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[title]If you're a Ham fan (or a Ham stan?), you'll know Alexander Hamilton is the "ten-dollar founding father without a father". The lyric comes from Hamilton's face on the modern Ameican $10 bill – and that neat bit of wordplay means you might be able to score tickets to the world's hottest show for less than the cost of a pint.
Hamilton offers $10 tickets through a digital lottery, so that those who might also be "young, scrappy and hungry" can get a shot at seeing the show. The digital lottery is known in North America as Ham4Ham, and it continues in Australia.
The concept of a lottery for cheap tickets was pioneered by smash-hit Broadway show Rent, which was also produced by Hamilton producer Jeffrey Sellers. Seeing Rent for the first time inspired a 17-year-old Lin-Manuel Miranda to go into musical theatre, so the lottery is part of Broadway history.
But enough reminiscing about the Great White Way – how do you get your mitts on tickets?
Timing is crucial: each Friday at 12.01am, a select number of $10 tickets will be released for the next week's performances. Winners are drawn the following Thursday between 1 and 4pm, but you'll only have one hour to claim tickets from the time that you're notified before they're offered to another hopeful. You can enter for one or two seats – and there's absolutely no reason not to enter for two every time and bless your theatre-date-to-be with the show of a lifetime. It's easy to get excited about all this, but don't just enter willy-nilly: winning tickets are non-transferable. If you can’t use your tickets, no one else can, so you'll be depriving someone of the utter magic of seeing Hamilton come to life if you can't attend for some reason.
To enter, you’ll need to get the TodayTix app on your phone – you can get it on all iOS and Android devices in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.
You can find the entry form here. Don't throw away your shot.