Lin-Manuel: Hitting the Heights

MANILA, Philippines - No less than the composer, lyricist and star of Broadway’s Tony Award-winning In The Heights, Lin-Manuel Miranda, graced the opening of the show’s second run in Manila yesterday. Atlantis Productions is re-staging In The Heights until March 25 at the Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium, RCBC Plaza in Makati. 

Lin-Manuel is a first-timer to the country, but don’t consider him a stranger.

“I know a lot about the Philippines because I have close friends who grew up here so I know more than the average American about the Philippines culturally,” Lin-Manuel, who even wrote a paper in college on Mt. Pinatubo, told The STAR in an interview Thursday, a few hours after arriving in the country.

Lin-Manuel likened the Philippines to Puerto Rico, where he traces his roots. “What’s interesting to me is that climate-wise, it feels a lot like Puerto Rico (and) in terms of infrastructure, the people, the humidity — it’s a lot like home in Puerto Rico.”

In The Heights, winner of four Tony Awards including Best Musical and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, was first staged by Atlantis Productions in Manila last September. It now serves as the opening salvo among the five productions that Atlantis is mounting this year.

In The Heights revolves around a vibrant community in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood — a place where “the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music.” It’s a community ready to embrace change and teeming with pressures, hopes and dreams.

Director Bobby Garcia explained why they decided to stage it: “The material is amazing. The songs that (Lin-Manuel) wrote are so special — so wonderful, character-driven songs that tell the story clearly. And the community is so Pinoy, it could be a street in Manila. I choose plays (to mount) that I have a personal connection with, and which I think could connect with the Filipino audiences.”

In The Heights is the first full-length play that Lin-Manuel wrote. “I started writing it in my sophomore year in college (Wesleyan University in Connecticut). When I graduated in 2002, I met our director Tommy Kail and we worked on it until we opened it off-Broadway in 2007 and Broadway in 2008. I spent my 20s working on it.”

Lin-Manuel admitted that the story is somehow hewed closely to real life. “There are certainly autobiographical elements throughout it. I definitely have an abuela who took care of me. I never ran a bodega, but I spent a lot of time in my corner bodega, and there are characters that are drawn from my own life experiences. And we really wrote about it with a lot of love because that’s what we really feel about our community, and I think that shines through in the play.”

Interestingly, the love interest of the musical’s central character Usnavi named Vanessa happens to be the name of Lin-Manuel’s wife. But call it pure coincidence. He met his wife Vanessa several years after he penned In The Heights. “It was one of those crazy, good coincidences.”

In Atlantis Productions’ In The Heights, Nyoy Volante is Usnavi, originally played by Lin-Manuel on Broadway

Lin-Manuel always knew he’d end up in theater. “All my life!” he said. “I’ve always been a theater kid ever since I got cast in my sixth grade play. I started writing plays and musicals, like those 20-minute musicals, in high school. I never stopped doing it, to the point that it became the only thing I was good at. I had no choice (laughs) as I didn’t have other skills. It was my way of making sense of the world.”

Lin-Manuel had a lot of help from his upbringing as well. He is the first in the family to pursue the arts — his father was a politician and community organizer, while his mother a psychologist, but an uncle of his father founded the actors guild in Puerto Rico. Though his family didn’t have all the money to spend for musical plays, there was an abundance of music and Broadway songs at home.

Lin-Manuel shared, “I always love different kinds of music, and there’s a lot of different kinds of music in Heights. There’s pop, Latin, rap, but it’s all infused with the musical theater technique.”

Like the start of many a success story, the cards were also stacked against him, but he pressed on. “The odds against any writer are astronomical, you know. Think about it, in Broadway, there are (30-plus) theaters, it’s like real estate, it’s very hard to break through to any of it. I was lucky enough to find producers who were willing to take a chance on young talents. My producers also produced Avenue Q., and they were first-time writers when they did Avenue Q. But yes, I worked odd jobs. I also taught seventh-grade English. I did a lot of teaching work to pay the rent so I could continue working on the show.”

Now, he’s more than happy that In The Heights is finding appreciation and relevance among foreign audiences. “There are a couple of things that I think why it resonates particularly well with Filipinos. One reason is that we are in the same dual-language place as in the States. The show is about many different generations of Latinos living in New York, and so the characters are all struggling about what is home. What are the traditions that I have been handed down, and what do I pass on to my kids — I think that resonates enormously here. Then there’s the bilingualism within the show, the English and Spanish. And I think the show (resonates) because it is very old-fashioned — it’s about home, community, struggle, and so for that reason, whether you’re Latino or not, you’ll find something to relate to.”

During our interview, Lin-Manuel also met for the first time Nyoy Volante, who’s playing Usnavi in the Philippine production. When direk Bobby offered to Nyoy the lead role of Usnavi — the sweet and nice owner of a corner bodega who longs to return to the Latin homeland of his parents — Nyoy was incredulous as he practically had zero theater experience except for being part of a chorus in a previous Atlantis production. But the acoustic singer nailed the part to glowing reviews in the first run.

“Pressured,” confessed Nyoy of what he now feels about reprising the role and performing before Lin-Manuel. “He’s not just the composer, but he’s also the original Usnavi.”

“Don’t be, don’t be,” Lin-Manuel reassured Nyoy.

Nyoy added, “But I’m also excited because not everybody gets this kind of privilege.”

Meanwhile, Lin-Manuel will be touring some parts of the country while here before heading back to work for the national tour of Bring It On: The Musical, the music and lyrics of which he co-wrote. For the revival of West Side Story, he also wrote the Spanish dialogue and worked with Stephen Sondheim to translate the material into Spanish song lyrics. In terms of acting projects, he has had appeared in the American TV shows House, Sesame Street and Modern Family. On stage, he most recently appeared as Charley Kringas in the City Center Encore’s! series revival of Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along. He’s also finishing a concept album on the American statesman Alexander Hamilton which he hopes to release this year. There’s no stopping Lin-Manuel from scaling more heights.

The 32-year-old, nevertheless, shares some advice for aspiring artists still scouring for a place in the sun and looking for a shot at success. “Here’s the thing: I would still be writing even if I wasn’t paid as a writer. If you want to be in the arts because you want to be famous, you are there for the wrong reason. That’s not guaranteed. The only thing that gets you that is luck. There are brilliant artists who wallow in insecurity, but there are not-so-brilliant artists who have one good idea and soared to the top, and that’s what you can’t control. What you can control is what you do with your time. If you can’t help write that story, or sing that song, then that’s supposed to be what you’re doing.”

(For details, call Atlantis Productions at 892-7078 or 840-1187.)