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IN NEW YORK YOU CAN BE A NEW MAN O R, THE STORY OF OAK & DAVEED

Thomas jefferson(our third president) and James Madison (our fourth president) had a partnership so close that it reminded John Quincy Adams (our sixth president) of “the invisible and mysterious movements of the magnet.” They had the same background–they were both rich slaveholding aristocrats from Virginia–and they shared a political goal: destroying Alexander Hamilton.

Lin and Tommy liked the idea of having Hamilton’s enemies in the second half of the show be played by his friends in the first half. But to make the idea work, they would need a couple of supremely dynamic actors, who would be totally convincing in two roles, not one.

At the Public, the audience spent Act One watching Daveed Diggs play the swashbuckling, speed-rapping Marquis de Lafayette, a freedom fighter who launches himself off the top of a desk on his way to war. When he swanned back onstage at the start of Act Two, he had let his hair down–literally–to transform into the supersmooth Jefferson, aloof and debonair. Tommy knew that Daveed’s laid-back charisma would suit both roles: They had worked together in Freestyle Love Supreme, a trial by fire. Anyway, the 34-year-old Daveed had plenty of experience with split identities. He grew up in a tough part of Oakland but went to Brown, he was raised by a black father and a white Jewish mother, he has had one career as an actor (including a performance at the Public’s Under the Radar Festival) and another as a rapper. These contradictions have been a rich subject for his songs, both as a solo artist and as the lead MC for Clipping, the avant-garde hip-hop group. “I’m American-working-class split persona,” he raps on one of them, “Party like a rock star, introverted loner.” Which sounds like Jefferson, except for the working-class part.

Okieriete Onaodowan, known to all as Oak, made an even more drastic transformation halfway through the show. In Act One, he played the muscle; in Act Two, the brains. The Hulk before intermission, Bruce Banner after it. As Hamilton’s friend Hercules Mulligan, Oak rapped in a booming growl and pretended that he had trouble controlling his powerful limbs; as James Madison, he shrank his 5’11”, 235-pound frame and adopted a nasal voice, diminishing himself to play Jefferson’s shy, sickly partner. Both of his performances seemed effortless, even though they were totally different types, and neither was much like Oak in real life. If Hamilton had five acts, Oak would play five roles.

Daveed and Oak, Oak and Daveed. A good way to chart the growth of Hamilton mania during those first weeks at the Public was to watch what happened when the two of them appeared in the lobby after each show– the crowds that grew around them, the multiplying requests for selfies, a new sensation for them both. Daveed had long since given up his boyhood Broadway dreams, since the place didn’t seem to have a place for him. “I used to have dreams about flying one day all the time, too,” he says. He didn’t even have an agent when performances began.

The acclaim was just as unexpected for Oak. Growing up in West Orange, New Jersey, school plays and community theater were mainly ways to stay out of trouble when it wasn’t football season. This didn’t always work: He stole, he mouthed off to teachers, he got suspended a lot. His parents, both of whom had immigrated from Nigeria, didn’t have much money, but he managed to afford some training after he graduated. It was during that shaky early stretch of his career that a director advised him to try another line of work. Even after some regional credits and a couple of small Broadway roles, that memory stung.

Beyond the newfound acclaim, and the chance to have New York apartments for the first time, Daveed and Oak both saw a special opportunity in playing a Founding Father. Oak says he is “hyperconscious” about the roles he takes. He is allergic to doing “another show about a messed-up black kid.” Madison has been a godsend: “I’m a black man playing a wise, smart, distinguished future president.” Daveed thinks that seeing a black man play Jefferson or Madison or Washington when he was a kid in Oakland might have changed his life. “A whole lot of things I just never thought were for me would have seemed possible,” he says. Even now, the show is changing him, making him feel more American. “I always felt at odds with this country,” he says. “You can only get pulled over by the police for no reason so many times before you say, Fuck this.’”

Don’t be too quick to count a kid out. There are plenty of debatable lessons to be drawn from Alexander Hamilton’s life, but that one is clear. The poor bastard orphan from the islands ought to have died a dozen times but somehow lived to help to found the nation. As a leader of the new republic, he fought to make it easier for people like him to travel as far as their talent would take them.

“There are strong minds in every walk of life that will rise superior to the disadvantages of situation and will command the tribute due to their merit,” Hamilton wrote in The Federalist No. 36. Look no further than his own life for proof of that statement. Or Oak’s. Or Daveed’s.