LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: A musical is not one art form.
It's this mongrel, bastard form um, that, that involves every discipline, and when those
coalesce I think it's the most thrilling art form.
[Music]
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: I grew up in a very musical household.
Although my parents were not in the music business, they had shelves and shelves of
vinyl albums.
Um, and I, I always liked the musicals the best because I could imagine the stories.
I grew up in the 80s, so I saw the holy triumvirate of Phantom, Les Mis, Cats, um, and I was - I
think Les Mis was the first musical I ever saw, and I was seven-years-old, and I fell
asleep.
It's not a knock on the quality of the show, but I remember my parents bringing home the
cast album, and I remember my mom crying every time she heard Bring Him Home.
And that was affecting to me, to see how this music affected my parents was very affecting
to me.
I would go to friends houses for playmates, and I would be like, "Hey, you know what would
be fun?
If we put on a show for your parents at the end of the night!"
Like, that was sort of, that was always the be-all and end-all goal.
Um, "let's put on a show!"
Because that also not only became my creative outlet, it became my sort-of niche in high
school.
And I wrote a musical my senior year called Nightmare - called Seven Minutes in Heaven.
And it was about, um, that first unchaperoned party in 7th grade, and we cast 7th and 8th
graders, playing themselves.
These kids had their first kiss onstage at a show about your first kiss.
And, um, it was, it was the first thing I wrote where I was like, "Oh, this is what
I sound like as a writer."
And then I started writing - I wanted to write a full-length show, and my first full-length
show was In the Heights my sophomore year of college.
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: I think about the genesis of it all the time, because it's a lot of
different things that came together.
One, on the most elemental level, I was about to go through my first major breakup, um,
with my high school sweetheart.
So I had all this angst.
So that's the rocket fuel, right?
Two, um, we were just coming out of the Latin pop boom of '99, 2000.
This is Ricky Martin, Mark Anthony, Jennifer Lopez, all of the sudden becoming mainstream,
and songs in Spanish being on mainstream radio.
We had this shared, duel culture of American culture and Puerto Rican or Dominican culture.
Um, and, and that becoming fair game, um, as a topic to write about I think went into
this as well.
All of that went into the stew of that first 80-minute, one act show I wrote my sophomore
year.
Uh, there were two seniors at the time, John Maylor and Neil Stewart, who saw the show.
They were planning to start a theater company upon graduating.
They said, "Lin, we want to bring your show to Broadway when you graduate."
And I was like, "Okay…sure."
But they were as good as their word, and they got in touch with me my senior year.
I met them the week after graduating, and they introduced me to Tommy Kale, who would,
uh, go on to direct every incarnation of In the Heights down the road.
And that was a really important collaboration in my life because, um, Tommy instantly got
the - not only got the show as it existed, but really saw what it could be.
One of the other things that went into the making of Heights was also - I had this weird
timing, um, with Puerto Ricans in musicals my senior year in high school.
Directed West Side Story my senior year, and directing West Side Story for me was a joyous
experience mainly because there weren't a lot of Latinos in my school.
I was one of the only ones who did theater, and I was behind the scenes.
So I had to teach all these white and Asian kids how to be Puerto Rican.
And that was really fun.
I brought my dad in, he did dialect coaching.
And I, I really saw it as a fun challenge, not as a "Oh man, we don't have any Hispanic
kids at our school."
I was like, No, these kids are gonna learn about my culture.
Two, that was the same year Paul Simon's Songs from the Capeman came out.
And it was the story - a true life story - about this Puerto Rican gang member from the '50s,
um, who killed two kids and went to prison.
Um, and it was a musical version of his life.
And I'll never forget Entertainment Weekly's review of it.
Which they - and they said, and I quote, "It's forty years after West Side Story, and we're
knife-wielding murderers again."
Uh, and that hit me where I live.
Because I knew I wanted a life in this world, I knew that musicals were what brought me
joy, but I didn't want to hold a knife for the rest of my life.
And I think the frustration of that, unfortunate timing of that West Side Story/Capeman storm
that came at me my senior year in high school also led to the writing of Heights.
I think Rule #1 that went into my writing of Heights is No one's gonna have a knife.
No one's gonna be from the '50s.
And no one's gonna be a gang member.
Let's create, um, a - for me - more realistic world in this neighborhood, where you actually
see the small business owner, and not the guy on the corner.
And so that, that very much informed the writing of Heights as well.
And so I think, I think Latinos, and I think writers of color, I think that's partly your
responsibility.
I think you have to write the kind of show only you could write.
And that applies to any writer.
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: I think writers portray people as they are in their experience.
I think that's why you see a lot of Latina maids in New York - in LA productions.
Because the people who are writing the shows, that's the way they intersect with our people.
We're their maids.
We're their gardeners.
Um.
And there's nothing, um, dishonorable about that work, but we are very different people
to each other.
We are more than just maids and gardeners to each other.
And so you're not gonna see a more honest reflection of that unless you write it.
So, um, you know, I, I get a lot of young people say, "I want to be a performer, and
I also want to write," I say, "Write."
We have a lot of performers, that's great, but we need writers.
We're desperate for writers, and we're desperate for good writers.
LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA: Yo.
This is Lin-Manuel Miranda.
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Peace.