So on Friday night, VP Elect, Mike Pence, attended a showing of Broadway’s smash hit, Hamilton, with his nephew and daughter, and things did not really go as planned.
For starters, when Pence entered the building (escorted by security of course), there was a sea of cheers and booing. The show went normally, until the end, where the entire cast came back out on stage and singled out Pence to deliver a special message to him.
Victor Dixon, who plays Aaron Burr, said to Pence, “We, sir — we are the diverse America who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us.”
Dixon continued, “We truly hope this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and to work on behalf of all of us. This is one American story told by a diverse group of men and women of different colors, creeds, and orientations.” Then the entire audience burst into cheers.
The New York Times reported that the director, producer, and cast of the musical wrote the statement for Pence once they heard that he would be in attendance.
The show’s Pulitzer Prize–winning creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, said he was proud of the cast’s actions:
We’re not sure if Pence actually caught the speech, since it was reported that he was walking out just before it. However, a spokesperson for the show reported to the Times that Pence heard the whole speech from the hallway, where he stopped to listen to it before exiting the theater.
Then, yesterday (Saturday) morning, soon-to-be President, Donald Trump, tweeted about the incident. Dixon even responded to one of his tweets.
However, it doesn’t really seem that the cast’s message was once of hostility, but rather one of hope – or even a plea to be heard and not overlooked. American is still shaken after the results of the 2016 election, and in fairness, Pence has put himself on a very controversial team, in a dominantly liberal city, to attend a play about equality, fairness, and diversity. The cast’s was not to make Pence uncomfortable or feel unwelcomed, but simply to make themselves heard – and boy, where they heard.