Boycott ‘Hamilton’? Trump Fan At Show Shouts ‘F*** You!,’ Disrupting Chicago Performance Of Hit Musical
Following an incident Friday in which Vice President-Elect Mike Pence was loudly booed by the audience at a Broadway performance of the hit musical Hamilton, Donald Trump supporters have called for a boycott of the hugely popular show. The hashtag #BoycottHamilton even briefly trended on Twitter.
But at least one Trump voter chose not to boycott the play, instead attending a Saturday performance of Hamilton by a touring company at The PrivateBank Theatre in Chicago — and interrupting the show with shouts of profanities from a balcony seat.
Hamilton musical cast deliver message to Mike Pence, Vice President-elect https://t.co/Ho18bApq4K
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) November 20, 2016
During the cast’s performance of the song “Dear Theodosia,” according to a report on the Broadway World theater news site, a man audibly shouted, “We won! You Lost! Get over it! F*** you!”
One audience member who posted about the incident on her Twitter account said the Trump supporter “was sitting a few rows in front of me.”
But the audience member appeared to indicate that the Trump supporter’s interruption came during the song “The Battle of Yorktown.”
“Seems the cheering after ‘immigrants, we get the job done’ triggered his response,” she wrote. That line, one of the best known lines in the Hamilton show, appears in the “Yorktown” musical number.
“At the end, the performers were crying… so was I,” wrote another audience member via social media, according to the Broadway World report. “They didn’t break characters once. They still sang their hearts out.”
The audience member — who by witness accounts appeared to be drunk — also had a physical altercation with theater security staff, though no blows were exchanged, the site reported.
“He was there with a group of like 6-7, kids and parents,” the audience member write on Twitter. “A family outing.”
Trump's tweets stunned the "Hamilton" cast and jolted many who are worried about Trump's tolerance for dissent https://t.co/5uv057Dacv
— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 19, 2016
On Friday, Pence attended a performance in New York City at Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre. Upon entering the theater, Pence received boos from the audience, though some audience members also cheered, as can be seen in the following video posted to Twitter. Broadway audiences typically contain a large number of tourists from outside of the greater New York metropolitan area.
https://twitter.com/dkipke12/status/799802254794571777
Following the performance, Hamilton cast member Brandon Victor Dixon read a prepared statement directed at Pence.
“There is nothing to boo here, ladies and gentlemen, we are sharing a story of love,” Dixon said from the Richard Rodgers stage. “Mike Pence, we welcome you here. We are the diverse Americans who are alarmed and anxious that your new administration will not protect us, our planet, our children, our parents. Or defend us and uphold our inalienable rights….We hope that this show has inspired you to uphold our American values and work on behalf of all of us. We thank you for sharing this wonderful American story, told by a diverse group of men and women of different colors, creeds and orientations,”
Watch Dixon read the statement to Pence in the video below.
The following day, Trump himself responded to the incident in a series of tweets claiming that the Hamilton cast had “harassed” Pence.
Our wonderful future V.P. Mike Pence was harassed last night at the theater by the cast of Hamilton, cameras blazing.This should not happen!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016
The Theater must always be a safe and special place.The cast of Hamilton was very rude last night to a very good man, Mike Pence. Apologize!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 19, 2016
Dixon responded to Trump with a tweet of his own, saying “conversation is not harassment, Sir. And I appreciate [Mike Pence] for stopping to listen.”
However, whether Pence heard Dixon’s statement from the stage is uncertain. The Vice President-Elect was near the theater exit when Dixon began speaking. Pence on Sunday said that the comments and the booing did not bother him.
“When we arrived we heard a few boos, we heard some cheers. I nudged my kids and said, ‘That’s what freedom sounds like,'” he told the Fox News Sunday program, adding that he found Hamilton to be “a great, great show.”
According to one audience member’s account posted to social media, during the Friday performance on Broadway with Pence in attendance, the signature line “immigrants, we get the job done” received “an especially strong ovation.”
https://twitter.com/DrDavidDuke/status/800002582332735488
Pence also received support from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who said that Trump should “cut all arts funding” to “antiWhites.”
[Featured Image By Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images]