ABSTRACT
Providing a multiplex site for the interrogation of the intersection of applied performance and popular theater, Hamilton applies the structures of the musical to a consideration of the implication of race and culture, using the eighteenth century American setting to foreground the application of history as a means to engage with representational politics and social attitudes. Trading in ideological (individualism) and musical conventions, Hamilton’s performance applies foundational history to overcome the contemporary social, political, and professional (prevalently white casting) forms of injustice. Hamilton registers an additional understanding of applied performance, insofar as one widely visible application arose in relation to the production’s figuration of the theater as public space, but only indirectly from the agency of its makers. Hamilton applies a critical and hybridizing repurposing of popular theatrical and nontheatrical performance, and of racialized practices indigenous to American theater; Trump applies a restrictive notion of “safe space” to limit Hamilton’s labor, its application to contemporary life.
