President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama invited cast members of the Broadway production "Hamilton" to the White House on Monday to perform for a group of high school students.
The show's cast, including the creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda, returned to the capital seven years after performing what would, in due course, become the opening number for the hit hip-hop musical.
Miranda and the remaining cast, including Daveed Diggs (Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson), Phillipa Soo (Eliza Hamilton), Christopher Jackson (George Washington) and Leslie Odom Jr. (Aaron Burr), took a road trip from New York City to Washington D.C. and spent the entire day at the White House for a student workshop hosted by Michelle Obama.
"Hamilton is not just for people who can score a ticket to a pricey Broadway show," President Obama said in his opening speech. "It is a story for all of us, about all of us."
"In each brilliantly crafted song, we hear the debates that shaped our nation, and we hear the debates that are still shaping our nation," he added.
The cast of the show, based on one of America's founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, performed the titular opening number in the East Room of the building. Miranda also showed off his freestyle rap skills in the Rose Garden as POTUS held cue cards with words to prompt his rap.
FLOTUS had nothing but words of praise for the show as she welcomed the cast to the White House.
"Really, Hamilton teaches us history the way it really should be taught. I mean, to my mind this is what school should be. We'd have a lot of great historians if we could only figure out how to do this more - for more subjects," Michelle Obama said.
She called the students "probably some of the luckiest young people on the planet" to have been able to spend the entire day with "Hamilton" cast members.
"We were saying backstage, this is really a full-circle moment for us in so many ways," she said about "Hamilton's" return to the White House. "Seven years later, that first performance won out hearts, and Lin-Manuel is back at the White House with the entire cast with this amazing crew of young people. It's really cool."
