Burning Research 5th of December 2023

In 2017 I discovered musical theatre and fell in love with the Hip-Hop musical Hamilton written by Lin Manuel Miranda about the formation of America and their foundation of the regional government told from the personal life story of a non-fiction orphan called Alexander Hamilton. A few months ago I was watching a behind the scenes 'How the production was put together' video and the prop designer mentioned in passing how long it took them to choose and discuss the burning time limit in the song "Burn" performed by Philip Soo which involved pyrotechinques on stage. I remembered this when it came time to start assembling my headdress and began looking for the same video. I found an article from DC Theatre Arts called "Perfecting the Burn: Props master Jay Duckworth styling the Iconic 'Hamilton'" which details how they chose the method for the letter on fire. The song his about a woman burning the love letters her husband had written her after she found out he had an affair to erased herself from being associated with his history. The letters must burn for exactly 2 minutes and 31 seconds in her hands so intense research was taken to see how to make the paper alight perfectly.

They had done both written research on paper significance throughout history but also trial and error research on paper burning which is then what I tried. I took different kinds of thickness of book paper and cut different shape feathers to see which wouldn't necessarily catch the quickest but which would burn in a way that felt aesthetically pleasing to the project.

Once I understood that they dry uncoated paper worked the best, I then repeated the experiment whilst having folded the paper in certain ways, each now also having a new burn time

I wanted a burn that that was quick and large, this meant that uncreased feathers were best as they encouraged the most oxygen within the head piece. I wanted the piece to look beautiful before the fire however so I reapplied I should add more individually cut feathers slated down on either side and cut little patterns into other feathers and have them on the furtherest limbs.

Now that I had the combination worked out I decided to start making with this in mind instead of writing out a plan so that I could intuitively create a blaze that was large and dramatic

https://dctheaterarts.org/2018/06/25/perfecting-the-burn-props-master-jay-duckworth-on-styling-the-iconic-hamilton-song/

Hope and Healing - Research

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