#494: Andy Blankenbuehler Returns! // Part Two
The Hamilcast: A Hamilton Podcast
Gillian Pensavalle
4.3 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2025
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hamilton choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler is an absolute treasure trove. There's really no other way to say it. This is his fifth episode of The Hamilcast and he's still dropping details and Easter eggs and insight into a show we've all been talking about for over ten years. HOW DOES HE DO IT?! I have no idea, but at the very least, these episodes let you in on his incredible thought process.
This week is all about the deep dives, so I hope you're ready for endless mind explosions. There are way too many to mention in the description but here's one just so I'm not totally leaving you hanging: Andy breaks down his process for "The Room Where it Happens," including details that never saw the light of day (hello nasty sand dance!), how Burr is essentially locking himself into a room ("he's screwing himself"), and we unpack some details we talked about last time ("The Room Where it Happens" = Road to Perdition). But seriously, that is just the tip of the iceberg with the deets and I cannot stress that enough.
Andy also talks about the super tricky process of translating his very lyric-based choreography to work for the German production, which Easter eggs actually just coincidences, the Hamilton choreography he wants to go back and change, and why it's important to always, always, always be studying and working and creating so you can constantly be pulling from your catalogue.
This episode was recorded in October of 2025 at WTF Media Studios in Manhattan and produced with Natalie Grillo from Any Moment Productions in collaboration with Meghan Miles.
#217: Andy Blankenbuehler // Part One (2020)
#218: Andy Blankenbuehler // Part Two (2020)
#219: Andy Blankenbuehler // Part Three (2020)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Stage in Stages, Lynn Manuel Miranda, and you're listening to The Hamelcast. |
| 0:05.0 | Boots and cuts. |
| 0:06.0 | Boots and cuts. |
| 0:07.0 | Ha ha, ha, ha. |
| 0:08.0 | Ha, ha. |
| 0:09.0 | Ha, ha. |
| 0:10.0 | Ha, ha. |
| 0:11.0 | Hey, friends. |
| 0:19.0 | Welcome back to the Hamelcast. |
| 0:20.0 | I'm Jillian. And in case you missed it, |
| 0:21.6 | last week, Andy Blank and Bueller kicked off the big return of all four members of the cabinet. And honestly, I really can't imagine a better way to start this grand finale of the pod. Last week, Andy talked a lot about how amazing it's been to celebrate Hamel 10. He gave us a breakdown of the already legendary 2025 performance at the Tonys. We talked about the Hamill film, and he reflected on over 10 years of working on the show. |
| 0:40.3 | Plus, he walked us through the changes in the What Did I Miss Correo, including why it happened in the first place, how wonderful it is that Leslie Odom Jr. came back to the show, and he even talked a lot about working with Lynn on Warriors, which I personally think is very, very, very exciting. exciting. These two are packed, and I don't want to waste any more your time. |
| 0:55.7 | So here you go. |
| 0:56.6 | Here's the second half of Andy's second visit to the podcast. |
| 0:59.6 | Enjoy. |
| 1:02.1 | So before we get to the Patreon peeps, I have some questions based on your first round of episodes. |
| 1:07.6 | So because we talked a lot about references that you put into Hamilton, West Side Story, The Matrix, bring it on. Has Hamilton made it into anything of yours yet? Well, it's so funny. There was a big laugh the other day in rehearsal because I was like, okay, I did a move and then the dancer was like, what if it was like this? I was like, that same moves in Hamilton. It's my shot. Like, we can't do that. And then they are laughing because I do, it's interesting, like I, it's, it's not so much quoting vocabulary, although there's a lot of vocabulary and there's a lot of vocabulary I want to repeat. Like, it's my own Easter eggs. Like I put the same shows in a lot, I put the same steps in a lot of shows. I do them differently, but I do them to |
| 1:45.0 | satisfy something in myself. Like, like, you know, like the young scrappy and hungry, like, that's from the summer ballet. Like, I've done that in every show that I've ever done. It was in the middle of 96,000, like, just that arm, arm chest. And it's just like a reminder to me, like the summer of ballet was instrumental. I remember being injured. I don't know if I told |
| 2:03.6 | you that story. And it's just like a reminder to me, like the summer of ballet was instrumental. |
| 2:02.3 | I remember being injured. I don't know if I told you that story. And I was in the green room with an ice pack on my knee while the show was going on. And I was like, if I can't do the summer ballet, let me just write it. And so I wrote like my own version of the summer of ballet in a journal. And the idea in the SCARTSA section about like seeing |
| 2:19.0 | the amazing things around you and breathing it in, like that was so important to me. And it made |
| 2:24.6 | such sense for these young people in strife and West Side Story to wish there was a better way. |
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