I recently had a conversation with my older cousin of 4 years, discussing how my generation of teenagers never got a “revolutionary” musical of our time, as she did with Spring Awakening. Well we did, actually:
Kids born in the late 40′s and 50′s got to experience West Side Story in their teens, a revolutionary show about teenagers in love, stricken by gangs and racial differences.
Kids born in the 60′s got to experience A Chorus Line, a revolutionary show about young adults desperate to succeed in what makes them complete.
Kids born in the late 70′s and 80′s got to experience Rent, a revolutionary show about young adults and the struggle to maintain an artistic and free lifestyle in a rapidly changing society.
Kids born in the early 90′s got to experience Spring Awakening, a revolutionary show about teenagers like them, struggling to communicate and express their emotions with adults, set to modern music.
What do we late 90′s kids get, huh? Well I’ll tell you- we get a revolutionary show …about the revolution. We get Hamilton- a show about young adults who just so happen to be the Founding Fathers. Told in a way that we millennials, even now, can directly relate to.
So just because I wasn’t quite old enough to understand Spring Awakening, and too young to experience the phenomenon that Rent was in the late 90′s, doesn’t mean that I missed out on that “revolutionary” show of the generation. That’s why I care about Hamilton. Sitting in the front row of the Richard Rodgers Theatre on July 17th, 2015, at one of the show’s first Broadway previews, with my favorite person in the world sitting right next to me, changed my life. The very same way that “that one special show” had been changing young adults of the generations before me.
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