Paganism

Texas church will pay damages for its “Hamilton” performance

Manny Moreno By |

McALLEN, Texas – Earlier this month a Texas church staged their own version of the musical Hamilton. The Door Christian Fellowship McAllen Church announced that they will be paying damages for their actions.

Hamilton is a musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda telling the story of American Founding Father Alexander Hamilton using a sung-and-rapped-through musical style. The musical premiered off-Broadway February 17, 2015, at the Public Theater in Lower Manhattan, with Miranda playing the role of Alexander Hamilton.

The musical moved to Broadway’s Richard Rodgers Theatre on August 6 of the same year subsequently winning eight Drama Desk Awards including outstanding Musical, the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and 11 Tony Awards including Best Musical. Hamilton subsequently opened in London’s West End receiving seven Olivier awards including Best New Musical.

While there are U.S. tours of the musical, no licenses have been granted for either amateur or professional performances.

In early August, the Door Christian Fellowship McAllen Church announced that they would be performing Hamilton and did so on August 5 and 6 2022.

 

Advertisement circulated by Door Christian Fellowship McAllen Church

Established in 1990, the “Door McAllen Church is a Bible-based, Spirit-filled, nondenominational family of believers. We welcome you and count it a privilege to minister to your spiritual needs.” McAllen is just west of Brownsville, Texas on the Rio Grande.

The McAllen church not only performed Hamilton but also modified it. Their version of Hamilton was posted online and has subsequently been removed.

The modifications included Eliza Hamilton, the wife of Alexander, saying, “Jesus gives me the strength to pull through when I needed him most he was right on time.”

Then, in his final soliloquy, Hamilton considers, “What is a legacy? It’s knowing you repented and accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ that sets men free. You sent your sinless son of man on Calvary to die for me.”

Hamilton then accepts Jesus as his personal savior.

But there was more. At the conclusion of the unauthorized production, the pastor of the church provides an evangelizing sermon noting,  “I don’t know what you’re going through..  but you have a destiny with God tonight…He is knocking on the doors of your heart tonight. He wants to help you tonight. He knows exactly what you’ve gone through, maybe you’ve gone through broken marriages, maybe you struggle with alcohol, with drugs, homosexuality… finances, whatever.”

Needless to say, none of this is the legitimate production of Hamilton.

By historical accounts, Alexander Hamilton was a Presbyterian who proclaimed his beliefs. He disparaged Thomas Jefferson as “the atheist” for insisting that Jeffersonian Democracy and Christianity were incompatible. Hamilton went further in 1802 proposing a Christian Constitutional Society whose work would be to elect “fit men” to office.

On August 10, 2022, word about the unsanctioned production reached Lin-Manuel Miranda and the legitimate Hamilton team. They were not amused.

Miranda tweeted, “Grateful to all of you who reached out about this illegal, unauthorized production. Now lawyers do their work.” He added, “And always grateful to the @dramatistsguild, who have the backs of writers everywhere, be it your first play or your fiftieth.”

The Dramatist Guild which aids “dramatists in protecting both the artistic and economic integrity of their work” condemned the performance at the McAllen church.

In a statement, the Dramatist Guild said, “We hold up the Door McAllen Church’s brazen infringement to shine a light on the problematic pattern of some theatrical organizations performing authors’ work without a license and rewriting the text without authorial consent. No organization, professional, amateur, or religious, is exempt from these laws.”

The statement added, “No writer’s work, whether they are a student who has just written their first play, or Lin-Manuel Miranda, can be performed without their permission. And it is never okay to change the words, lyrics, or notes, without their express consent.”

The lawyers apparently did their work, first with a cease-and-desist letter.

In a statement posted yesterday on Door McAllen’s website, the church acknowledged that it “did not ask for, or receive, a license from the producers or creators of Hamilton to produce, stage, replicate or alter any part of Hamilton,” nor did it “seek prior permission to alter Lin-Manuel Miranda’s work by changing the music, the lyrics, deleting songs, and adding dialogue.”

The church’s pastor, Roman Gutierrez, in an online apology said that his church will pay damages adding that they “will never stage the performance again and will destroy any and all video or sound recordings and images of the unauthorized performances or rehearsals, and request that all our members do the same.”

The amount the church will pay in damages has not been disclosed. However, Shane Marshall Brown, a spokesman for Hamilton productions, said that, “The Hamilton family stands for tolerance, compassion, inclusivity and certainly LGBTQ+ rights. We are in the process of reviewing the unauthorized changes made to the script to determine further action. We would like to thank our devoted fans for bringing this to our attention.”

Brown then added, “that all damages paid by the church will be donated to The South Texas Equality Project, a coalition of organizations that ‘work to advocate for, celebrate, uplift, educate, and provide support to the LGBTQIA+ community of the Rio Grande Valley’.”

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