Based on a little-heard-of off-Broadway musical called Hamilton, the genuinely gifted cast and mind-blowing quartet The Shamiltones perform an hour of infectiously catchy hip-hop tunes, choreography and dialogue – with a brand-new narrative every evening and all entirely improvised and on the spot.
Ticket link: https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/shamilton-the-improvised-hip-hop-musical
1. Shamilton! lovingly parodies one of the most celebrated musicals of all time — what makes Hamilton such a rich playground for improvisation?
Each night the audience shouts out which celebrity (or historical figure, or even fictional character) they want the show to be about, and that’s what makes it so much fun for me. We get to use the iconic sound, musical themes, and story moments from Hamilton to tell the story of literally anyone. Even if it’s Shrek. Hamilton is just jam packed with amazing stuff to play with, so we get to have fun figuring out how to best tell the story.
And no matter who the suggestion is, we ask the audience for information anyone knows about the celebrity/historical figure. So even if you don’t know the suggestion, everyone gets on the same page with the backstory of the character, whether it’s Tinky Winky or Chewbacca or Jack the Ripper. And I love that if you don’t know Hamilton, you can still love watching our show, because we’re telling a completely new story anyway. And when it makes sense to use elements from Hamilton, that’s always a nice cherry on top. If Lord Farquaad wants to sing a “King George” style number, we’ll do that!
2. Every performance features entirely new rap battles, songs and storylines; what skills are needed to create convincing hip-hop theatre at lightning speed in front of a live audience?
Balls of steel. But seriously, I music direct the show, so I get to sit behind the piano, and night after night Kenny (our beautiful Scottish drummer) and I are blown away, and laughing our asses off at what the incredible cast is able to come up with. Collectively, they’ve all been improvising and freestyle rapping for… over a century? Yeah I’ll say it, a century. The way they can pull rhymes out of thin air while rapping is magic. And meanwhile they’re all hilarious. Their talent is sort of unfair. But together we’ve worked over the years on creating a show that sounds and looks like a high end musical, while being both laugh-out-loud funny, and really heartfelt and touching. It’s a real thrill.
3. The show has become a Fringe phenomenon with audiences returning again and again — why do you think people are so fascinated by watching performers create something from nothing?
The audience is so much a part of our show. From the very beginning the audience gets to shout out suggestions, and vote on which person they want to see the show about, and then give us a few facts and details about that person. And even if someone happens to misremember a fact about someone, or just make something silly up about them, that detail will end up in our show. So the show doesn’t exist without the audience. Even during the show, if the audience is laughing at something and really loving it, the performers can react to that and do more of that in the moment, in a way that a scripted show just can’t. It’s also just exhilarating to know that the specific show you’re watching will never be seen again, so if you missed it, you really missed it!
4. Improvised comedy often thrives on mistakes, while musical theatre demands precision; how do those two seemingly opposite disciplines work together in Shamilton!?
Treat the “mistake” as if it was always meant to precisely happen that way. That’s where I think so much of the joy of this show comes from. We LOVE when we make mistakes, because we all love playing with each other so much, so we can playfully call out each other’s “mistakes”, and then fold them into the show, and keep doing them bigger and bigger, until they’re so much a part of the DNA of the show that you can’t imagine what the show would have been without that initial mistake. It’s also just so fun to treat the absolutely absurd circumstances we end up with in our shows, with absolute theatrical integrity, as if this were on a West End stage.
5. The audience inspires a brand-new story every night — have any suggestions left the cast wondering, “How on earth are we going to turn this into a musical?”
A few years ago, it was the last night of Fringe, we’re all a bit delirious from the long month. The suggestion was “Ingvar Kamprad”. The room went quiet and we were all like… huh??? Then the person shouted out “The founder of IKEA!”. And the room went wild. Obviously we had to do Ingvar. But what on earth would the story be? The audience had no specifics about his real life. So we were able to make up whatever we wanted about him. And it was one of the craziest shows I’ve been a part of. It ended with the cast member playing Ingvar literally smashing our stage chairs (bought from IKEA) to bits.
6. With sold-out runs, standing ovations and rave reviews year after year, what have you learned about spontaneity, creativity and collaboration from performing a completely improvised musical night after night?
The Fringe really is a marathon. I do 52 shows over the course of the month, between Shamilton and Baby Wants Candy performing each night. I’ve had to learn how to come into each show with a blank slate, no expectations, just fully open to whatever the show becomes. We have a saying in improv, “follow your foot”. Well we have a lot of sayings in improv, maybe too many. But I really resonate with that one, which means trusting and following your impulses. I also love being at Fringe and getting to see so many other shows from all around the world. That really feeds my creative engine. There’s so much inspiring work happening at Fringe, and I’ve learned so much about what theatre can be by seeing the people who are pushing those boundaries.