Theatre & Politics: a.k.a - Hamilton & Pence
**WARNING: I have no personal political opinions in this observation, simply an observation**.
After hearing much about the Hamilton cast saying something that was addressed to our newly elected Vice President I decided to watch the video. Throughout it I waited to hear the cast say anything with hate, negativity, or plainly telling Pence he shouldn’t be in office. I heard none of that.
If you haven’t watched the video the speech begins and continues as so:
“You know, we have a guest in the audience this evening, and Vice President-elect Pence, I see you walking out, but I hope you will hear us just a few more moments. There’s nothing to boo here, ladies and gentlemen. There’s nothing to boo here. We’re all here sharing a story of love. We have a message for you, sir. We hope that you will hear us out.”
Pulling a small piece of paper from his pocket, Dixon encouraged people to record and share what he was about to say “because this message needs to be spread far and wide.”
“Vice President-elect Pence, we welcome you, and we truly thank you for joining us here at ‘Hamilton: An American Musical.’ We really do. We, sir, we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents, or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights, sir. But we truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. All of us.”
He end the speech with saying “Again, we truly thank you truly for seeing this show, this wonderful American story told by a diverse group of men and women of different colors, creeds and orientations.”
After this video went viral Trump decided to turn to Twitter and demanded an apology and also stated that the cast of Hamilton was rude and harassing to Pence.
@realDonaldTrump “The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!”
My first observation was that — the cast of Hamilton was not rude to Pence, the audience was. The cast cannot control their audience reaction. Did you know that, Pence requested tickets to see Hamilton? It is a show about the American Revolution, the difficulty of independent governance and about the Founding Fathers’ struggle to establish a democracy, despite their human flaws and differences. It isn't fair to say he put himself in this situation, but he is in the public eye and this election has been very controversial, so it might be a little adverse for him to publicly go and see it.
Second, the Hamilton cast simply took an opportunity, in a place that Trump defined as ‘safe and special’, to voice a feeling when they had the chance. Shouldn’t a theatre be the best place to give this sort of message? Trump was correct, theatre is in fact a safe and special place that lets both audiences and the cast discover and explore themselves with challenges, comfort, upset, and a ton of other emotions. That is why people go see shows, to have an experience that they can somehow relate to.
Lastly, at the end of the day we are all one nation, and sometimes we have to bite our tongues agreeing to disagree. We will never be happy and make progress if the next 4 to 8 years is filled with protests turning into riots about how the ‘president isn't yours’ or whatever is making you upset. I am pretty sure that is called being a sore loser and there are better ways to work that out. Change is made best in a calm and understanding fashion, no one wants to be attacked they will never listen then.
So, I guess you can say that in my honest opinion, Pence was not attacked, he was given a calm thought-out statement that a group of people found important.
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