By Telling the Story of HAMILTON, 'Broadway Backstory' Host Patrick Hinds Shared his Own Narrative

At its best, theatre has the ability to impact people on personal levels that dramatically transcend the specific story being told. That is what happened when one of the community's most well known interviewers saw HAMILTON for the first time.

"When I first saw (it), and the show ends the way it does with Eliza, I remember being despondent leaving the theater," Patrick Hinds, the founder of Theater Podcast Productions said. "I couldn't breath. I was a wreck. I couldn't talk without crying for like an hour."

Over the more than two and a half years that HAMILTON has been playing in New York, Chicago, and California, Hinds certainly is not the only one to leave the theater feeling that way. But, the show's epilogue, which sees Alexander Hamilton's widow, Eliza, finishing the work that he began, and eventually founding an orphanage, hits especially close to home for the reigning theatrical podcast king.

Lin-Manuel Miranda's theatrical game of chess has taken a nearly forgotten footnote in history, packed it with biographical information, while still maintaining a uniquely personal and impactful narrative, and the world will never be the same. In the 32 months since its first performance, HAMILTON has been analyzed by every theatre outlet, pop culture critic, and obsessed fan around the world.

So, as he dove into the work of building a two-part season premiere about the Broadway juggernaut for his podcast "Broadway Backstory," Hinds found himself wading through mountains of research and hours of interviews, in order to find his fresh perspective on the piece, only to realize that it was tucked in down the hall all along.

Listen to the HAMILTON episodes of "Broadway Backstory" here.

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For those that haven't been swept up by the podcast craze of recent years, Hinds is the host and producer of a handful of podcasts, most notably "Theater People" and "True Crime Obsessed;" the latter of which he hosts with Gillian Pensavalle, the co-creator and host of "The Hamilcast" (who makes a couple of appearances in the two-parter).

In the nearly four years since he launched "Theater People," Hinds has become an indispensable voice for theatre fans around the world, as he obsesses and gushes over Broadway's biggest stars.

After doing podcasts with BroadwayCon, Disney Theatrical, and the Broadway League's BwayZone, Hinds partnered with TodayTix on a project that was a fairly significant change from his trademark loose, light-hearted conversations with his favorite stars.

On "Broadway Backstory," Hinds attempts to chronicle the entire journey of how a single idea makes its way to Broadway. After a two-part series premiere on IN THE HEIGHTS, Hinds told the tales of FUN HOME, THE SECRET GARDEN, THE 25TH ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE, the SPRING AWAKENING revival, LEGALLY BLONDE, and NEXT TO NORMAL in the first season.

He appropriately calls the series an "audio documentary," and he treats it as such. Before each of his interviews for the show, he informs his guests that, even though he will certainly think that their jokes are funny, that he is going to try not to laugh or react, in order to keep the audio "clean."

While Hinds narrates each episode, he purposely downplays his most excitable instincts in an effort to tell the show's story as journalistically as possible.

That is why when I listened to the first few minutes of the Season 2 premiere, I was surprised that he opened with a recording of his three-year-old daughter Daisy singing HAMILTON while he got her ready to take a bath.

While not generally the type of thing that he includes on this particular show, it didn't strike me as more than a sweet, real-world touch used to ground the story of this larger-than-life phenomenon; that is until I got to the end of the two-part premiere, and was hit with the deep, emotional resonance of that 15 second clip.

"I knew that I wanted to end these episodes, the way that the show ended," Hinds said, "which was giving it to Eliza, and sort of talking about her legacy."

The specific part of her legacy that Hinds focuses on to end the episode, is the creation of the orphanage that would become Graham Windham, the nation's oldest nonprofit, non-sectarian child welfare agency.

"When I went back to interview Phillipa Soo," Hinds said of Broadway's original Elizabeth Schuyler, "I learned more about the orphanage, and I discovered more about what it was, and that it (included) foster care."

Hinds and his husband Steve began the adoption process with Daisy through foster care when she was practically a newborn, and knowing that story, when the premiere episodes came full circle, from Daisy singing in the tub to Hinds talking to Graham Windham's President and CEO, Jess Dannhauser, I felt similarly to the way that Hinds did following his first experience with HAMILTON; overcome with emotion and with more than a few tears streaming down my face.

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Hinds estimates that he spends 60 to 70 hours simply editing each episode of "Broadway Backstory." When he initially settled on starting the show with TodayTix, he wasn't exactly sure what it would eventually entail, and whether or not he would be capable of making it work.

"When we first decided to do this, I didn't really know if I could do this," Hinds said. "It was certainly the most ambitious project that I'd ever taken on."

While he does borrow from his Theater People audio archive for "Broadway Backstory," approximately three-quarters of the interviews are new, and Hinds goes out of his way to talk to every person who has had a significant impact on the show being profiled, even if that leads to having to change the episode's narrative mid-stream.

This labor-intensive process requires an inordinate amount of time and meticulous planning.

"It's a really time consuming process," Hinds said. "I would say that we wrapped the first season of 'Broadway Backstory' probably five or six months ago, and I gave myself a week off, and then I just started booking again (for Season 2), and I'm still doing interviews; I'm still trying to track down people."

This attention to detail and Hinds' incredible access are what has made "Broadway Backstory" such a special and unique outlier in the theatrical podcast space; not to mention that it is also why, as more and more people discover the show, the theatre community's respect for Hinds has grown exponentially.

While he knew that attempting to tell the story of HAMILTON would be daunting, Hinds realized that he had a bit of a head start, having already interviewed many of the principals involved with the show's development.

"I just happened to get lucky in that I seemed to have gained access to the HAMILTON (team)," he said. "I interviewed Phillipa Soo and Renée Elise Goldsberry and Tommy Kail and Alex Lacamoire and David Korins and all of a sudden, I realized, 'Well, wait a minute, I could make the episodes now.' I basically had all of the material that I needed."

Despite his confidence, Hinds quickly realized that what he had wasn't quite enough. Since "Broadway Backstory" focuses more on the behind-the-scenes artists that work on a show than the actors who appear in it, he went back and re-interviewed Kail and Korins, and spoke to The Public Theater's Artistic Director Oskar Eustis and HAMILTON's producer Jeffrey Seller.

Hinds' thoroughness and perseverance led to a handful of enlightening details about the show that somehow hadn't already been over-analyzed by the HAMILTON hype machine.

Two of those discoveries focus on the iconic, seemingly simplistic set. First was that when Korins, the creative team's only member who hadn't worked on IN THE HEIGHTS, interviewed for the job of set designer, one of the first ideas that he had was to include a turntable.

The director, Kail, didn't see the vision, but Korins kept it in the back of his mind and would bring it up occasionally, and finally, just before rehearsals for the world premiere production at the Public began, they realized that having the circular motion at the center of the set would be the perfect metaphor for the show's journey through time, and would solve many of its logistical problems as well.

The other point that interested Hinds was that Eustis, a renowned dramaturge, had driven home the point that, during colonial times, everything that mattered was built by shipbuilders. So, as Korins designed the set, every little detail reflected that, and carried some sort of symbolism.

Hinds is proud that he was able to bring these stories to light, as details like this are often overshadowed by the glitz and glamor of the biggest show to hit Broadway in generations.

Between these otherwise unknown specifics, Andy Blankenbuehler's nuanced choreography, and Miranda's densely packed lyrics, Hinds thinks that HAMILTON is a show that can continue to astound audiences, no matter how many times they have seen it.

"It's a gift that keeps on giving in a way that theatre isn't usually," he said.

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After the months of booking, prepping for, and recording interviews, and the hours upon hours of editing; despite dozens of interviews with many of the theatre world's most influential artists, one of the last decisions that Hinds had to make about the HAMILTON episodes was a small, personal one.

"I worked on that ending a lot, because I did want to mention that we had adopted Daisy through foster care, and that's one of the reasons why the Graham Windham piece is so important to me," he said. "I went back and forth on it, and eventually I took it out, because I didn't want to make it about me in the end. I wanted to make it about Graham Windham, and the great work that they do."

With the two-part season premiere of "Broadway Backstory," Hinds has done in podcast form, what HAMILTON does on stages across the country every night. He has taken what appeared to be an epic, untamable story, and, by focusing a light on the most important, overlooked linchpins in a sea of minutia, has somehow crafted something far more personal and emotional than anyone would have ever anticipated.

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What did you think of the two part season premiere of "Broadway Backstory?" Let me know on Twitter @BWWMatt. You can listen to me on BroadwayRadio or on BroadwayWorld's pop culture podcast Some Like it Pop.