Hamilton fans know Carvens Lissaint as the Tony-winning musical's current George
Washington, but his talent and impact extend far beyond giving his all eight
shows a week at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. Carvens Lissaint is a poet a
rapper a preacher and one of the newest stars of the Broadway sensation Hamilton.
Spoken-word entered his life as a troubled teen.
--My ear stands at attention like soldier, them curious if these brown bodies
telling their history was to their liking. The words were too fast,
they say. No one can understand that rap stuff. I mean, I don't know why anyone
would write so many lyrics and so many words, but that was okay. And I say out
loud, Oh, too many words you say?
You must hate Shakespeare.
Checkov, Ibsen.
They
stay silent like they usually do.
[music]
--I have a mentor named Mahogany Brown, and i
remember in an earlier workshop, I think I might have been like 17 or 18, I sat
down and I wrote this poem. And she said, Well this is beautiful, but I'm gonna
tear this up because I don't think this poem cost you anything. So, I always knew
that I had to come to the page with high stakes, that anything that I wrote had
had to be a matter of life and death. If I don't say this, I will die.
--[V/O] While playing George Washington in the hit musical Lissaint is also celebrating
the release of Target Practice, a searing collection of his spoken word works. He's
been working on the very personal piece for years.
--I started in grad school. We were
doing we were doing a a production of Buried Child, and I was I was Father Dewis,
so I had a lot of off off stage time. --Okay [laughs]
--And, yeah, so I would be backstage, and really the
the genesis of the book started with the death of Philando Castillo, the man in
Minnesota who was in the car with his girlfriend and his girlfriend's daughter
in the back, who respected lawful a lawful order, effectively communicated
that he had a firearm in the car and that it was licensed, and still he was
deemed as someone who was a threat even with a child in the car. And I saw the
video. --There's video of it, right.
--Yeah, I saw the video live while backstage doing this doing the show,
and I said I have to write.
--Target Practice, which is, your line is... --Yeah, is
the black body target practice? Is the black body target practice? And it's
something that I wrestle with all the time because what targets, in many ways,
it can be violent, non-violent, it can be microaggressions. And really, it just goes
through my narrative of different stories of racist racist experiences
that I've had, both walking into my building, into my apartment, or on the
train... --Or at the stage door of Hamilton
--Or the stage door of Hamilton.
Or, or fans who comment
on my Instagram and say, Oh my god. I loved you as George Washington, but I don't
really know about this like racism stuff you're talking about. Racism is like over.
There are people who love Hamilton and hate black people.
It's real. It's real. I've experienced it.
I feel like we could live forever, but a
black boy's soul evacuated from his body yesterday, and I cannot shake this
thought. I sign playbills with tremors in my hand. This evening I was star, jaws
dropping in awe of my talent. I'm loved for the entertainment I provide.
Fascinating, the same people who gave me a standing ovation wouldn't rise to
their feet and scream if I were killed right here, wouldn't bat an eye if I
lived beneath the gravel they walk on every day. I matter on the platform, but
murdered in the shadows.
--Lissaint is the son of Haitian immigrants, who set him on
a disciplined path of hard work that has led him to his current stage success.
--What are your parents like? I know they came from Haiti --Yeah
--in the late 70s.
They came to New York. What were they like when they got here? What do you know
about their early days in New York?
--All I know is my dad said that he came
here on a Friday and he was in school on Monday. --Wow.
--He said I was here on a Friday
and I go straight to school. Because for him, he was like I need to make a better
life of what I've had before. And I need to do that for my family, I need to do
that for myself, and I need to do that for the future kids that I know I'm
going to have. I don't know all of the stories, but I know that that man was in
school, he was also working like a night job,
and he never, he just never stopped working since then.
--What does he do for work? -- He's a
desk attendant at Barnard College up at Columbia University.
And you know he
works nights, you know, he works at the dorms making sure everyone is safe. We
went to go visit him. My wife said, Hey man, you need a break. And he looked at
her he said, Break? What is a break?
Like he literally, in his head he was like I
don't know what a break is. I don't know what that is. It's it's an
honorable virtue that I think he has that I think was instilled in me in a
lot of ways. --You're your father's son.
--Yeah, yeah. Yeah, very very very much so. -- Tell me
about the night he came to see Hamilton.
--Oh man. It was a
Sunday matinee. I didn't know where he was sitting. All I know is I came to the
stage door you know to come get them, and he's seen a couple of you know
poetry slams and performances that I've done. He's always like, Oh, good job. Whatever.
But um, he just he just broke down. He just weeped. I've seen
him cry maybe like three times, and I don't think I've ever hugged my dad. I don't
think I've ever hugged my dad, but he broke down in my arms and held me at the
stage door for about two minutes. And that's a long time. If you really just
hold someone for two minutes and be like Oh, this is it was a really long time. So,
it was moving. It was moving for me just because you know we don't have the
closest relation, I don't have the closest relationship with my family. But
to see that I affected him
in any type of way, and for him to feel confidence that you know there were
things that he instilled in me that helped me get here, I thought
was moving.
--[V/O] Growing up in New York wasn't always easy for young Carvens,
who fought on the streets of the city when his parents struggled financially.
--We didn't really have a place to live. Luckily and by the grace of God you know
we have a lot of cousins and family in the city, so we were able to couch hop
for a little bit. But we didn't have a home. Literally taking my last $7 going
to the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe, paying seven dollars to get in, praying that I
won the poetry slam. If I won the poetry slam, I would get like 10 or $15 and I
knew I had enough money to get a slice of pizza and get a MetroCard to go back
home and do it all over again. And that's what I did. I did that for years.
--[V/O] The rising star has found comfort these days with his steady job in Hamilton and a
loving home life in a new Brooklyn apartment with wife Leslie, an actress,
writer and dancer.
--You describe yourself in the book as a 6-3 tower of poetic
romance.
--Yes. --That's you
--Tis I. --So does the spoken word help
you uh get women? Is that, did you? --It does not!
--Your wife also does... --She yeah she does
do poetry but that's not what she was
interested in. --You guys didn't fall in love at a
slam? --We met at a slam.
--You did! --But we did not fall in love at a slam.
She it's funny like she was not feeling she was
not feeling your boy.
--Not into it. --She was not feeling your boy. She was like,
Just so you know, I'm not about to be that woman that's gonna be at every one
of your shows, you know, cheering you on. That's just not me. Or even when
we first met, she hated my singing voice. Like I would sing and she would be
like, Can you not? And I'm like...
And I asked her one day, I said, You don't think
I can sing? And she was like, You know, I just feel like some voices really speak
to you and some voices don't. So, she was not feeling your boy in the in the
in in that sense at all. But uh she like me now! --She likes you
--She like me now because
I'll be singing and other woman will be like, Woo, boy! Sing!
And she'll be like, Yup. That's my man. I'm
like, Uh-huh, don't do that! But yes she likes it now, but it took us what? Five years of
marriage for her to come around.
--[V/O] Starring in Hamilton has special meaning for Lissaint
He first fell in love with the work of Lin-Manuel Miranda when he discovered
In the Heights as a high school student, and had his mind blown.
--So you're on Broadway? --On on it
--What does it mean for you every night to be
walking into that theater where you saw In the Heights. Now that you're
you sort of in it, it's your it's your life now. It's I'm sure the
dazzle of sort of you know making it has worn off and now it's...
--Yeah, definitely. The dazzle is gone, cuz it's work man. It's work, and
it's hard work. You go there, and you know I'm riddled with injury, and we're all
tired. Everyone is tired. Everyone is injured. But we all know that we have a
job to do with coming in and telling this story. But I make sure that I
don't lose sense of the dazzle, if you will. But for me, it's such a, it's so athletic.
It's such a sport. It feels for me when I walk into the theater what LeBron James
must feel like when he walks into the Staples Center. I'm like, Whoa. All right
I'm tired. My body hurts. But y'all it's time to go. It's time to go. There
thousands of people here. There's a thousand people here, literally. I'm
walking by them before I walk into the stage door. And it gives me a sense of
urgency, and I just try to remind myself like, Man, I came from the bottom. Came
from the bottom and I'm here now. It doesn't matter where I'm at.
I will still feel that sense of gratitude, urgency, like I feel walking
into the Richard Rodgers every day. And uh yeah i'm just trying to do the work.
Just trying to do the work.