Lin-Manuel Miranda returned to Broadway on Wednesday night to host a fundraiser, alongside Hillary Clinton, for President Joe Biden ahead of the 2024 election.
The Tony winner and the former secretary of state presented a performance of Suffs, the musical by Shaina Taub based on the suffragists and American Women’s suffrage movement. Tickets for the show ranged from $500 to $5,000.
“My friend Shaina Taub is the future of musical theater, and you’re about to see her Broadway show tonight,” Miranda said to the packed crowd at the Music Box Theatre. “It’s incredible, and I love her and this entire company, and you’re doing good and helping save American democracy while you’re doing that. Thanks for being a part of tonight, and now I get to introduce another chapter in this story: Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
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Clinton and Malala Yousafzai co-produced the show, which focuses on the historical events leading up to the passing of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote.
“How better to kick off this evening than standing next to Hamilton?” the former presidential nominee said. “I cannot thank Lin-Manuel enough for being here, and I share everything he said about this amazing production and particularly Shaina, who really conceived it and made it happen, and you’ll see why it’s so important. It’s historic, and it’s especially relevant today. And I am honored to be a co-producer because I believe in this.”
She shared that the audience in the theater that night was only the eighth to ever see the show since it began previews on the Great White Way, before officially opening April 18. She noted that if people like Suffs, they should tell their friends, because, as one of the lines in it says, “progress is possible but not guaranteed.”
“Therefore, all of us have to come out of this theater with the same enthusiasm for voting that it takes to actually make that kind of progress,” she concluded. “So thank you all for being here. Thank you for supporting this amazing show. Thank you, as Lin said, for supporting our democracy.”
The Suffs performance isn’t the first time Miranda has been involved in a Broadway fundraiser for the Democratic presidential candidate. In 2016, he performed a rewritten version of Hamilton song “The World Was Wide Enough” during a Broadway fundraiser for Clinton’s campaign. Four years later, he reunited the cast of his Tony-winning musical for a special performance and Q&A to support Biden’s first presidential run.
Miranda and Clinton’s fundraiser for Biden this year comes days after the president was joined by former commanders-in-chief Barack Obama and Bill Clinton for a conversation with moderator Stephen Colbert at Radio City Music Hall. The event raised a record-setting $26 million-plus for Biden’s reelection campaign.
