'I didn’t know where Cork was': Hamilton star on walking in Frederick Douglass' footsteps
Paul Oakley Stovall with Fionnuala O'Connell of Cork Migrant Centre at the launch of the Douglass in Ireland exhibition, at Nano Nagle Place. Picture: Clare Keogh
This time last year, Paul Oakley Stovall was playing the role of George Washington in the musical phenomenon Hamilton and enjoying every minute of it. Then Covid struck and everything changed, the iconic show created by Lin-Manuel Miranda just one of the thousands of productions that went dark around the world due to lockdown.
“I had taken over [the role] in early September 2018. It had been a year and a half. I was coasting along, I was happy to do it for another couple of years. It was great craic, as you say,” says Stovall.
That last sentence gives a clue to what happened next for Stovall, who is now hunkered down in Cork, a place he had never even heard of until a couple of months ago. The performer is lending his support and creative talents to Douglass Week, a festival organised by researchers at UCC, commemorating the life and legacy of Frederick Douglass, the African American abolitionist and social reformer who escaped slavery and paid a historic visit to Ireland just over 175 years ago.
“There were a lot of things I could have imagined happening when Hamilton got shut down, this [coming to Cork] was not one of them,” says Stovall.
Stovall arrived in Dublin over two months ago, when the lockdown had eased, to research and write a planned television series about the life of Douglass.
“I had been introduced to some great historians who were helping me with research but I wanted to see Ireland, and as restrictions were lessened, I could get here and walk in his footsteps in Dublin. Almost as soon as I landed in Ireland, I was introduced to Caroline Schroeter (UCC) who is running Douglass Week. She was thinking perhaps I could read a speech, walking down a street where Douglass had been in Cork. I didn’t know where Cork was. She told me this is where he had spent much of his time during his visit.”
Stovall arrived in Cork last week, having been given special permission to travel, and, along with Hamilton castmate Nikhil Saboo, is working on several events for Douglass Week, including a collaboration with the young people who attend Cork Migrant Centre and their mentors, DJ Stevie G and rapper Raphael Olympio. Stovall is very much aware of the echoes of the migrant experience that resound in Hamilton, which follows the story of the first US secretary of the treasury who was born in Puerto Rico.
“Alexander Hamilton stepped out on faith, went to a new place and tried to make the best of it. He was wildly successful of course, that can’t be everyone’s story, but he is a great inspiration of what can be done.”
Stovall says starring as George Washington in the first US touring production of Hamilton was an adrenaline-fuelled experience.
“It’s like a moving train, you just have to grab on with both hands, and dive in. You can’t spend much time thinking ‘I’m in Hamilton, isn’t that wonderful?’. There really is no time to do that. Physically, mentally, spiritually, you are on a juggernaut and it moves quickly.” He says the smash-hit show has connected with audiences around the world because it is a masterful blend of the old and new.
“It’s incredible. While Lin-Manuel had previously had a big hit with In The Heights, nobody could have imagined that Hamilton would go to this level.
"The combination of hip-hop and rap — I equate it to the groundlings in Shakespeare’s time, he was giving a new language to the people who might not be able to afford to go to the theatre but were ready to hear new words and new ways of speaking. And then, at the same time, he cannily constructed a very traditional western story — the hero, anti-hero, the villain, the father figure, the love story, the three companions that travel with him… it is like Star Wars or the Wizard of Oz. Those who are possibly intimidated by the hip-hop or the fast pace, are immediately comforted by that traditional framework.”
Stovall has also benefited from Miranda’s expertise himself.
“I’ve written a new musical myself, and he has read it, listened to it, given me notes and pushed me along. That has been very nice of him because he is a busy guy, he has got one or two things going on,” laughs Stovall.
The musical he has written is loosely based on an incident that happened when Stovall worked for Barack and Michelle Obama. He was employed by the former US president’s campaign and administration for seven years, in events management. Having also worked with the Bidens, he looked on with a mixture of sadness and happiness at events in Washington DC last month. He was in Dublin when rioters stormed the Capitol.
“What I felt was that this was a long time coming. I was sad. I wasn’t angry, I was very sad. I’m still sad about it.” However, these emotions were leavened somewhat by the inauguration of Joe Biden, especially the acclaimed recital of the poem The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman, in which there were two allusions to Hamilton, both of which were inspired by the words of George Washington in the show.
“I caught the first mention, that everyone would sit under their own vine, and then she said ‘history has its eyes on us’. Both of the lines she used were my lines, or rather Lin’s lines, that I humbly tried to say correctly each night. I thought, ‘well, here’s a 22-year-old super- intelligent writer, poet, black girl — of course Hamilton is part of our lives now’, it doesn’t surprise me at all that she used it. I thought it was wonderful.”
Stovall says he is delighted to be honouring the work of Frederick Douglass but that he is also determined to spread the word about how Irish women especially supported him in his fight to abolish slavery.
“Douglass blazed a trail of fearlessness and his desire for autonomy led him throughout his life. And it is not lost on me that it was the women of Ireland, who also wanted autonomy, who supported him.
"They were running the anti-slavery and abolitionist groups — Isabel Jennings from Cork, Hannah Webb from Dublin, Mary McCracken from Belfast; Rebecca and Susanna Fisher from Limerick. Their voices were so lost and I am going to push these names out. These were the woman who organised a global sugar boycott.… It makes me tear up, what they were willing to sacrifice for something they just saw was wrong.”
Stovall plans to return to the US at the end of February, to rehearse a virtual show in his hometown of Chicago. He is also optimistic that his TV series will be picked up, having received the imprimatur of Ken Morris, great-great-grandson of Frederick Douglass.
He says he will be back to Ireland at the first opportunity. “You come to Ireland, and it just grabs you by the waist and says ‘let’s dance’, it really does.”
- Douglass Week runs until Sunday, Feb 14. All events are online and free. www.douglassincork.com
