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How 'Hamilton' finds success with teen audience

It's not easy getting someone my age excited about a Broadway-style production.

With rare exceptions, the music and storylines of most such shows aren't exactly aimed at high school students and it's often difficult for us to relate.

Let's face it, we listen to hip-hop, and it'd be much easier for most of us to name our favorite rapper than our favorite musical.

But there I was on a recent Thursday night at PrivateBank Theatre in Chicago with the lights going down and the drum beats of the opening number just beginning and I was almost bouncing in my seat in anticipation of Alexander Hamilton setting foot on stage.

Of course, this was not really Alexander Hamilton, but Miguel Cervantes, the actor portraying the ambitious immigrant whose story has taken over Broadway and is helping bring musical theater to a whole new audience.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, who created “Hamilton,” has done something extraordinary. The New York City native has melded hip-hop and history into a record-breaking production with incredibly wide appeal.

As a self-proclaimed music fanatic who loves hip-hop and Broadway alike, I was attracted to “Hamilton” like no musical ever before. And clearly I'm not the only one.

The songs are witty and funny. Listen closely and some of the immature jokes within raps are the same kind of jokes you'd probably hear in the hallways of a high school.

While the score is full of hip-hop-inspired beats and rapping, there also are beautiful melodies and traditional Broadway stylings.

The music truly brings you on a ride, with crazy fast rapping and wild times with Hamilton's friends, or songs of love and sacrifice in his relationships.

Hamilton's excitement was contagious and, as a teenager, I often found myself drawing parallels between my life and that of one of our Founding Fathers.

That connection was easier to find than you might think, because the story is presented not as a history lesson, but as a tale featuring someone who was just a normal guy who rose to prominence.

A teenager himself in the beginning of the story, Hamilton is so ambitious he often gets himself in trouble.

But when the time comes, he steps up to become a leader — albeit a controversial one.

The musical weaves a path through his time as a soldier and during his political and law careers, all the while keeping an emphasis on his love life, his children and his friendships.

Sitting there in the darkened theater, I felt like I was watching a TV show about Hamilton's everyday life, not a musical about the history of the guy whose face is on the $10 bill.

It was so easy to laugh at King George's anger over the war and to cry with Eliza and Alexander as they lay with their dying son. But no matter what was happening, I felt connected to the characters and the music, like I was living it with them.

No, it isn't easy getting people my age to the theater. But with this show I think many of us can connect with the lessons of “Hamilton.”

Every day in school we're reminded that with enough hard work and ambition, we can accomplish anything.

Alexander Hamilton came from nothing. He was a poor orphan immigrant, but he made a life for himself in America and went on to do many amazing things.

And thanks to this play, his life continues to resonate today.

The music of “Hamilton” is exciting and the story is fascinating. But if there's one lesson I want to take away, it's that if you put your heart into something, you can do almost anything.

Hamilton proved that in life. And “Hamilton” continues to prove it on stage.

Glenbard South student Maggie Loversky says "Hamilton" can inspire young people to try to reach even greater heights. Courtesy of Maggie Loversky

About the author

Maggie Loversky is a student at Glenbard South High School in Glen Ellyn who's doing an internship this fall in the Daily Herald's DuPage County bureau.

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