Hamilton and Me

Giles Terera MBE is an award-winning actor, musician and writer. He trained at Mountview Theatre School and has worked consistently at venues such as the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company and Shakespeare's Globe. He is best known for originating the role of Aaron Burr in the London production of the award-winning musical Hamilton, for which he won the 2018 Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical. His other theatre credits include Rosmersholm, The Tempest, Avenue Q, The Book of Mormon, 125th Street, Rent (West End); Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Hamlet, Death and the King's Horseman, The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, Troilus and Cressida, Candide, Honk! (National Theatre); The Merchant of Venice (Shakespeare's Globe/international tour); The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Donmar Warehouse); Pure Imagination - The Songs of Lesley Bricusse (St. James's); King John (Shakespeare's Globe/UK tour); Don't You Leave Me Here (West Yorkshire Playhouse); The Playboy of the Western World (Abbey, Dublin); The Ratpack (West End/international tour); Jailhouse Rock (Theatre Royal Plymouth/West End); You Don't Kiss (Stratford Circus); Up on the Roof (Chichester); The Tempest (RSC); Six Degrees of Separation (Sheffield); Generations of the Dead (Young Vic); Bill Shakespeare's Italian Job (Playbox, Warwick/Gilded Balloon, Edinburgh); The Demon Headmaster/The Animals of Farthing Wood (Pleasance, Edinburgh). As a writer, his theatre work includes The Meaning of Zong (Bristol Old Vic), The Ballad of Soho Jones (St. James') and Black Matter (Crazy Coqs). As a filmmaker, Giles's first documentary, Muse of Fire - created with Dan Poole - centres on modern perspectives of Shakespeare and premiered on BBC Four in Autumn 2013. Giles was an associate producer on Poole's feature documentary The Space: Theatre of Survival and he wrote and directed the concert film Hello Harry! A Celebration. Giles was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to theatre. Praise for Giles Terera's Aaron Burr 'Giles Terera steals the show with his sphinx-like charisma as Hamilton's nemesis, Aaron Burr'The i 'Giles Terera is terrific as Aaron Burr, who narrates this story, anchoring it, managing to hold together the whole exploding maelstrom'The Times 'A star-making performance... as the ambitious Burr, Terera has a cool shrewdness. But there are notes of resentment, awkwardness and longing in his performance - Burr's appetite for politics is quickened by a thwarted desire to be, as one second-half song emphasises, in "the room where it happens"'Evening Standard