You heard "Hamilton" creator Lin-Manuel Miranda recite a sonnet when he won the Tony Award for Best Original Score. What you didn't hear -- because it didn't air in full during the Tonys broadcast on CBS -- was his acceptance poem for Best Book of a Musical.
In that poem/rap, Miranda thanked "Hamilton" director Thomas Kail, orchestrator Alex Lacamoire, choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, The Public Theater's Oskar Eustis, producer Jeffrey Seller, and actor Daveed Diggs. Most important, though, he spoke about his father, Luis A. Miranda, who moved from Puerto Rico to the United States before his son was born.
"I was a manager at the Sears in Puerto Rico, and I basically threw it all away to go to New York," Luis explained in an interview with Broadway Genius. "[And] I didn’t speak a lot of English. It made no sense, but it was what I needed to do."
Read Miranda's poem in full below, and watch the magic above.
This envelope says Lin, but it’s not entirely Lin’s
’Cause when you work with Tommy Kail the best idea wins.
When Alex finds a place to cut or Andy needs more bars,
You can’t think “this is mine”; you can only think “this is ours.”
Is it ours or is it hours? Well, it’s hours of rewriting
You talk Burr with Oskar and Jeffrey and keep igniting
That spark into a flame. Make a mark,
Arrange the frame, hit your target and change the game,
Earn the hyphenate in your name.
You let Daveed Diggs turn your couplet into a triplet.
You give him the mic, he grips it and spits it, rips it and flips it.
You turn back to this envelope that says you win.
You think about your father and how scared he must have been
When he came to New York City and he didn’t speak the language
So you give Hamilton all his hunger, genius, and anguish,
And you vanquish self-doubt by perfecting your lines of text
And you call Tommy Kail and you say, “what’s next?”
Hungry for more "Hamilton"? Here is a roundup of every single time the musical won or performed at the 2016 Tony Awards.
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