Students are not throwing away their shot for the chance to see the hit musical production Hamilton this Thursday in the Twin Cities.
When CAB learned that the Orpheum Theatre would be showing Hamilton, they “knew a lot of people would be interested in going, so we made sure to grab some tickets,” Shauna Capron, Art and Entertainment Executive for CAB, said.
Student reception of the event was overwhelmingly positive, with people being “SUPER excited about it,” Capron said. “A lot of people [were] asking me if there was anything more they could do to increase their chances of winning.”
To fairly determine which students received tickets, the CAB selected winners through a random drawing.
In order to be entered into the drawing pool, students had to follow at least three of the Campus Activities Board social media accounts and leave a comment on the post announcing the event.
Capron, along with Sophomore Social Media Executive Stella Hadjiyanis, then assembled every comment, removed any additional comments made by the same person, and input the data into a random number generator to determine who would win.
After the generator selected 21 students, Capron and Hadjiyanis verified that the student was a Gustie and had followed Gustavus CAB on three social media sites.
Twenty-one winners were announced on Friday, Sept. 14 and were given two tickets—one for them and a friend of their choosing.
Once Hamilton made it off Broadway, the frenzy to buy tickets began.
However, “the tickets were immediately almost impossible to get (and crazy expensive too),” Sophomore Kyra Bowar said. Bowar’s name was pulled in the random drawing.
Once she heard she had won tickets, “I told my friend Katie… she got to go too, and we both freaked out together.”
Tickets for the event were offered to students at an extremely discounted price of $44 dollars.
Normally priced tickets for the event range from $227 to $1,885 dollars according to the Orpheum Theatre website.
Junior Abbie Biegner adds, “I’m really grateful that CAB was able to coordinate this event and offer tickets to Gustavus students… most of the general public [applies] for Hamilton lottery tickets through the Hamilton app.”
While the Hamilton app offers $10 tickets for each performance, chances of winning are slim, according to an article published by TimeOut magazine on June 18, 2018.
The article states that one’s odds of winning tickets off the lottery are “about 1 in 400.”
“I’m really grateful that CAB was able to coordinate this event and offer tickets to
Gustavus students.”
-Abbie Biegner
The musical’s creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, was first interested in Hamilton’s story while on vacation in 2008, when he decided to read Ron Chernow’s 2004 novel Alexander Hamilton.
He was immediately inspired by his story and looked into whether it had already been made into a musical.
When he learned it hadn’t, he began writing.
It took a year each to write the musical’s first two songs, and it took a full seven years for the musical to be finished in its entirety.
Hamilton first premiered on Broadway back in August of 2015, where it was met with instant success and recognition. It has won countless awards since then, including a Grammy, a Pulitzer Prize, 16 Tony nominations, 11 Tony wins, and the Best Musical Award, all of which were won in 2016.
The Hamilton Mixtape, a blend of select songs from the show covered by popular music artists dropped in December of the same year.
Miranda later described Hamilton as “the story of America then, told by America now.”
The CAB set up a similar event last fall, when students went to see the Orpheum Theatre’s production of the musical Aladdin , which was described as “a huge hit… it’s an excuse to get dressed up with some friends, and we had so much fun,” Capron said.
The Gustavus CAB works with staff and faculty members who “advise us, help us through the details of the events, and encourage us along the way,” Capron said.
The Gustavus CAB, as well as the Student Senate and other campus organizations, receive allocations from student fees included in tuition, so they have the funding to organize events and activities for the student body.
The overall goal of CAB, according to their website, is to enrich various aspects of life at Gustavus while “executing the entertainment needs of the student body,” which includes activities such as hosting guest speakers and conferences, holding concerts, hosting recreational activities, weekend movie nights, and the President’s Ball, among other events.
Senior Michael Scheie is the Operations Manager for CAB.
His work determining event proposals and taking event evaluations, as well as the work of Capron, Hadjiyanis, and Arts and Entertainment Executives Emily Scroggins, was key to the planning and execution of the much-anticipated event.