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The Roundtable

RT25 and #Hamilten: Lin-Manuel Miranda in the room where it was starting to happen

By Sarah LaDuke

Published May 1, 2025 at 11:30 AM EDT

Lin-Manuel Miranda and Sarah LaDuke at The Public Theater in 2015

Sarah LaDuke: As we here at WAMC celebrate the 25th Anniversary of The Roundtable, a little American musical is celebrating 10 years since it premiered in New York City – and quickly became a once-in-a-generation success in terms of reviews, ticket sales, fan enthusiasm, and awards recognition.

“Hamilton” opened off-Broadway at The Public Theatre on January 20, 2015 and played there through May 3. It opened on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in early August of 2015, where it is still running. “Hamilton” won 11 Tony Awards, a 2016 Grammy Award for its cast recording, and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It has played – and is playing – all over the world. A pro-tape of the production’s original cast streams on Disney+ and was a pandemic sensation.

Written by and originally starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, “Hamilton”’s success helped to elevate the careers of its cast and creative team. It launched Miranda into the stratosphere of professional artistic opportunity - on stage and in Hollywood.

But before all of that - “The Hamilton Mixtape” was a work-in-progress, put up in a black-box staged-reading, presented by New York Stage and Film and Vassar College in the summer of 2013. And I did get to be there - in the room where it was starting to happen.

Here is a portion of my archival interview with Lin-Manuel Miranda from 2013.

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The Roundtable theater broadway tony award powerhouse musical theater hip-hop Vassar College Lin-Manuel Miranda

Sarah LaDuke

Sarah has worked in public radio since 2006. She grew up in Saranac Lake, New York where she worked part-time at Pendragon Theatre all through high school and college. She graduated from UAlbany in 2006 with a BA in English and started at WAMC a few weeks later as a part-time board-op in the control room. Through a series of offered and seized opportunities she is now the Senior Contributing Producer of The Roundtable and Producer of The Book Show. During the main thrust of the Covid-19 pandemic shut-down, Sarah hosted a live Instagram interview program "A Face for Radio Video Series." On it, Sarah spoke with actors, musicians, comedians, and artists about the creative activities they were accomplishing and/or missing. She is on the board of WAM Theatre and lives in Albany, New York with her husband, Paul, and their dog, Doritos.

See stories by Sarah LaDuke

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