This document provides context and summaries for scenes from the musical Hamilton. It discusses the characters of Burr, Hamilton, Angelica, Eliza and Washington that are featured in the song "Non-Stop". It summarizes the plot points covered in the first segment of the song regarding Hamilton and Burr's law careers and Hamilton's role in the Constitutional Convention. It also discusses the student's goals for their performance, including improving characterization of Angelica and voice projection.

1. Hamilton an Introduction to Characters and Context
“There’s a million things I haven’t done, just you wait.” - Alexander Hamilton. I will be
talking about the characters and context behind Hamilton’s non-stop. Non stop was
chosen as it involves all three of the musical theatre aspects, singing, dancing and
acting. The characters in this piece are Burr, Hamilton, Angelica, Eliza and
Washington. We gave the characters to people in the class who we felt strongly
suited each role and to the people who had skills that matched with each character.
In this lesson we read through the script and sung along with a backing track that
had the majority of the ensemble parts in there. My smart target for this lesson was
to project my voice more to get the point of the song across. As a class we all
understand how to achieve an american accent, and we all do it decently, we could
more than likely work on it more, to achieve a higher grade when it comes to
pronunciation. We also aimed to learn about the context of the scene, but have
previously watched Hamilton, so I already knew why this scene takes place and what
its importance is towards the whole performance.
As a class we decided to this piece because it incorporates all three of the musical
theatre elements, as well as the fact that it would help us as a class to develop our
skills when performing this piece, and would ensure that we took part in our research
independently regarding this piece, even if it is listening to the backing track for
ensemble parts or the line that will cue you in when singing, or the beat you need to
dance on. This would benefit my own skills development (my timing and
coordination) as I learnt to look for cues when I sing and it also helped my work on
my pronunciation when singing in an American accent.
The first segment of the song deals with the law careers of Hamilton and Burr. Ever
impatient, Hamilton bypasses the traditional three year apprenticeship typical of
lawyers and instead does a crash course. The study notes that he made for himself
were used by generations of future lawyers who would copy them out by hand as
part of studying for the bar exam. A New York judge once commented that it was a
pleasure to have either Burr or Hamilton in his courtroom, but it took Hamilton two
hours to say what Burr could express in 30 minutes. It then goes into a part about
the Constitutional Convention, which was set up to remedy the unworkable
weakness of the central government created by the Articles of Confederation.
Hamilton gets appointed as one of three delegates from New York State.
Unfortunately for Hamilton, Gov. Clinton appoints two other delegates who are
ardent anti-federalists who are quite happy with a weak central government in favour
of the power amassed at the state level in New York. Because the rules of the
convention were one vote per state, Hamilton was regularly overruled by the majority
of his state’s representation. He did take advantage of his access to George
Washington as well as the absence of his fellow representatives which provided him
an opportunity to exercise those durable lungs. At the end, as Washington put it, the
Constitution was signed by, “Eleven states and Col. Hamilton.” The anti-federalists
fired up their propaganda engines and began writing commentary in local

2. newspapers. To counter these arguments and address the concerns of Virginia and
New York, Hamilton joined John Jay and James Madison in writing the Federalist
Papers, a series of 85 essays written over the course of six months and amounting
to 175,000 words of material. That was a pace of three to four essays per week, and
Jay stopped writing after contributing only five. Eventually Madison stopped writing
as well. Thus Hamilton ended up writing somewhere between 51 and 59 of the 85
essays. In “Non-stop,” Washington doesn’t make it halfway through his persuasive
speech before Hamilton interrupts with, “Treasury or State?” since he is well-qualified
for either position. Washington chooses Hamilton to be the Secretary of Treasury,
and Jefferson gets asked to take on Hamilton’s left-overs in the next act.
Throughout “Non-stop,” Burr continuously questions Hamilton,
“Why do you assume you’re the smartest in the room?”
“Why do you write like you’re running out of time?”
“How do you write like you need it to survive?”
Indeed Hamilton did seem to need writing to survive and he managed to write
himself out of several severe depressions over the course of his life. Lin-Manuel
Miranda commented at one point that it took him six years to write the musical.
“Hamilton would have written it in about three weeks!” Eliza Schuyler Hamilton
breathlessly sings her theme “Look at where you are,” as though trying to keep up
with her husband's non-stop life and ambitions. Hamilton ruthlessly co-opts both that
theme and Washington's “They are asking me to lead,” to justify plunging into
another intensive job.
Throughout the performance there are ensemble parts, which I take part in. Before I
take on the role of Angelica, I feel my target for the ensemble is to learn the parts
and to know the cues of when to come in, because I always feel I have to second
guess when to come in. Therefore I went away and learnt where the ensemble takes
part and what the line is before they come in so I am prepared. In the original
performance of non stop there are obviously more ensemble members so it is louder,
which means us as a cast have to project our voices more in order to be heard. The
original performers also take up a lot more space on stage when it gets to the
harmonies between Angelica and Eliza with Hamilton, as they move down stage so
we need to ensure that the ensemble in this part more how they do in the original to
cover as Angelica and Eliza move about the stage.
For the next rehearsal I obviously set myself previously to learn the ensemble parts
but I also wanted to go away and perfect my own part for Angelica as I felt it still
needed work, in order to characterise her; I must show emotion towards Hamilton as
Angelica is in love with him. I also felt my voice was shaky and that my overall
pronunciation could have been better. As well as going away and perfecting the
choreography for the ensemble parts in the back of Hamilton and Burr performing.

3. One of my strengths is adaptability and being multiskilled throughout hamilton, as i
am in no way a dancer but I am open to trying and have no complaints about the
ensemble dancing parts as it is not so heavily skilled that I cannot do the routine/
choreography. I am one of the singing parts in Non Stop, which is my biggest
strength out of the three musical theatre aspects, so I am very confident when it
comes to this as I know I can sing the part if I put my mind to it.
One area to develop, is to improve on my characterisation, I feel I need to put more
emotion into my performance as Angelica, as it would help to develop the piece and
to give example to the emotion behind the song, which would also help the audience
to be engaged in the piece as they will understand it more; through the storytelling in
my emotion.
To review my target in the beginning, it was to project my voice more in the lesson
and I feel I met this target to some extent, as some parts were louder than others,
which meant my projection was good at some points, for example at (3.14 seconds)
the beginning of my part as Angelica my projection was good and my voice was
clear, compared to (5.54 seconds) where I feel my projection was too much and it
just sounded like I was shouting, therefore I am going to go away and figure out how
to make sure it does not sound like that.