlove called Hip Hop: The Songs That Shook America.

Before I started work on my chapter about Hadestown I took a couple weeks to study, read about, and play Roots Music. Before I wrote about The Scottsboro Boys, I read about the actual case, about minstrelsy, and about tap dancing. People sometimes ask me why I don't hire a dramaturg. It's because research is one of my favorite parts of my job!

I learned so much about these shows and the considerable craft and artistry that isn't always obvious. And I learned so much about the accompanying issues and history.

Doing research for The Scottsboro Boys, I was surprised to learn that the history of the blackface tradition in America is really complicated, and that its effects and influence can still be felt in our popular culture today.

Doing research for Bonnie & Clyde, I was stunned at the extreme degree to which all our American institutions broke down and failed during the Depression, government, religion, family, community, the economy.

The Hands on a Hardbody chapter was so much fun to write because it's such a weird premise for a show, and a weird show itself, but also such a powerful, honest, painful statement about Americans' economic pains.

There were two big surprises for me about Dear Evan Hansen. First, I had no idea there were so many people who hate this show, who are offended by the story, and who went so far as to write articles online about how much they hate it -- though in almost every case, they are misreading and misinterpreting the show, and making assumptions about the show and the writers that just aren't true. It's a really weird phenomenon, and I honestly don't understand why it pushes some people's buttons so ferociously. Personally, I think Dear Evan Hansen is close to a masterpiece.

The other DEH surprise was the novel! If you haven't seen it, writer Val Emmich, along with the show's writers, adapted the stage musical into a novel. It's a rare reverse of the usual process. (Don't tell anyone but, back in 1995, I adapted my gay vampire musical In the Blood into a novel. I'm not sure it's any good, but it was an interesting exercise. The DEH guys did it way better.) The big surprise is the novel is GREAT. I totally recommend it.

When I started studying The Color Purple, I came at it as a blank slate. I had never read the novel. I had seen part of the movie once, but hated it. I assumed it was a "chick novel." But in studying the stage musical, I got to see videos of the original Broadway production and the re-imagined revival, I read the novel -- which is now one of my favorite novels I've ever read -- and I watched the movie. I was right about the movie last time (it's terrible), but the novel is a glorious, amazing, adult fairy tale. If you haven't read the novel, you really should. It really is like nothing else.

Working on Hadestown was extra fun for me. I loved learning about Roots Music. I had seen the show and liked it, but it didn't grab me the way some shows do, but I still thought I should include it in this book. And once I got deep down into the guts of the show, I really came to love it. Sure, the original staging by Rachel Chavkin (who also staged The Great Comet of 1812) is really fun and interesting and expressive. Yes, the songs are very cool. And holy shit, that original cast on Broadway is so strong. But the real power here is in the storytelling, in the way Anaïs Mitchell takes these ancient stories and reforms them into stories that resonate with us today. The result is that wonderful theatre contradiction -- it's both Then and Now, both at the same time. (Same with Hamilton.)

Studying and writing about Michael R. Jackson's Pulitzer Prize winning musical A Strange Loop was a wild, trippy, wonderful adventure. Luckily for me, Jackson has been very open in interviews, etc., about his writing process, his intentions behind songs, all of that. If you don't know this show, get to know it. It's really wild and smart and fearless, and really powerful.

I put my Hamilton chapter last, as kind of summing up of where our art form is, and where it's headed. Studying Hamilton was like opening the sepia toned door on Technicolor Oz. Everywhere I looked there was richness and originality and rule-breaking and some of the smartest, best wrought storytelling I've seen in a long time.

But the coolest thing for me was that I took about three weeks to teach myself about the art form of hip-hop music and lyric writing. My mind was blown over and over and over, by the history and evolution of hip-hop. I think the biggest shock for me was to find out that 1. there are a bunch of different kinds of rhyme, not just "perfect" end rhymes, many of which I'd never heard of; 2. American pop lyrics don't use most of those kinds of rhyme; 3. hip-hop uses them all, and not surprisingly, Lin-Manuel Miranda uses them all in Hamilton. I discovered that rhyme is a just a "correspondence" between two words, which is a much broader definition than most of us use.

For example, did you know alliteration is also known as head rhyme? I learned about chain rhymes, mosaic rhymes, apocopated rhymes, transformative rhymes. I published the section about rhyme from my Hamilton chapter, as a blog post a few months ago. Take a look -- it'll blow your mind too.

The other thing I learned was about the language and wordplay of hip-hop, again going back thousands of years in the history of human poetry. Hip-hop lyrics use every imaginable kind of figure of speech, things like metaphors, puns, homonyms and homophones, eponyms, antanaclasis, anaphora, epistrophe, and chiasmus. It will come as no surprise that Miranda uses every one of those devices in Hamilton. It's like a masterclass in storytelling, in musical theatre, and in hip-hop.

Now that my book is done, I have some work I have to get done for New Line, and then I'll return to my (now two-volume) history of movie musicals. When I left it, I had just written about The Wall, and next up are Eddie and the Cruisers and Purple Rain. Can't. Wait.

This Sunday, July 24, my books and I will be part of the Broadway Makers Marketplace virtual shopping event Places Pleaser. Stop by and check it out!

After far too long a wait, we New Liners plan to go back into rehearsal again in mid-August. We will have a full season -- that is, providing we can get the people in Missouri's "red" counties to get vaccinated! This will be New Line's 30th season, and it will include Songs for a New World, Head Over Heels, and Urinetown. All three of these shows we're repeating, from three different decades of New Line's history. I can't wait to start making musicals again!

I hope you'll check out my book, Hamilton and the New Revolution: Broadway Musicals in the 21st Century. and all my other musical theatre books too!

And if you're nearby, come see us at New Line Theatre!

Long Live the Musical!
Scott