Episode Notes
Patrick Vassel is associate and supervising director for Hamilton, the mega-hit hip-hop musical about America’s founding that first took Broadway and then the entire country by storm. A Notre Dame alum who majored in political science and minored in the Hesburgh Program in Public Service, he was back on campus during Commencement weekend to address the graduates of those two programs.
Patrick and host Ted Fox talked about, what else—the making of Hamilton, from creator Lin-Manuel Miranda’s songwriting and the early days of the production to everything that goes into keeping this cultural phenomenon the show it was intended to be. Along the way, they also discussed how there was more than one all-star member of the class of 2003 at Akron’s St. Vincent-St. Mary High School.
We promise that will make sense in about half-an-hour.
Episode Transcript
*Note: We do our best to make these transcripts as accurate as we can. That said, if you want to quote from one of our episodes, particularly the words of our guests, please listen to the audio whenever possible. Thanks.
Ted Fox: From the University of Notre Dame, this is With a Side of Knowledge. I'm your host, Ted Fox. The idea behind this show is pretty simple: A university campus is a destination for all kinds of interesting people representing all kinds of research specialties and fields of expertise. So why not invite some of these folks out to brunch--yes, I said brunch--where we'll have an informal conversation about their work, and then I'll turn those brunches into a podcast? It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.
Patrick Vassel is associate and supervising director for Hamilton, the mega hit hip-hop musical about America's founding that first took Broadway and then the entire country by storm. A Notre Dame alum who majored in political science and minored in the Hesburgh Program in Public Service, he was back on campus during commencement weekend to address the graduates of those two programs. Patrick and I talked about what else, the making the Hamilton, from creator Lin-Manuel Miranda's songwriting in the early days of the production to everything that goes into keeping this cultural phenomenon the show it was intended to be. Along the way, we also discussed how there was more than one all-star member of the class of 2003 at Akron's St. Vincent-St. Mary High School.
I promise that will make sense in about a half an hour.
Ted Fox: So Patrick Vassel, welcome to With a Side of Knowledge.
Patrick Vassel: Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here.
Ted: What is it to you in your opinion, 'cause obviously tons of ink has been spilled writing about Hamilton. To you, what is it that has made this show such a phenomenon, sets it apart from so many other great works that are on Broadway?
Patrick: Diving right in with the big Hamilton question, alright. You could ask me that question every day for a very long time and I could give you a different answer and I think they'd all be true. Our director, my boss Tommy Kail, at one point early on in the madness of the move to Broadway and the people outside for the lottery, he used a phrase that I often think of that for whatever reason, combination of reasons, this particular story turned out to be one that people were hungry for in a way that we didn't anticipate. I think that's still true. We keep finding, as we now have tours crossing the country and reaching more and more people who are only all the more eager and excited to experience it.
To answer the question, I think one answer that comes to mind is, the way that Lin wrote it has an enormous amount of generosity in it. He wrote the best songs for people that would not be him. There's so much in the writing of the show that just has this remarkable generosity of spirit, in addition to being a brilliant work of art, that in my experience part of what was and is thrilling to work on the show is to watch all these other artists then come to it and say, well if Lin wrote that, what can my lighting design be, what can my costume design be, what can I do on stage, what can we do on the directing team.
The initial inspiration and I think that that's so much of the feeling that the show generates is, well if that can exist, what can I do, what am I doing, and really in a very meta way that ties back to the very narrative of the story, just how improbable the journey of this kid, this teenager growing up in the Caribbean, who somehow by the force of his talent and his words and his will ends up right in the middle of revolution and shaping this nation. If he can do that, what can we do?
In so many ways that's I think the impact of the show and I think what went into the making of it and what I think is also so much of what people respond to when they see it.
Ted: You joined the show at a pretty early stage. It was still in workshops at the point when you joined it. I'm wondering now we look, Hamilton now, it's ubiquitous and we look at it and it's this big thing, but it wasn't always this big thing. It started as someone's idea, then it's being workshopped, then it's being worked out what it's gonna look like. What were those early days of being part of the show? What was that like?
Patrick: It was thrilling and to be totally honest for me, it was definitely overwhelming. Most of those early days my perspective was like the water was very high. I needed a straw most days to breathe. Part of that too was because I joined the first time that we put anything up on its feet, which was early. So there had been some music workshops, there had been a concert at Lincoln Center, and as we look at it now, yes, that was relatively early in the process. But it was not early in the writing. Lin had already been writing it for at least five, maybe six years at the time that I joined.
So that's part of why the water felt high was that there were a lot of people in the room, Tommy and Alex Lacamoire, music supervisor and Andy Blankenbuehler and Stephanie Klemons, who's associate. There were a lot of them that had been talking about it for long before I got there, so there were a lot of things I was still figuring out and processing that they were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we know how that's gonna work, we know what that's gonna be like.
So it was lot of me really leaning on why I was hired, why I was there, the things that I'm good at, and it was a total thrill. Because the moments that I first heard those demos, that I first heard that music, it was, well this is brilliant. Don't know what it's gonna look like on stage, don't know how, like none of us knew exactly how that was gonna come together, but we knew the music was brilliant. So that was really what was thrilling was, well what's that gonna look like, how's that gonna work? In addition to being the real privilege and honor of being so close to watching that creative team work together. So Lin and Andy and Tommy and Alex day after day, whether it was staying late after rehearsal or it was getting in the next morning. They'd go in a room, they'd have 10 things to solve, they'd come out with three answers and then we'd move on, and that's how we worked.
That's the other thing I guess it was, saying the thrill, honor and privilege and hearing Tommy Kail making fun of me for saying any of that. Because it was work, and that was the other real lesson for me of the experience was putting together Hamilton felt very similar to when I did my high school musical, when I did shows here at Notre Dame. You have to figure out where the people are gonna go and what they're gonna wear and what they're gonna say and how they're gonna say it, just like any other show, and that's how it worked.
Ted: It's interesting hearing you talk a little back there about how much the music stood out right away because I think my introduction to the show was Jenny showing me the YouTube clip of Lin-Manuel Miranda and--was it Tommy that was playing the piano for him or was that ...
Patrick: That was Alex.
Ted: Alex.
Patrick: Yeah, Alex Lacamoire.
Ted: At the White House with President Obama, and I've heard Lin talk about this since then. In that room, in the beginning everyone seemed almost like reacting to a parody, it's a little bit of a joke. They hit that second verse and it's, oh my gosh, there's something huge here. So I think anyone who comes to this show, its that initial exposure. You hear one of these songs and it's in some ways it's unlike anything I've ever heard before.
Patrick: Yeah.
Ted: Which I think is probably part of the genius of it.
Patrick: Absolutely, again, I'll continue to quote Tommy whenever in doubt. But one of the things that he said all along was this thing shouldn't exist, but it does. It's a terrible idea on paper, and yet there it is. That's another thing that I think is something people respond to is, it's an incredible story, it shouldn't have happened, but it did. Lin shouldn't have written it, and it shouldn't have worked, but here we are.
Ted: Like you said, very meta with Alexander Hamilton, that shouldn't have happened for him either.
Patrick: Exactly.
Ted: Taking a step back from Hamilton specifically for a minute, how does the process for someone like me, and I assume a lot of people who don't know a lot about how Broadway and how musicals work, what is that gauntlet that a show has to go through from, you've alluded to it a little bit talking about how long he was working on this. But from the conceptual stage to actually making it to the big stage on Broadway. 'Cause it seems like there're a lot of milestones and checkpoints you have to cross to make it just to even be, I don't want to disparage anything as an average Broadway show, but just to be a Broadway show that isn't Hamilton and doesn't redefine the genre--just to get to Broadway seems like an incredulous arduous journey.
Patrick: Yes. It can be, it really depends, every show is different. Musical theater is an incredibly difficult art form. It's a thing that people often forget. But for all the talk of this shouldn't work or this shouldn't exist but it does, you could a little bit say that about most musicals. We're going to tell a story, sometimes we're gonna sing, but not all the time. When you actually break it down it's like, wow. People think about Broadway and people think about classic shows, whether it's West Side Story or Rent or The Lion King or whatever it is, and we take it for granted that people love that. It doesn't really--the logic of the art form is shaky.
Ted: Don't look at it too closely.
Patrick: Exactly, exactly. So creating a new work of musical theater is an enormously difficult task, and it takes a long time. It also takes a lot of people is the other thing. When we think about an arduous journey to Broadway, that's what comes to mind is it takes a lot of people and it takes a lot of resources. So in the early days it's going to be the writers doing it for free, for nothing; for a long time, they're just going to have to write songs or write a script, eventually get to a place that a producer or an investor or someone with money will encourage them either by buying the option on it or ...
Ted: Did you wanna order right now?
Patrick: Sure.
Ted: I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I'll remember where you were so I will pick it back up.
Patrick: Alright, we'll pick up, cool.
Ted: (voiceover) Back when Patrick was a student at Notre Dame, he was chair of the Student Union Board, a group for which my wife, Jenny, served as the advisor. Several years after he graduated, we were having brunch with him at the very restaurant this episode was recorded, in fact. And he told us about this hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton that he had just joined. He wasn't sure what it would become, but he loved the idea. Turns out, he wasn't the only one. (end voiceover)
Ted: You were talking about the writers starting out, you're doing these things, you're writing the script, you're writing the songs for free, you hope that maybe at some point you're gonna attract a producer, attract an investor, kind of get this thing some legs and start moving forward.
Patrick: Right, because at a certain point then yes, you can make demos in GarageBand by yourself and Lin did. But eventually, you're gonna wanna lay down some tracks and again like having more people involved. So whether that's a director, choreographer, music director. Then it really becomes about the development process and every show is different. Some shows are going to need 10 years, some shows are going to need five years. Most shows are gonna need at least a few years, and every time, what typically happens is, you do go from an initial some sort of workshop. Maybe it's just the songs, and that was true for Hamilton. The first couple of times they tried anything out, they didn't worry about staging, it was just music.
Ted: And that's in front of an audience?
Patrick: Eventually.
Ted: Eventually, okay.
Patrick: Usually like a small friends and family, like invited, it's not usually a very public thing. Now sometimes you may do more public things. As a little bit of a writing deadline for Lin, Tommy and Lin did a concert at Lincoln Center. So the concert at Lincoln Center was a deadline for, let's try to write some songs. It wasn't all Hamilton material at the concert, but it gave Lin a chance to try some things out.
Then it becomes about having a team of a really smart producer and a creative team that knows what the show needs. Because it can be tempting, and it often happens, to take what feels like a great idea and try to rush it to Broadway before it's actually ready. You only get one swing, so if it doesn't work on Broadway, it's not coming back next season. So that's a lot of why it takes a long time and shows will go out of town. So they'll maybe premiere in Chicago or they'll premiere in San Diego, somewhere that the creative team can try it out, keep on working on it before it comes into Broadway. That game is a tricky one of real estate. There's only so many Broadway houses. A lot of them are taken up by long-running shows. The landlords of those theaters want to bring in shows that are going to succeed. So there's a lot of conversations and politics around what do they think is going to run, what's gonna really fill their theaters. So a lot of shows actually will get to a point where they've been developed, they've been out of town, they're ready to go and they're just waiting for a theater. They're just waiting for the right theater to open up.
And that's another thing is the right theater. We always want it to be in the Richard Rodgers and we're really grateful to be there. It's the perfect venue for our show. A lot of shows end up in the Broadway, which is a huge house. So if it's not a huge show, that's tricky.
Ted: What made the Richard Rodgers perfect for Hamilton?
Patrick: So both kind of logistics and history. So the history of the team, the Rodgers is where in The Heights premiered and ran, so everyone knew the crew there. The building just felt like it kind of was home for the creative team in a really powerful way, and the Rodgers is this really magical space. It's about 1300 seats; it does not feel like that. You never feel like you're very far from the stage because you really aren't. If you're standing in the front row, you can reach up and you can touch it, it's right there. That intimacy felt like very much what we wanted to achieve and preserve from our beginnings at the Public Theater, which is 299 and is quite intimate and all of a piece with our narrative goal of taking these historical figures, getting them off the pedestals, really putting them on the ground, making them feel like people that are walking the earth. That was the goal all along.
Ted: So we walked through that process for a musical in general. So now turning back to Hamilton, was there a moment either when you were still in workshops, when it was off-Broadway at the Public Theater, when it was on Broadway, where you had that moment of taking a step back and saying not just this is going to win the Tony or this is going to win 11 Tony's, but this is going to be something that defines an entire generation of musical theater. Like this thing is even bigger than anything we thought of when we were excited about it creatively.
Patrick: Sure, I mean there's a few. The moment when we extended at the Public Theater and Oskar Eustis, the artistic director, the day that we put the extension on sale came down to rehearsal to let us know that we had broken both their website and their phone system. And that was a little bit like, okay. Great.
Ted: There's some interest.
Patrick: Yep, noted. The first preview on Broadway, where that was our first lottery. I forget what the crowd count was, but it was something like 1500 people just on 46th Street. That was like oh, okay, they're ready for us. Then that whole first year, every month there was something. From the president is coming to the president is coming back to--there were so many moments that were like that. But the truth of the matter is, they all feel very fleeting in my mind because Tommy did an amazing job, and the whole team did an amazing job of--we had to come in and do the work. That was never not true, and that was always the vibe. We acknowledged it, absolutely like it was impossible to ignore. Again, we tried to meet it with gratitude and with a real spirit of inclusion, that's where the Ham for Ham shows came from. It started that first day where it was like it was all these people, you gotta go say thanks, you gotta go say hi. Then it's like, alright, well what can we do it tomorrow, 'cause there's gonna be a whole lot of them coming back.
Ted: And most of them aren't gonna get tickets.
Patrick: Exactly, exactly. And as Lin put it, we do not want to send 1500 angry people back out in the streets of New York, that's the last thing New York City needs. So what can we give them that they can at least walk away if they didn't win the lottery with, well I got to see Daveed, or I got to see Lin.
Ted: And they would actually perform out in front of the theater.
Patrick: Yeah, exactly. We did all kinds of things, our stage manager called cues from the show so we could see what that's like. We had the dancers doing their audition choreography, or Oak did his Mickey Mouse voice. It was all different things, and we invited other performers from other Broadway shows to come and perform. So we really were able to create a nice sense of community in that, as well, because we were so happy to be there and so lucky to be alongside so many other amazing performers and shows in the same neighborhood. So there were lots of moments that felt like historic and enormous in many ways, but we always knew that we had work to do, and so that was always the focus.
Ted: So speaking of the work, your title is associate and supervising director. I'm wondering what exactly that means. When you get up--people go see Hamilton one time. And that's the thing--like, I went to see it. It's your day in and day out. So what do you do each day when you go to work?
Patrick: Great question. I hope my family and friends are listening, 'cause they wonder this all the time. So the job has changed a lot. To be an associate director on a show, the shortest answer is, it's whatever the director needs, and every director's different. For Tommy and with Hamilton, the job was essentially absolutely being at his right hand for whatever may come up or be needed. Tommy's very hands on, he's very involved. That was true at the beginning, it's true now. He and I are constantly communicating. But when we were making the thing, it was a lot of tracking information. So both like, actually recording the staging as we're creating it so that a few days from now we can say, what was that, where did we go, what number were we on. In addition to a lot of tracking of, hey let's pay attention to this, or remind me about that, or I think that's gonna be a problem, let's make sure that we talk about that--it's a lot of those kinds of things. Then the real, like where things get, you really hit the ground running is when you actually get into tech and previews. Because when you're in the rehearsal room, it's just the creative team and the cast and the music team. Once you get into the theater, now you're adding all the design teams, you're adding everyone in the theater, you're adding the crew, it's a lot more people. And what that means is that the director just simply cannot talk to all those people, and all those people need to talk to the director, so it's a lot of dividing and conquering. So that would change every day. Tommy would say hey, I really need to talk to David Korins, our set designer, can you just go through all the notes with Howell, our lighting designer, and let me know how it goes, let me know if you need me. Or 18 different versions of that.
Then you start previews, and previews are an invaluable time where you're getting to do the show at night for an audience, but then come in and rehearse the next day and make changes and adjustments and fixes. Lin was rewriting and we were changing staging, and that's really intense, because that's me sitting next to Tommy in the dark, watching the show, he's whispering notes, I'm feverishly writing them. I go home and translate them into something that people understand. And then the next day, not only do I have notes for every department from Tommy, I have notes for every actor from Tommy. So that's really where it's a lot of like, hey you go talk to Lin, I gotta go talk to Leslie, a lot of that.
Now that we have many companies of this production, of this show, my job is much more casting and auditions. So I'm in auditions almost every week because we are always looking, people are always coming and going.
We have a team of resident directors, so there's a resident director for every company of Hamilton that I talk to almost every day about how understudy rehearsals are going, about how the show is doing, about what's happening in the building. There's always things to discuss and to talk about. I work really closely with our production supervisor, Jason Bassett, and our associate and supervising choreographer, Stephanie Klemons. Jason was our stage manager on Broadway, Stephanie has been with the show since the beginning, so that's a really rewarding part for me is that it feels like we're still all making the thing.
Then I do travel to each company every four to six weeks to watch the show, share my thoughts, be able to support and check in however I'm needed. We're still adding companies, so we're getting ready for the And Peggy Company, which will start rehearsals this fall, do three weeks in Puerto Rico with Lin playing the part next January, and then head to San Francisco after that. So that's been ongoing on six month cycles here. We've been putting up new companies, and that's where a lot of my energy goes. Long answers, sorry.
Ted: No, it was great, I think you explained it very well, so I hope your family was listening because that was a great explanation. I know in the last year here at Notre Dame you directed Sorin: A Notre Dame Story, which premiered here and has played around the country. I'm wondering what other--Hamilton is your day job, I mean, it's a cool day job, but it's your day job. What other projects are you working on now as a writer, as a director, 'cause I know you have a lot of different things that you're interested in.
Patrick: Sorin was great last year. I also directed a show that we did in the East Village, kind of off, off Broadway, part of a theater company called Ten Bones Theater Company in New York. We did this play by my friend Pete McElligott, called In a Little Room, which had like a three-week run. It was right after Sorin premiered, and with both of those shows, those experiences were great, and it was part of why I wanted to do them. Because Hamilton is this enormous, enormous show in all ways, and Sorin is a one-man show; In a Little Room had three people in one location, no music. So the chance to really be going between worlds in that way was really thrilling.
I had the chance last year to do a writing residency at the Sheen Center in New York City to write and develop a play--about a lot of things, but kind of grappling with, I grew up in the Midwest as a Notre Dame fan, going to football games. The last few years of concussion research and college athletics and sexual assault and there's so many things that I feel like have been swirling I wanted to try to write something about it. So I wrote this play call The Forward Pass. I need to rewrite that play, and I think it's going to be very different.
Pete, who wrote In a Little Room, has several other scripts that he and I are always talking about. I have a friend that we've been working on what right now is a very contemporary Black Lives Matter musical that I'm excited about. So lots of those meetings and those conversations. Again, like I mentioned before, musicals take a long time; so do plays. So it's a lot of, send me that script, here are my notes and thoughts, great let's meet, should we get some people together and read it. I'm still working on a show called Welcome to the Gun Show, which is a kind of song cycle where all the lyrics are Chekhov. We've done that a couple of times and we're still sort of figuring out what that wants to be.
So I've had the chance and still have the chance to do a lot of other projects. The big one that I'm eager to try to write this year is, it scares me, and that's why I need to do it. It's an autobiographical show that launches from my senior year of high school, when I was voted most likely to succeed in the same class with LeBron James.
Ted: It's the greatest factoid.
Patrick: It's a good fun fact.
Ted: Same high school class as LeBron James. It's LeBron ...
Patrick: He got best smile, he got best smile.
Ted: I love that.
Patrick: It would basically take that structure of what he has done since then, what I have done since then, and really try to grapple with what is success. So we said most likely to succeed back then. What does that mean, what does that have to do with being happy, what does that have to do with achieving anything? So some version of that is a thing that I think I need to write this year. So if nothing else by the end of 2018, I'm hoping there's a draft of that.
Ted: And who knows, LeBron seems to be a pretty good actor.
Patrick: He's very good.
Ted: Maybe, you never know.
Patrick: Yeah, that would be the thing, I'm writing a part for him.
Ted: I was gonna say, we will refer back to this podcast.
Patrick: Exactly.
Ted: So super serious question for you right now. Are you ready for the super serious question?
Patrick: I'm ready.
Ted: Is Lin-Manuel Miranda's phone number in your phone right now?
Patrick: It is.
Ted: That's crazy. That was all that question was. But no, the serious part of that was, you've talked about this, and I'm wondering just to kind of crystallize it here at the end. I'm wondering what the experience--and obviously you're still having an ongoing experience on Hamilton--but from working with Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tommy Kail, or anyone else on the show, what thing or things in particular have you taken with you that you feel like, okay, as a director this is a lesson that I keep with me. Or as someone writing a show now, this is something I'm taking with me. What have you taken from working with them in terms of your work?
Patrick: Everything, I take everything, I steal everything that I can. The things that come to mind are, I say this all the time, I think a lot of people say this, if you follow Lin-Manuel on Twitter, you do have a pretty good sense of who he is, I promise. He really is like that. What I mean to say by that is his kindness, his compassion, how much he's a fan and cheering for everyone to do well, that is how he is.
What that connects to, and is the real answer I think to the question is, pretty early on in working with Tommy, and Tommy and I did a show called Magic/Bird, about Larry Bird and Magic Johnson on Broadway before we did Hamilton. Certainly it's part of why I have my job I know is because we get along this way. But pretty early on I was able to recognize that Tommy's style of directing and the way that he works is exactly how I'm trying to work, it's exactly the kind of way that I want to work. Which is thrilling, was thrilling, is thrilling, because it means that I don't have to fake anything. I don't have to be a certain way because it's Tommy's direction and I'm working on Tommy's show. I can just be myself because that's A) what the show needs, but B) what I'm interested in doing.
So Tommy has spoken about all of this much more eloquently than I will, but the belief that great art does not have to be created in a cauldron. That we need not be angry or be bitter or be frustrated in order to make something that is of value. That it can actually be made with real care and with real love is something that was true all along and still is, and it's a huge part of what I feel responsible for now as we welcome company members and create companies--who knows where they were when we were making this thing. A lot of them were in college, which keeps me feeling ever older. And they don't know, they weren't there. So they come to this thing thinking whatever they're thinking about Hamilton, and it's one of the best parts of my job is from the audition process to the rehearsal process to the process of being in the show to really make sure, yeah it really is like this, we've got your back, we're here to support you, we wanna create the conditions in which everyone can come to work and be happy and do their best work.
That's how we made this thing and that's how we keep making it, and that's something that--I'm so grateful for that in taking it to all my other work because whoever I work with, whether they're writers or they're producers or whoever they are. If they try to start to take things down a certain ... I can say no, no it doesn't have to be like that, we don't have to do that. This can be as much about the humanity of who we are, and in fact, really the best work is going to come out of that.
Because the work is always gonna be hard. It's enormously difficult, it's going to be hard, you're going to get frustrated, there's gonna be bad days. You don't need to lean into that in order to achieve something. That's also I think a big part of why I'm still with the show and why I see myself sticking around for a while. I don't feel like I have to be someone I'm not, I'm still fully who I am as a director in this role, and I think I'm better at it now than I was a year ago. The show continues to offer me the chance to be better at it the longer I do it.
Ted: Patrick Vassel, our food is here.
Patrick: Our food is here.
Ted: This was awesome.
Patrick: Thank you so much.
Ted: Best of luck with the speeches this weekend.
Patrick: Thank you, thank you.
Ted: With a Side of Knowledge is a production of the Office of the Provost at the University of Notre Dame. For more, visit provost.nd.edu/podcast.