Lin-Manuel Miranda on the Moth Radio Hour

The other night I heard Lin-Manuel Miranda's piece on the Moth Radio Hour about the power of theater and I thought it was really quite moving.

As he mentioned, often times we have been writing our characters in our stories for years, or even decades, as they come from our own feelings and experiences whether or not we realize it. I believe that this is where the power in writing lies, in that it allows you to work through things you have been feeling beneath the surface, but may struggle to explicitly say.

Many of my short stories and concept ideas are based, to one degree or another, upon my own lived experiences and interactions with people I have known. I struggle to write stories that do not in some way, or more often than not, in large part, stem from my life or feelings. 

Writing is most definitely cathartic in a sense, even in Hamilton some major parts of Miranda's personal life slips through into a historical narrative. I believe that this is what sets Hamilton apart from being a biopic of sorts and makes it able to stand on its own, based upon but also independent of the life of Alexander Hamilton himself. I think that that's what makes a good work great.

Anyways, that's just my two cents. If you're interested, you can listen to his speech on the Moth Radio Hour here. 

Have a good Sunday everyone,

- SG