By Matthew Ochoa
Scamiliton is the newest phenomenon in theater fan groups. Hamilton, a Pulitzer Prize for Drama Award-winning play, has been rewritten by a group of people to focus more on teaching the way of Jesus Christ. Other than the fact it may seem like some of the cast require more vocal lessons for their subpar performances, it is also illegal as the theater group who created this, The Door Christian Fellowship Ministries, sold tickets and planned to profit off this play without being given the full right to do this from the creators of the original Hamilton musical like Lin-Manuel Miranda. How could this problem have been prevented so other play directors will not repeat their mistakes?
The first issue that has been shown that could have easily been prevented was the lawsuit. The main issue was not that they did this parody, but that they were profiting off of it, not to mention lying that they had written consent from the creators. Most people wouldn’t care to see if you did anything with their work unless you might have slandered, changed what the project represented, and/or profited from this rip-off. The next issue presented in this play was the major alteration of what this play’s goal is. The original Hamilton play was an autobiography for Alexander Hamilton, used to teach the history of his life with jokes, drama, and of course music. The Door Christian Fellowship Ministries' goals however differed as they wanted to tell the story of how Hamilton’s life changed for the better when he accepted Jesus Christ as his savior. This also could have been prevented if they didn’t parody every song from the original play and copy the costume designs of the characters from Hamilton. Another simple solution would have been to either reuse other plays that do have more focus on spreading the word of god or create a piece that may have been inspired by Hamilton. Keyword being inspired, not copied.
If any of these situations were handled in the way stated above Scamilton would probably have been accepted better and could even have its great take on the beloved play. But because of these messy mistakes the play failed and is now considered one of the biggest jokes to theater fans. It doesn’t seem to stop there either as the group will then venture into creating a religious story using The Greatest Showman.
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