Lin-Manuel Miranda - H 2015
Eric Ogden/The Hollywood ReporterLin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton, has been awarded a prestigious Genius Grant by the MacArthur Foundation.
A composer, lyricist and performer, Miranda, who graced the Sept. 4 cover of The Hollywood Reporter, was recognized for “reimagining American musical theater in works that fuse traditional storytelling with contemporary musical styles and voices.”
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Hamilton tells the story of Alexander Hamilton and the other Founding Fathers through the unconventional use of hip-hop. A huge crossover success, Hamilton has also been a critical darling, with THR‘s theater critic David Rooney describing it as a “game-changer” both for the musical art form and for Broadway.
The show has been playing to capacity houses since it began previews at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in July, and has already grossed a whopping $16 million. Prior to Hamilton, Miranda wrote music and lyrics for the 2008 Broadway hit In the Heights, which won the Tony Award for best musical.
Miranda and the other MacArthur fellows receive a stipend of $625,000, paid out over five years in quarterly installments. Other notable recipients of this year’s Genius Grants include The Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, puppeteer Basil Twist, theatrical set designer Mimi Lien and photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier. The full list of 23 MacArthur fellows for 2015 is here.
