Rise Up!: A Broadway Progression

Rise Up! : Broadway and American Society from Angels in America to Hamilton by Chris Jones examines Broadway's progression over time, ending with Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton. 

Rise Up! : Broadway and American Society from Angels in America to Hamilton by Chris Jones examines "the story of Broadway's renaissance from the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, via the disaster that was Spiderman: Turn off the Dark through the unparalleled financial, artistic and political success of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton". The novel looks at impactful moments on Broadway over the past few decades in order to examine the social and political influence of the broadway Musical. In this book we are able to see a ripple effect circeling different Broadway shows in history. What I mean by this, is that by acknowledging the power of musical fanbases as groups of people who inspire acedemic discourse and social change we are able to see how a song in a musical can ripple into a series of real-life changes. 

Jones looks at "the moment when Tony Kushner's angel crashed (quite literally) through the ceiling of prejudice and religious intolerance to the triumph of Hamilton, with the coda of the Broadway cast addressing a new Republican vice-president from the stage. That complex performance - at once indicative of the theatre's new clout and its inability to fully change American society for the better - is the final scene of the book". Jones looks at the influence of Hamilton's public statement, and how the originallity of Hamilton changes the way in which people listened to it. How a revolutionary musical becomes revolutionary off-stage. 

Altohugh this book is not centered on Hamilton itself, I think it is important to acknowledge that it ends with Hamilton. Since the novel ends with Hamilton it can be assumed that it was the success of hamilton that inspired the novel. Without a drastic change in history, we ar eunable to look back to see all of the moments that contributed to it. It is only when we acknowledge the impact of Hamilton that we are able to look into the history of the musical to examine what moments lead us here. Through this, the author is able to investigate the progression of radical Broadway performances, getting a closer look at how Broadway is changing the world around it.