‘The first black battalion’: Casting in Hamilton

Abstract

This article places the casting practices in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton in a trajectory of casting practices utilized by Joseph Papp at the New York Shakespeare Festival, and highlights the difficulty of pinpointing which particular casting practice is utilized in Hamilton. It also places the Hamilton casting concept in conversation with August Wilson’s famous arguments about colour-blind casting, and considers how these conversations have changed. It considers the criticisms that have arisen in response to the casting of Hamilton. Finally, the article examines the City Center’s Encores! production of 1776 in 2016, which was produced to be ‘in the style of Hamilton’ but argues that the production of 1776 was not particularly successful at recreating the Hamilton-style casting. In the end, the article questions if there is such a thing as a successful production of 1776 with Hamilton-style casting.