Description
Most of us have heard of the success of the Broadway musical Hamilton. What is the hullaballoo all about? On the one hand, the show – about one of our founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, who died in a duel with Aaron Burr – is an energetic, rapturous story, told in hip hop and R&B, that provides insight into American history in a way that has never been done before. For our purposes, the success also lies in its madly creative use of hip-hop – a form that uses rhyming and word play, combined with rhythm and syncopation – to deliver a thrilling story and thoughtful psychological portrait about a very complicated man: Alexander Hamilton. In this Challenge, you have the chance to do the same: create a hip-hop biographical song about an important person in history. The aim for your portrait is to report to your audience both the key historical facts about your chosen character, but also to provide some insight into the nature of the person: what, based on your research, made your character tick? According to Ron Chernow, on who’s book the musical Hamilton is based, this is what Lin- Manuel Miranda (the show creator) accomplished in such a startling way: “I think he (Lin) has plucked out the dramatic essence of the character — his vaulting ambition, his obsession with his legacy, his driven nature, his roving eye, his brilliant mind, his faulty judgment.” You and your team are charged with doing the same: identify and then present, in a hip-hop performance, “the dramatic essence of the character” of your chosen historical figure.
