If you get to see the musical "Hamilton", you may get to see Daveed Diggs as Thomas Jefferson and Christopher Jackson as George Washington. Portraits and drawings of these two important early American presidents usually show them as Caucasians but these two actors are African Americans. I have the feeling that Diggs and Jackson move in ways that the two Virginians never did, maybe could not, move.
Here is a short clip from the show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOdWU-EnOEk The first number in the clip "What did I miss?" shows Mr. Jefferson, now historically and parentally linked to his slave Sally Hemings and their six children, in ways you didn't get to see him in junior high school history class. The show is respectful of our country and its difficult days starting off in a fight with the superpower of the age but it depicts those times with more energy and rhyme than older shows and movies that you might be used to.
On the CBS show "Sixty Minutes" this past Sunday, a segment of the show was about the rap-hiphop opera. You may have caught the segment. Several of my friends did. I read today that something like 15 million people watched it. The energy, talents and focus of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show's writer and lead actor, shone out of the tv set. You can catch parts of the segment on the CBS site here.
The show has been wildly popular, capturing 50 million dollars in pre-sales and being sold out until sometime next March. It makes clear that there are stunning talents, wit and brains in all the groups and ages in America and that we ain't seen nothing yet.
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