A Day to Remember: My Experience Watching Hamilton

As part of the Black Creative Trailblazers' access and opportunity programme, we took 18 creatives to see the award-winning musical Hamilton at the Liverpool Empire Theatre through the EduHam initiative, a programme designed to make theatre more accessible to young people and to inspire the next generation of creatives.

One of our brilliant young Trailblazers, 15-year-old musician Renee Adelakun, shared her reflections on the experience. Her words capture the emotion, excitement and inspiration the show sparked. Here's what she had to say:

I had the amazing opportunity to watch Hamilton in theatre. I was already a huge fan of the production and I love theatre so it was such an incredible experience for me.

We set off for Liverpool around 11am and the energy was high. We had the soundtrack blasting the whole journey and when we arrived, we saw loads of high school students also going in to watch the show. Many photos were taken in and outside the theatre and we bought snacks to take with us.

Eventually, it was time to find our seats. We were quite high up, near the far left section of the theatre, and had a good view of the stage. I am a musician whose main instrument is bass so from where I was sitting, I also had a view of the pit band and the bassist. I was really inspired by him as he wasn’t only playing bass guitar but he was effortlessly switching between bass guitar, double bass and bass synth throughout the entire show by himself.

The actual show was phenomenal and I enjoyed every minute of it. Not only the acting was incredible, but the lighting, sound, wham (wigs, hair and makeup), music, set design etc were all extraordinary.

I personally prefer the first act of Hamilton because it’s more upbeat whereas the second act is more mellow and emotional. However, some of my favourite songs like one last time, the world was wide enough and your obedient servant are in the second act.

My favourite characters in this particular production of Hamilton were Angelica and Burr. The reason being I already knew that the singing would be good but I wasn’t expecting Angelica and Burr to sound as beautiful as they did. They both had voices like honey that were so clearly trained, rich and almost hypnotising to listen to.

After the show, there was a Q&A session. I was made aware of this before the show however I didn’t expect them to go into as much depth as they did. They kept it quick and informative yet still entertaining and engaging. The actors playing Hamilton and Angelica came out, led the Q&A and introduced different people who work behind the scenes to make things happen.

They went through lighting and demonstrated how they use primary colours to create any colour they want. They showed us the role of costumes and they did a fun competition on stage with two swings (a performer who covers multiple roles in case someone is absent) and two dressers (crew members who help actors change costumes quickly backstage). Each swing was paired to a dresser and the two teams had to race to see who could do a quick change the fastest.

They also explored what I believe is one of the hardest and most demanding job in theatre: the DSM (deputy stage manager). They sit at a desk during the whole show and call all the cues (sound, lighting, set changes etc) through a headset. It is such a high pressure role because they have to be precise to the second. Their cues control moving set and so if the DSM messes up the whole show could go wrong or someone could even get hurt.

They also looked into sound, set design, automation and the fly tower and the cast answered questions from the audience.

Overall, I had a wonderful experience and would happily go again if given the opportunity. I left feeling inspired, more knowledgeable about theatre and even more in love with the production Hamilton. I hope to be involved in theatre, whether it’s musically or technically, in the future as it was inspirational in a way I won’t forget.