How I Got Hamilton Tickets (a.k.a. Sorry, Not Sorry)

Let me tell you what I wish I'd known
When I was young and dreamed of glory. 
You have no control:
Who lives, 
Who dies, 
Who tells your story?

Try not to be jealous, everyone, but I'm going to see Hamilton.

My husband, Dan, and I have been trying to get tickets forever. We were hoping to see the original cast in New York a couple of summers ago, but it was next to impossible to get tickets . . . except for the nosebleed seats that cost something like $3000 a piece. We decided against it.

The last time we visited New York, Dan and I went to In the Heights, also by Lin-Manuel Miranda. A few years later, Hamilton took the world by storm. Dan and I bought the album. We watched the cast perform on the Tony Awards and for President Obama. Even Dan, not exactly a musical theater lover, took almost as much of an interest in it as I did.

"I was listening to Hamilton today at work," Dan told me one night, "and it's basically a rap concept album!"

He appreciated the cleverness of the King George song and its musical homage to the Beatles and the British Invasion (a literal invasion in the show).

Cuz when push comes to shove
I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love
Da da da dat da . . . 

He bought the "Hamilton Mix Tape." He checked out the Hamildrops, the latest being "The Hamilton Polka," by Weird Al.

Dan may act calm and collected, but he got just as excited as I did every time Daveed Diggs showed up in a movie or a TV show or in some experimental hip hop group.

Then there is me, never one to act calm and collected.

Not long ago, we visited a museum that featured a traveling exhibit about America's founding fathers. Every time we came upon a plaque about the Marquis de Lafayette, I would yell out, "Lafayette!" One of the displays was even named, "The Room Where It Happened," and I did my best Aaron Burr impersonation.

The game is played.
The art of the trade, 
How the sausage gets made. 
We just assume that it happens.
But no one else is in the room where it happens.

Then I started hearing about real people, people I knew as friends, family members, and acquaintances, actually getting into the show. What kind of dark magic was this?

Most of my extended family live in Illinois and when Hamilton moved into the Chicago theater district, many of them headed to the city to see the show.

Boise did not make the cut for the Northwest tour (at least not this season, fingers crossed!), but Portland, Seattle, and Salt Lake did. Dan and I made a few futile attempts to get tickets. All of the theaters seemed to sell out right away.

Friends of mine on Facebook were still getting Hamilton tickets! But how . . . ?

Over the holidays, I texted one of these friends, "By the way, I was going to brag about the fact that Dan got me Hamilton: The Revolution for Christmas, but then I saw that your wife got you actual TICKETS TO SEE HAMILTON! So you win haha!"

Around the same time, another friend posted that she had finished the Hamilton biography, in preparation to see the musical in Seattle, and that she was starting another book, I think about President Trump or something, I don't know because, as I commented on her post: "All I heard was YOU’RE GOING TO SEE HAMILTON!"

“We're not trying hard enough!" I told Dan.

"What?"

"To get Hamilton tickets."

"We've tried . . . " he said half-heartedly.

"Then how come everybody and their dog are going, but not us?"

"It will probably come to Boise next season, like American Idiot and Book of Mormon. We're usually the next stop after the first Northwest tour," Dan said.

"Then we can see it again, like we did with American Idiot and Book of Mormon," I leaned in and glared at him intensely. "I am NOT throwing away my SHOT!"

I danced into the next room, "Yo, I'm just like my country, I'm young, scrappy, and hungry . . ."

Finally, we got on StubHub and found some tickets to the Portland show. I didn't trust StubHub, I guess, because I am not a Millennial. I don't completely trust anything on the web.

Back in the day, we would have called the sellers on StubHub, "ticket scalpers." Supposedly StubHub had legitimized that trade. If worse came to worse, we would get our money back.

The tickets were guaranteed to arrive by the day of the performance, also scary seeing how the show was in PORTLAND. StubHub made it sound like we could get the tickets earlier than that though.

A few days later, Dan was notified that Salt Lake City tickets were going on sale. Since we weren't certain we would get the Portland tickets in time, Dan stood in a "virtual line” on his computer for hours, only to learn the show had sold out by the end of the afternoon.

"I guess we have to trust that StubHub is legit," Dan said.

On March 1, 2018, Dan forwarded me a message from StubHub. Our tickets had shipped!

I burst through the garage door that evening and dropped all of my work gear in front of Dan.

“WE’RE GOING?!”

"We're going," he said.

We received the tickets in the mail the next day.

.

So, yeah. I have been rocking out to the cast recording in my car. I have been dancing down my driveway, earbuds in, picking up the mail. Don't judge.

I just have to get through one more week of school and a huge spring musical. No biggie.

"Am I going to survive this coming week?" I asked Dan the other night.

"Only one more week, and then we get to see Hamilton," he reminded me.

I froze, stared ahead dramatically, and started to sing:

Alexander Hamilton. 
My name is Alexander Hamilton.
And there's a million things I haven't done
But just you wait, just you wait . . . 

Dan said, under his breath, "The better question is, am I going to survive this coming week?"

For the latest blog updates, visit and "like" Rebecca Turner-Duggan.