'It has opened another door for people' - we meet the Hamilton cast member with proud Bristol roots

The first thing rising star of musical theatre Michael James Stewart does when he is cast in a touring show is to check whether it’s heading to Bristol.

A proud Bristolian, Michael was especially pleased when he heard that Hamilton was stopping off at the Bristol Hippodrome as part of its first ever UK and Ireland tour.

“It has been so nice because it has been an eight-week run in Bristol, rather than the usual one or two weeks. It was just nice to come home for that long and stay with my parents, catch up with old friends and visit places again. It’s also nice seeing how Bristol has evolved even in the time since I left to go to college in London.”

Now 32, Michael has been a professional singer and dancer in musical theatre for the past 12 years, appearing in productions in the UK and abroad including Mamma Mia!, Saturday Night Fever and The Wizard of Oz.

For the first 18 years of his life, he lived in Bristol, a city he still regards as home and a place where he has a large family.

During the current Hamilton run at the Hippodrome, Michael has been splitting his spare time between his mum’s house in Chipping Sodbury and his dad’s place in Lawrence Hill. 

“The Bristol accent went when I went to London but I’m still a proud Bristolian,” says Michael, who grew up mostly in Southmead.

As a child, his family moved around the city and he attended six primary schools including Cabot Primary School in St Paul’s, Blaise Primary and Fonthill Primary in Southmead, before settling at secondary school in Henbury.

A keen rugby player up to the age of 15, a growing love of drama and hip hop dance saw Michael choose the arts over sport when it came to making his A-level choices at Filton College.

He left Bristol in 2010 and went to London to do a musical theatre degree at the acclaimed Urdang Academy, where he was fortunate to get a scholarship.

“I think if I hadn’t had that scholarship, I wouldn’t have been able to go,” says Michael. “Scholarships are a lifeline for a lot of people. For young people who want to get into musical theatre, the first thing shouldn’t be whether they can afford it. People should always give it go because there are always avenues and opportunities.

“Being a student is hard whatever subject or wherever you study so I worked in a bar and got odd jobs around the college but within two hours of getting into Urdang Academy, I knew it was for me.

“You find other like-minded people who come from the same kind of background, you bond and power through. I met a lot of people at college from similar backgrounds. When you come from those backgrounds, it gives you even more of a hunger to succeed.”

Although Michael had been part of a Bristol hip hop crew called Dark Angels, and performed in a school show at the Hippodrome when he was younger, he came to dance and performance relatively late in life.

“My mum tried to get me into dance when I was much younger and I wasn’t interested. I didn’t revisit it until I was about 13 or 14. I did it for fun but I never thought there was a job, I didn’t understand you could have a career in it or make money from it.

“In Year 10, a teacher at Henbury asked if I would think about dance in further education. I couldn’t play an instrument and I liked acting so I went for dance and drama rather than dance and music.

“I didn’t really discover theatre until I was 16 and I didn’t discover musical theatre until I was 18 when I went to London. As a kid, I never went to things like pantomimes, I didn’t know things like that existed. I didn’t actually see anything in the Hippodrome until eight years ago when I saw a friend in Barnum. 

“But Hamilton is the fourth time I’ve done a show at the Hippodrome and a lot of my family are coming to see me. Some have never seen me perform in a theatre before because I’ve been in the West End for so long and they haven’t managed to get down to London, so that means a lot.

“Hamilton is an incredible show and it has filled a void in the world of musical theatre, I think it’s the first musical to incorporate hip hop, jazz, swing and funk. I’m from that hip hop background, that was the first style of dance I learnt, but when I graduated in London in 2013 there wasn’t anything close to this, and it attracts a unique crowd.

“I think the audiences for musical theatre have been the same for many years so it’s nice to be able to go out and see a much younger audience with a lot more different ethnicities. It has opened another door for people and got people coming to theatres which is great.”

Hamilton is at Bristol Hippodrome until June 22. For tickets, click here.