Before regathering at San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre in July to rehearse and re-kick-off their tour, the last time the cast of “Hamilton” had gathered in the same room was on March 11, 2020.

“We performed the matinee, and that morning [San Francisco Mayor] London Breed had announced no gatherings over 1,000 people. But the ordinance hadn’t come down the pipeline yet, so we still did the matinee, and then we found out at intermission that we wouldn’t be coming back for the evening show,” said Marja Harmon, who stars as Angelica Schuyler in the blockbuster Broadway smash musical, in a video call last week. “Initially, they were like ‘Two weeks.’ We know what happened with that story. For a week up until that pause—the big pause—slowly and slowly, we started to see more masks and things in the audience. You’re like, ‘Wow guys, it’s happening.’”

Now, more than a year and a half following initial lockdowns, the production company, one of three crisscrossing the U.S., has completed its shortened San Francisco run, sold out shows in Sacramento and is in its final week at San Jose’s Center for the Performing Arts. From there, it’s on to Reno, Tucson, Boise, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Portland and Vancouver. It’s an extremely long tour, which Harmon said is not out of the ordinary for a show that continues to draw demand, and it’s finally back on track.

Harmon, who’s also acted on TV on shows like “Jessica Jones,” “Person of Interest” and “Madame Secretary,” appeared on Broadway in “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof” and “The Book of Mormon,” and toured nationally with “The Lion King,” took time out of her day to speak to RIFF about the most noticeable differences in “Hamilton” since the reopening of the theater industry, her favorite parts of the show and avoiding “the white room.”

RIFF: What do you remember best from the last pre-pandemic performances?

Marja Harmon: We were definitely thinking about [the coronavirus] because the West Coast had some of the first few cases, and especially in San Francisco with all the travel. I was like, “Oh, this is coming. It’s making its way here.” We were having very real thoughts of, like, “We’ll be the first to go, and we’ll probably be the last to come back—our industry.” We just didn’t know how it was all going to shake out, but yeah, we had questions about our safety. On stage, off stage, being in front of an audience; definitely, we were having conversations about it. We were changing protocols backstage even up until the point where we stopped.

What kind of changes did that include?

We were putting up notices everywhere about, like, hand washing hygiene; we had sanitizer everywhere and that sort of thing before we knew it was aerosol-spread. We were taking care of all the tactical things.

Has there been anything about the show, after reopening, that has surprised you? Whether it’s an audience reaction that’s different from before, your own understanding of any lines or the work itself; rehearsals or anything else?

Obviously, these 18 months were really traumatic and difficult for everyone worldwide. … The theater industry was crushed for 18 months. It was really hard to wonder, “Are we going to come back?” We were having a lot of really difficult conversations about, “Should I continue to do this? Do we need to figure out something else to do to make a living?”

Everyone went through a lot of significant growth and change in the past 18 months, and while the show is the same, we’re all very different. There’s a lot of emphasis placed on different words or meanings in the show now. That first week of rehearsal was just full of emotion; it was so overwhelming. I mean, to be singing together with people in the same room, making noise, breathing the same air. It was wild.

Singing lyrics like, “Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now” hits differently. “And if there’s a reason I’m still alive/ When everyone who loves me has died,” it hits differently.

Talking about taking a song like, “One Last Time” where George Washington has a peaceful transfer of power, hits differently. This show resonates with what’s happening culturally, but what I love so much about it, especially in a time when we are truly even more polarized than I thought we had been in the past few years; it does remind us of a time when we were all unified trying to work towards the same thing. I hope that hits audiences. I hope people come out of it thinking through things a little differently and recognizing everyone’s humanity and not just labels. There’s a lot within this show that strikes a chord in different ways post-pandemic.

Musically, the Schulyer sisters’ songs were obviously inspired by Destiny’s Child, so how does it feel to be Beyoncé?

Yeah, I think it was. It feels pretty amazing. It’s really fun. It’s funny because I do, kind of, as Angelica Schulyer channel Beyoncé or her Sasha Fierce stage persona. It’s a lot of fun to think about that while doing that role because she’s such a force, just like Beyoncé.

Does that mean you’re a Beyoncé fan?

Yeah, especially of late, when she kind of stepped away from Destiny’s Child and really started showing us her individual artistry. When she came out with Lemonade, I had never paid more attention to her because it was just like an unapologetic Black female anthem album, and I just thought it was incredible.

Do you have a favorite part of the show or favorite song?

My favorite song that I don’t sing is, “Wait For It,” Aaron Burr’s big magnum opus. I just think it’s an incredible number, musically and lyrically. My personal favorite song to do, and my hardest song to do, is “Satisfied.” I also remember seeing the show for the first time and seeing that staging for that number, and I was just blown away because I had never seen anything theatrical like that before. To replay the same scene in a show is so significant, and from another point of view. It’s just really an incredible opportunity for the audience to see inside a character’s head who was just quite brilliant. It’s challenging, but it keeps me on my toes, truly, every single night. It’s always very satisfying when I complete it, and I didn’t miss a word. But it’s one of my favorite moments in the show.

Do you ever miss a word?

Hasn’t happened yet! But, as you’re doing anything for a long time, it probably will. But luckily, not yet. We call it “going into the white room,” where you just lose it for a second. You’re like, “Uh-oh,” and you just have to kind of wait ‘til the lyric comes back to you.

You hope it’s a very small room.

It usually is. It just feels long in your head. It’s maybe just like a second or two, hopefully, unless it’s a train wreck.

Before the pandemic, did you ever get bored with doing the same show night in and night out?

It’s a very interesting question because with Broadway or any long-running show, there is an aspect of it where you think the novelty wears off, right? We’re doing this thing eight times a week, indefinitely. I love to think of Broadway performers like athletes, and we are. We just don’t have an offseason. Because we train our voices, we train our bodies, we warm up, we cool down.

Every decision I make throughout the day is to preserve myself to do this performance at night, because this is the most physically demanding show I have ever done. It’s mentally very challenging; it’s physically very challenging. We’re also in a period costume, so for the women that means we’re in corsets. We’re singing and belting into the rafters [while] restricted. Learning, adapting to perform the show is not an easy feat. Also, because it’s lyrically and mentally challenging, you can’t really go on autopilot in the show, and you always have to be present. You always have to bring that energy because if you don’t, it’s a trap.

Even if you do have those days, where you feel tired (and we do), as soon as the down-beat goes, as soon as you hear the audience’s excitement, especially after not having live entertainment for a year and half, and people, for all we know, this is the first live performance that they’re seeing after all this time—that fuels us to give every little bit that we have left for the audience and also to remind ourselves that thank goodness we’re doing this again. Because there was a time where we didn’t know if we were going to.

One of the things that happened during the pandemic was the Disney+ broadcast of “Hamilton,” which included a backlash to Alexander Hamilton himself being involved in the slave trade. How did this affect you during that time, when people were looking at a piece of art so revered, and all of a sudden they’re questioning this show? It includes so many people of color raising up somebody who wasn’t as necessarily great at certain aspects of his life, and pretty horrible at one aspect.

Absolutely. Here’s the thing. I can’t speak for everybody because we’re not a monolith. I can only speak for myself. We all know that the founding of this country and our founding fathers were very morally compromised human beings, and that’s not hidden in this show at all. That’s what I love about it, is that we’re seeing the underbelly of all of these characters. Yeah, they did this stuff, but they also did this stuff, and we’re talking about a time where slavery and our economic foundation are like this [Harmon clasps her hands together].

Everyone had their hands in it, and the show’s creator wrote the show about the inner workings and the humanity of this human. Obviously, we can’t make it all about slavery because then you start casting the net too wide, but I do think the ultimate retribution was having the diversity in the cast playing all of these people, and look where we are now.

Different people have to reconcile that for themselves. The founding fathers are everywhere on everything, and I think it’s personal how you feel about it. But for me, I love the show, and I think it does a beautiful job at recognizing the faults of our founding fathers and the humanity, and also acknowledging that it was very clear that slavery is a stain that we cannot undo. It has stayed with us and will continue to stay with us until we face it. But I personally can separate the two, and I really enjoy the show. It’s very complicated. It’s tough, and I say that because it’s in everything within our culture and our country. It’s seated in everything. It’s hard to step away from it, and I think that’s the truly traumatic and sad thing.

When the show started around 2015, it coincided with the rise of Trump, and it gave people hope. Is that something you see as well? Also, what do you and your castmates think “Hamilton” can teach us about the plague era?

The plague area era being the Trump era?

And the COVID era.

“Hamilton” kind of came in on the end of the Obama era, and Obama ushered the show into the White House. It resonated so differently with him, his administration. And then with the changeover, it was solemn. It did take a different seed, and it was like a hope. I think it stood for kind of a revolution or a rebellion against the administration in a lot of ways, especially since there was that performance where the cast addressed Mike Pence directly, in the audience.

It was kind of like it became a form of protest, like this is what we could be. I think now, post-pandemic, it was really sobering for me personally to [think] if anything could unite us as a country and as people, it would have to be this, and the extreme opposite happened. I would like to think of it as an opportunity, as I said earlier, to remind us all of what we have in common and to see each other as human beings, and not dehumanize each other. Because I think that’s what’s happening a lot, now, on both sides.

Even before the pandemic hit, and the whole political scandal of the quid pro quo conversation was happening, and there’s a line in the show that’s like, “Oh, a quid pro quo” in “The Room Where It Happens,” and the audience would fall out every night because it was truly reflecting culture at that time.

Again, it’s different this time. I think the different parts of the show hit differently. My castmate Darnell [Abraham], who plays Washington, he talks about, “I wonder how people see, watching the initial President do that peaceful transfer of power, and do that whole monologue about why it’s important.” Things that hit differently, now; I hope it really just resonates with audiences however they choose to relate to it. But there’s a lot there to pick from, which is a testament to the brilliance of the show.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.