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lenbryant · 5 months

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Sondheim (from 2021) LONG POST

Cherished Words From Theater’s Encourager-in-Chief

He wrote great shows, but Stephen Sondheim was also a mentor, a teacher and an audience regular. And, oh, the thrill of getting one of his typewritten notes.

In the fictionalized movie version of his life, Jonathan Larson ignores the ringing phone and lets the answering machine pick up. Crouched on the bare wooden floor of his shabby apartment in 1990 New York City, he listens as Stephen Sondheim leaves a message — instant balm to his battered artist’s soul.

“Jon? Steve Sondheim here,” the voice says in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s biomusical “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” and it really is Sondheim’s voice we hear, offering a bit of badly needed praise for the prodigiously talented, profoundly discouraged Larson.

Sondheim scripted that voice mail for the film himself, and goodness knows he’d had decades of practice, offering just the right words to buoy the spirits of Larson and countless other young artists. When Sondheim died on Nov. 26 at 91, the American stage lost not only a composer and lyricist nonpareil but also its longtime encourager-in-chief.

The story of his own early tutelage under Oscar Hammerstein II has been told and retold, but much less known — at least outside professional theater — is the rigorous dedication with which Sondheim passed that tradition on.

Miranda, who first met Sondheim at 17 and began corresponding with him in earnest while writing “Hamilton,” said he was initially afraid of intruding on Sondheim’s time.

“It took me a while to realize he was serious when he said, ‘Reach out if you ever want to talk about anything,’” Miranda said.

The letters Sondheim wrote over the decades were so numerous that they might seem cheap currency if they weren’t so powerfully affecting to the recipients. Imagine the hand of God reaching toward Adam in Michelangelo’s fresco and you have some idea of the vital charge they could carry.

After Sondheim died, Twitter was flooded with images of them. Notes to students and professionals and fans, they were thoughtful and specific, full of gratitude and good wishes, each on letterhead, each with the elegant, sloping signature that’s familiar now from the Stephen Sondheim Theater marquee.

“He was always concerned about the future of the art form, and he wanted it to survive,” said the director Lonny Price, who played one of the leads in the original Broadway production of Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along.” More than three decades later, he directed the documentary “Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened,” about the making of that show, a notorious flop.

But it was as a Sondheim-obsessed 14-year-old in 1973 that he struck up a decades-long correspondence with his hero, and discovered that Sondheim was kind enough to take him seriously.

‘You make me want to write more’

Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld of Fiasco Theater got a cherished letter from Sondheim in 2013, after he saw their company’s production of “Into the Woods.” Declaring it “inventive and exhilarating,” he ended with a breathtaking line: “You make me want to write more.”

“It was the most important thing that’s ever happened in our professional lives,” Steinfeld said, calling it “unspeakably meaningful” to learn “that the cycle of inspiration might have actually flowed in the other direction.”

SONDHEIM CULTIVATED the field by founding the Young Playwrights Festival, where the theater and television writer Zakiyyah Alexander recalls him having “a proud dad vibe” about her and the other teenage winners. Elsewhere he championed emerging composer-lyricists like Larson and Miranda and Dave Malloy. For years, he was the president of the Dramatists Guild Council.

Revered as the closest thing we had to a theatrical deity, Sondheim didn’t retreat to reign alone on some Olympus. He ambled down from the mountaintop fully aware of the power and responsibility that came with his position.

And so it was immensely moving, but utterly unsurprising, that he spent his last day of theatergoing, two days before he died, taking in a pair of form-bending documentary plays that were struggling at the Broadway box office and about to close: a matinee of “Is This a Room” and an evening performance of “Dana H.,” both at the Lyceum Theater.

He had told a New York Times journalist his plan, and after he died, Michael Paulson reported what he had said in anticipation: “I can smell both of those and how much I’m going to love them.”

To Emily Davis, the star of “Is This a Room,” the fact of Sondheim having been there — which she said she learned about only when she read it in the newspaper — felt like “the biggest and most grand actual welcome to Broadway that there could have been.”

And when she noticed, the day after his death, an unusually large number of audience members doing doubleheaders — spending their Saturday catching both plays — it seemed to her like people paying tribute to him by doing as he had done.

Children will listen. He got that right.

‘Forgive me’

The composer Jeanine Tesori, who spent many hours alongside Sondheim as the supervising vocal producer on the new “West Side Story” movie, got her first letter from him in the 1980s, when she was just out of college. To her retrospective mortification, she had mailed him some music she’d written.

“That’s what we all did,” she said. “We just cold sent him our stuff because we didn’t know not to do that: send a cassette, and then you would just sort of wait and hope.”

He wrote back, gently, apologizing that he had been unable to listen to her tape — and somehow even that felt like a kind of validation, because he had noticed she was there.

“The beautiful thing was, it didn’t go into the ether,” she said. “He could have easily ignored it. But what he did was acknowledge that he had gotten it, and he returned it. I’ll never forget those words, typewritten: ‘Forgive me.’”

TO A LEGION OF FANS Sondheim was and is the be-all and end-all. But his own horizons as a theatergoer were significantly broader than that. In an art form that is so much about being present for the unrepeatable moment, he not only showed up, but he also often did so to experience work that was offbeat and obscure, challenging conventions just as his own work did.

When the Chicago-based experimental shadow-puppetry troupe Manual Cinema brought “Ada/Ava” to New York in 2015, Sondheim headed downtown to see what they were up to — “the ultimate pinch-me moment,” said Ben Kauffman, one of the company’s composers.

When Mindy Kaling and Brenda Withers performed their loopy Matt Damon-Ben Affleck sendup “Matt & Ben” at P.S. 122 in 2003, Sondheim went backstage afterward to celebrate its unknown, 20-something playwright-stars.

Kaling tweeted last weekend that she’d told him she hoped someday to star in one of his shows; Withers, by phone, recalled his grace in focusing the encounter on them, not him.

“He made the effort to stay and talk to us and see our eyes get wide and let us ask him a couple questions,” she said. “He wasn’t there because his publicist told him to be there, and to be nice. He was there because he wanted to be.”

But Sondheim, far too famous simply to blend into an audience, was cautious about making such appearances. Jason Eagan, the artistic director of the artist incubator Ars Nova, said that Sondheim went to shows there but never to openings, because he didn’t want to be a distraction on someone else’s big night.

And while there was nowhere for him to hide when he first saw the immersive “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812” at Ars Nova’s tiny space in Hell’s Kitchen, when he went to see it on Broadway, he sat in the mezzanine to be as inconspicuous as possible.

However much that theatergoing nourished him, as it nourishes all of us when the work is good, it was also frequently an obligation, and he fulfilled it diligently. Tesori remembers him showing up at City Center just after his close friend, the author and composer Mary Rodgers, died in 2014.

He had promised that he would listen to some young artists perform his music, so he did — “even though he was heartbroken,” Tesori said. He asked her to give him the performers’ addresses, “because he wanted to write to all of them, to encourage them.”

‘Why I wanted to write for the theater’

The playwright Lynn Nottage, now a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, was returning to the theater after a seven-year absence when Sondheim wrote to her out of the blue in 2004, praising her new play “Intimate Apparel” and telling her: “It reminded me of why I wanted to write for the theater in the first place.”

“I entered back into New York theater sort of tiptoeing and frightened and not sure whether there was a space for me,” Nottage said. “And so when I received this letter from one of the giants, it just was the kind of affirmation that I needed in the moment. What it said to me more than anything is that I belong in this community.”

From then on, at all of her plays, she said, “at some point I’d look out in the audience, and there he would be.”

SONDHEIM’S LETTERS generally weren’t long, but it’s the little things, right? Except that the little things combine to eat up who knows how many hours of a life. And even when a genius lives to 91, it’s easy to lament — as Miranda recently did, in an interview in The New Yorker — the works that went uncreated because of finite energies expended elsewhere.

Over the phone a few days after Sondheim’s death, though, Miranda said he didn’t truly feel that way.

“Obviously it’s to theater’s enormous benefit that he took that time, and I think it fed him to encourage others,” he said. “He succeeded on both fronts because he left a legacy of immortal works that we’ll be doing forever — I mean, just look at this season alone — and he also left behind a generation of artists who got encouragement from him, and support.”

It was part of Sondheim’s gift to understand not only the encompassing job description of great artist but also his singular effect on his colleagues — how even a few words of appreciation, or moments of attention, could prove enduring sustenance over the long slog of a career in an often pitiless field.

It was unglamorous work, and Sondheim did it exquisitely.

No single theater artist right now is as revered as he was. No one else can yet step into those shoes. We nonetheless could, artists and audience members alike, seek to borrow from his example — by being adventurous, by being generous, by showing up.

That would be one way to honor the giant.

A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 5, 2021, Section AR, Page 7 of the New York edition with the headline: Cherished Words From the ‘Encourager in Chief’. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

#stephen sondheim #sondheim #theater #theatre #broadway #musicals #composer #lyricist #our shakespeare

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nael-opale · 2 years

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"You're the real gift, kid."

- Bruno to Mirabel in All Of You

Can we talk about how true that is ?

Do you realize Mirabel did everything she said she would do in Waiting On A Miracle...?

❂ "I would move the mountains"

She literally opened a path to the past, breaking the mountain between them and the river where her grandfather was killed

❂ "Make new trees and flowers grow"

She helped Isabela discover the extent of her plant-making powers and find her true self along the way

❂ "Someone please just let me know where do I go"

She found Bruno. He was just as lost as she was, but he helped her realize the most important thing : she is exactly what the family needs

❂ "I would heal what's broken Show this family something new"

She stood up for her family when she confronted her grandmother, something none of them dared doing until then. She listened to them, she repaired their broken bound, she showed them they were more than just their gift... She gave them support and freedom.

❂ "Bless me now as you blessed us all those years ago When you gave us a miracle Am I too late for a miracle?"

You are the miracle, Mirabel. You were the miracle they needed all along...

#many people told me they did not find the songs in Encanto as memorable as other beloved Disney songs...#they may be right #but there's something I'll keep defending #Lin-Manuel Miranda is a talented lyricist #the lyrics may seem simple at first but they are so much more when you take the time to truly listen to them #there is something he is amazing at : motifs #his songs...they answer each other #themes and words keep coming back and it's super effective #the most important motifs here are ''open your eyes'' and the theme about shining #that's exactly why I got obsessed with Hamilton as a clueless French person who does not care about America's ''founding fathers''#by the way : go watch ''Hamilton and Motifs: Creating Emotional Paradoxes'' on YouTube #this video helped me put words on the emotions his songs make me feel #which is...all of them. I'm overwhelmed. please send help.#Encanto #Encanto spoilers #Mirabel Madrigal #Bruno Madrigal #Madrigal Family #Hamilton #Lin-Manuel Miranda #being very emotional and analytic at the same time is a blessing and a curse...#naelistic train of thought

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septembersghost · 2 years

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I do not know how to articulate this in a concise way that does it justice - sondheim would know, except he probably would brush away what I'm about to say in the way that he often did praise - part of the loss here is now that we're forever bereft of an artistic bridge between theatre's past and its future, and how impactful and part of the fabric of our culture broadway is. steve was mentored by rodgers and hammerstein. oscar was not only a teacher, but a surrogate father to him. he worked with leonard bernstein. he passed on that tradition of teaching and fostering new talent by reaching out to young composers, including jonathan larson (who was taken far too soon, but unquestionably had a permanent influence), including lin-manuel miranda, and that barely scratches the surface of the lives he touched, interacted with, guided and changed. all last night and today, names keep popping into my head of people who I know are grieving him, and they're legends. they're luminaries of the theatre. sondheim linked our cultural and musical and literary (because his lyrics ARE literary) past to where we've traveled and come, where we might be going. I know he said stop worrying where you're going, but without the compass he provided, where would we be? stop worrying if your vision is new, but his always was, and its innovation and originality and moving complexity was because he was a keen observer of the current times, but also cherished the lessons he learned from those artists past. there are endless, countless things to say about the history of musical theatre and its composers and lyricists and writers, but no one had the perspective and rich perception of it that he did because he was there. his legacy lit the way because he was a part of artistic history at every turn. so it's not only his loss as an extraordinary human being, or the realization that we won't have new creations from him now, it's also a grief for that piece of the past. his life kept that here with us for so long, and we were better for it.

he loved teaching. he considered it sacred. it's our job now to keep carrying those memories and lessons on, if we can honor him in any way, it's to keep teaching one another. his memory IS a blessing and we've been entrusted with it. careful the tale you tell, that is the spell. keep telling it.

#stephen sondheim #sondheim #broadway #musical theatre #my heart aches #order out of chaos #may his memory be a blessing #bubble wrap around my heart #*

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brian-in-finance · 2 years

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Best Film - Belfast

Best Original Screenplay - Kenneth Branagh

Belfast' Finds Everlasting Love with WAFCA Critics

Washington, D.C. — "Belfast" headlined a diverse roster of winners when The Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA) announced their top honorees for 2021 this morning. A semi-autobiographical coming-of-age drama from filmmaker Kenneth Branagh centering on a nine-year-old boy and his family during the Troubles in 1969 Northern Ireland, "Belfast" won Best Film and Branagh took home Best Original Screenplay.

Jane Campion won Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for "The Power of the Dog," based on Thomas Savage's 1967 novel, a provocative western of toxic masculinity and repressed longing set in the big sky country of 1925 Montana. As a college-aged young man with an increasing enigmatic connection to his petulant rancher uncle, Kodi Smit-McPhee was also awarded Best Supporting Actor for the film.

WAFCA awarded Best Actress to Kristen Stewart for her stirring portrayal of Diana, Princess of Wales, reaching the life-altering decision to leave her marriage to Prince Charles and the royal family over the 1991 Christmas holiday, in Pablo Larraín's "Spencer." Also superbly playing a late real-life figure, talented composer, lyricist and playwright Jonathan Larson, Andrew Garfield won Best Actor for Lin Manuel-Miranda's musical-drama "tick, tick...BOOM!" Best Supporting Actress went to Aunjanue Ellis, wonderful as Oracene "Brandy" Price, mother of future tennis greats Venus and Serena Williams, in Reinaldo Marcus Green's "King Richard."

Best Acting Ensemble accolades were awarded to Fran Kranz's "Mass," an emotionally shattering drama starring Ann Dowd, Reed Birney, Martha Plimpton and Jason Isaacs, as grieving parents who meet in the wake of a tragic school shooting. For Best Youth Performance, Woody Norman won for Mike Mills' "C'mon C'mon," as a nine-year-old boy who forms a bond with his uncle while his mother is out of town.

Mike Rianda's vibrant sci-fi comedy "The Mitchells vs. the Machines," about a family road trip that turns into a fight to save the world from a robot uprising, took Best Animated Feature honors, while Best Voice Performance went to Awkwafina for her standout work as excitable dragon Sisu in "Raya and the Last Dragon." Best Documentary kudos went to "Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)," Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson's film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. Best International/Foreign Language Film was awarded to Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Japanese drama "Drive My Car."

In technical categories, Denis Villeneuve's sweeping fantasy epic "Dune" was the major victor, winning Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score, while Best Editing went to "tick, tick...BOOM!"

The Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association comprises over 65 DC-VA-MD-based film critics from television, radio, print and the Internet. Voting was conducted from December 3-5, 2021.

THE 2021 WAFCA AWARD WINNERS:

Best Film:

Belfast

Best Director:

Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)

Best Actor:

Andrew Garfield (tick, tick...BOOM!)

Best Actress:

Kristen Stewart (Spencer)

Best Supporting Actor:

Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog)

Best Supporting Actress:

Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard)

Best Acting Ensemble:

Mass

Best Youth Performance:

Woody Norman (C'mon C'mon)

Best Voice Performance:

Awkwafina (Raya and the Last Dragon)

Best Original Screenplay:

Kenneth Branagh (Belfast)

Best Adapted Screenplay:

Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog)

Best Animated Feature:

The Mitchells vs. the Machines

Best Documentary:

Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

Best International/Foreign Language Film:

Drive My Car

Best Production Design:

Patrice Vermette, Production Designer; Richard Roberts and Zsuzsanna Sipos, Set Decorators (Dune)

Best Cinematography:

Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS (Dune)

Best Editing:

Myron Kerstein, ACE; Andrew Weisblum, ACE (tick, tick...BOOM!)

Best Original Score:

Hans Zimmer (Dune)

http://www.dcfilmcritics.com/awards/

Remember the wins in Washington?

#Tait rhymes with hat #Good times #BelfastMovie #Winners #2021 #Washington DC Area Film Critics Association #WAFCA #6 December 2021 #Washington DC USA #Belfast #Now in North America #Worldwide 2022 #Campaign To Shorten Awards Season

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moonmeg · 2 years

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First off, I just wanna say that I love your art! You have so much talent- I just- wow. Another thing is that I was wondering, I know you like musicals, but are there any singers and/or bands that you happen to like?

Thank you!!!

Yes I'm quite the theatre kid but I also enjoy non musical bands and singers

Since May this year (*cough* Eurovision *cough*) I'm a big Måneskin fan <3

I also enjoy some big names like Ariana Grande or Doja Cat and some others for example but I wouldn't call myself fan exactly.

Some smaller names I really like are Emei and Lyn Lapid!

Also! He doesn't have my favorite voice and I'm out of the Hamilton fandom and the times I adored him to bits but Lin-Manuel Miranda is a good ass musician and lyricist ngl. Encanto reminded me of how well this man knows what he's doing and he manages to create beautiful masterpieces and songs that get stuck in your head. You don't have to like him as a person but I think we can agree that Puertorican knows how to write music and lyrics.

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keepingupwithlinmanuel · 4 years

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So, How Was Your Decade, Lin-Manuel Miranda?

Lin-Manuel Miranda began the 2010s as a darling of the theater world and will end it as a darling of, well, pop culture as a whole. Miranda’s first hit, In the Heights, premiered on Broadway in 2008 and he spent the ensuing years working as a performer, composer and lyricist on a variety of theatrical projects (Bring It On: The Musical, a West Side Story revival, Merrily We Roll Along). All the while, though, he was plotting his next show, Hamilton, a hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton that would premiere on Broadway in 2015 and become the rare Broadway show to transform into a genuine cultural phenomenon.

Hamilton won an astounding 11 Tony Awards, spawned a star-studded remix album (The Hamilton Mixtape) and song series (Miranda’s “Hamildrops”) and embarked on a world tour that’s still rolling along. Miranda became a star in his own right, garnering additional accolades for his work on the Moana soundtrack, penning music for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, hosting Saturday Night Live and starring in Mary Poppins Returns. He also became a staunch activist on behalf of Puerto Rico, advocating for debt relief, and donating and raising funds for rebuilding efforts after hurricanes Maria and Irma. The one thing Miranda managed not to do this decade was complete his EGOT. He’s only one measly Oscar away, though, so it shouldn’t take long at all. Miranda tells us about the people, places and things that shaped his decade.

My favorite album of the 2010s was: Beyoncé’s 4, just because it has one of my favorite songs of all time, “Countdown.” I think the surprise drop for the self-titled was the most innovative thing about the 2010s; it changed the way we exist. It was always let everyone in the world know you have an album coming, and Beyoncé upended it in one move. She basically blew up the system.

My favorite song of the 2010s was: I will refer you to “Countdown.”

The artist who had the best decade was: Donald Glover had a hell of a decade. Donald Glover has what we call a “Fosse year” in that he was being recognized for different talents in different things, all at the same time. Write the best TV show, drop the best single, and also be an incredible actor.

The craziest thing that happened to me in the 2010s was: Honestly, it’s the Hamilton wave that keeps cresting. I thought we’d do well with school groups [and] maybe run one or two years. Everything else has been gravy.

My least favorite trend in music this decade was: As soon as I say something, it’ll be someone’s nostalgic favorite in 10 years, so I’d rather not [Laughs].

The TV show I couldn’t stop streaming in the 2010s was: It’s not really a 2010s show, but I’m a big West Wing streamer, it was just sort of on for most of the decade. It’s like TV caffeine for me, the crackle of the dialogue — I feel energized after watching it.

The best new slang term of the decade was: Probably saying that something “slaps.” It’s very accurate and descriptive to how I feel when a piece of music whacks me over the head and doesn’t leave me alone.

The best live show I saw in the 2010s was: This just barely makes it into the decade, but I would have to say my wedding. We hired incredible Latin musicians, and imagine your favorite concert but everyone around you is someone you love.

The most surprising encounter I had with a fellow artist this decade was: Literally any backstage moment at Hamilton. Alex Trebek, to Bernie Sanders, Donald Glover twice, Supreme Court justices. It was like an ongoing Mad Libs.

Something cool I did this decade that nobody noticed was: I got to write a song with John Kander of Kander and Ebb [“Cheering for Me Now”]. He’s really fast and I’m pretty fast, and we just did it side-by-side… it was pretty incredible and I’m really proud of what we made.

The strangest thing someone said about me in the media this decade was: I think it was [author] Dana Schwartz who coined the term, “Find someone who looks at you the way Lin-Manuel Miranda looks at everyone.” That went very, very viral and that made really laugh because I never thought of myself that way, but she had the screen caps!

The best outfit I wore this decade was: Honestly, when I was doing the Marry Poppins junkets last year, I had Stacy London dressing me. I will not improve on that [Laughs].

The most “2010s” moment of the 2010s was: Just like, insert any news cycle of: Let’s all look at this video… turns out the video is the opposite of what we thought it was. That cycle, over and over and over. What’s the meme, we regret to inform you the duck is racist? [Milkshake duck]

My biggest hope for the 2020s is: A new president. I’m sure I’m not the first person to say that.

#lin manuel miranda #rolling stone #hamilton #interviews

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queen-of-my-goofball-army · 4 years

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Let’s talk heroes\inspirations in life

For me having heroes is something that I don’t really do very often. I’m a little bit different and I think in a different way than I think most people would. To me what makes a true hero is somebody that I can admire. Whether they’re funny, talented, unique, weird themselves or they just do whatever they do\did so well that it changes my life for the better. A lot of these people you might not really understand and they are more people that I idolize that have changed my life and helped me become more confident than actual heroes. I will be counting two that actually has since passed away but he is a huge part of my personality.

The first person to me is the easiest, he’s the person that I try to emulate the most and he has helped me out in so many different ways through the characters that he’s played. My biggest hero is Rob Paulsen voice actor extraordinaire. This might come as a surprise to some of you who don’t know me in real life but I love cartoons, and when I say I love them I mean I LOVE cartoons. They are my main special interest and something that I study in my free time. The character who spoke to me when I was seven years old and lonely was Yakko Warner. If I watched his skits, I was no longer alone. I could laugh and if I could laugh that would mean eventually I would be alright. Most of what I know about the business comes from Rob’s Talkin’ Toons podcast that I listen to all the time the same episodes (I recommend the Richard Horvitz one, Billy West one and Charlie Adler one I learned the most from these three.) He has this saying that on the bad days I just say to myself and I start to smile “Laughter is the best medicine and the best thing is you can’t OD and the refills are free.” If I were to meet anybody on this list of six people I would want to meet him hands down. I would just want to thank him for everything that he has done for me.

Alright second hero out of six I idolize Lin Manuel Miranda writer lyricist for Alexander Hamilton and In The Heights. He also played the main character in both musicals. A lot of musical theater fans admire him but for me this is more of a personal story than anything else. I sent Lin a letter through snail mail around four years ago as something that I needed to do for school to graduate. I kept running outside to check the mailbox everyday after I got home from school and would see that the mailman came. Everyday I came back flipping through the bills, letters and other articles and my heart broke a little bit more every time. I thought that I wouldn’t hear anything so after two months I eventually gave up checking. Little did I know that right after Tonys season I would get my response. I ran inside screaming excitedly that it had finally came and my dad has been telling me to get it framed ever since. I feel like if I frame it though it will become a lot less real.

This next one is going to seem really stupid since I can’t ever have a conversation with him. For the reasoning that he does not speak English. I am speaking of course of Hayo Miyazaki-san the head of animation for Studio Ghibli. This man basically is like the Japan Walt Disney to me. I grew up with his films especially Totoro that was my favorite when I was really little. I would watch the opening scene and just die laughing at the little creatures making the silly faces. Over the course of my life he has given me relatability through his characters like Kiki who showed me that girls don’t just have to sweet and kind but can also save the day at the end of it. I have been so inspired to become a writer through his movies and even if he thinks that anime is essentially a mistake I couldn’t really care less because without him I wouldn’t have one of my biggest heroes in the world.

The first hero that passed away has been a massive part of my life for as long as I can remember even if I’ve only ever seen one film with him in it in a major role. I watched the movie Singin’ In The Rain with my grandma that I’ve since had to cut out of my life when I was four. She is where I get my love of musical theater from since my parents while they enjoy it they don’t love it like me. Most of my friends that know me probably find this hero really weird but if I were to want to thank any of these men it would be this one. Since I was four I have been obsessed with the tap dancing of Donald O’Connor. To me, even though he was around during the 40′s 50′s and 60′s when dancing was a huge deal since you had Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire and probably man more he is the one that has most inspired me. His enthusiasm when you got a pair of tap shoes on him is something that’s infectious. He is easily one of the handsomest celebrities to me as well there’s just something that he gave me when I was younger. It was this inspiration to be yourself even if that self was somewhat weird and spazzy he never once was anything other than the same goofball that always was. To me he is Cosmo the character that he played in Singin’ In The Rain. I’m going to watch I Love Melvin tomorrow, this year I’m making it a goal for myself to watch all the musicals that he was in. I also adore him in Out To Sea even though he has a bit of a minor part it was still one of my favorite parts of the movie. He makes just about everything better for me and I couldn’t be happier that I was introduced to him at such a young age.

My final one is probably right behind Rob Paulsen in terms of how much my life was changed thanks to him. He’s a man that everybody seems to have forgotten about but he worked for Disney during the 80's and 90's before he passed away. He was a songwriter who hit the bigtime when him and his writing partner made a little musical called Little Shop of Horrors. I am, of course talking about Howard Ashman. He gave me the confidence to always speak my mind in a sort of funny way. He didn’t take anybody’s bullshit and that spoke to a shy and socially awkward 15 year old me. I first learned about him through the documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty. I knew his name but I never really thought about the man that wrote the music I grew up with. He was very opinionated and usually knew best about music. We certainly wouldn’t have Part Of Your World or the Beast’s complex backstory if he hadn’t been writing and working so closely with the crew. That was my very long winded list of heroes. Do any of you have hero’s or people that have inspired you?

#hero #inspiration #rob paulsen #lin manuel miranda #hayo miyazaki #donald o'connor #howard ashman

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thehighwarlockofbrooklyn · 4 years

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Pick 7 of your comfort films and the tag some people

I got tagged by @yearningtozier :D

1. Tag (2018) I honestly.....just love that a group of real life friends that this movie was based off of (though the movie takes.....a lot of liberties) just wanted to stay connected to their best friends and just....come back together for a whole month of every year just to play the wildest fuckin game of tag ever. It’s a fun movie, it makes me laugh, and it also made me cry. it’s not like the best movie ever but it literally tugs at all of my emotional strings. it’s absurd, it’s hilarious. I Love Hannibal Buress cracks me the fuck up. also they smoke so much weed and i’m a stupid simple bitch who always thinks that shit is funny.

2. not quite a movie but The Comeback Kid (2015) comedy special from John Mulaney available on Netflix. It’s my first instinct to watch this whenever I’m not feeling very Happy

3. What A Girl Wants (2003) what the fuck 35% on rotten tomatoes??? probably deserves it but this is my favorite childhood movie. I watched this so many times. and it will make emotional all the time. also taught a good lesson of “you shouldn’t be someone else to make others happy. be you and fuck everybody who resents you for it”

4. Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2002) JDGSKJG TWENTY TWO PERCENT ON ROTTEN TOMATOES. DOES NOT DESERVE. THIS FUCKING MOVIE SHAPED ME. KJDSHGKJH GO WATCH IT IT IS SO FUNNY I FUCKING LOVE THIS SO MUCH

5. Tangled (2010) this movie came out on my birthday that year. my birthday is right before thanksgiving so not only did this movie just rock my socks off it was so good, it was like a birthday gift sent from god. catch me singing I Want Something I Want by Grace Potter at any and all hours of the day. also catch me loving Eugene Fitzpatrick until the day i fucking die. I related so much to Rapunzel. I was a sheltered kid and I was always trying to break away from that and follow the exploration of my identity, which my parents discouraged at the time. but now im a grown adult who can dye their hair any fucking color i want, get those tattoos, the nose piercing, realizing im Not Female By Any Means, that I Like Girls, and am a Total Weeb.

6. Moana (2016) THIS CAME ABOUT THE DAY BEFORE MY BIRTHDAY WOW I DIDNT EVEN KNOW. First of all, Lin Manuel Miranda wrote the original songs for it. He’s so fucking talented as a lyricist i love him. But the single from the movie How Far I’ll Go reaches into my fucking soul and then rips it out. Disney really spoke to my future adult self with this. As an adult I keep getting told my the adults around me that i have so much potential and that it’s in a place that I really Don’t Wanna Be (my hometown) but....I don’t wanna be here. I know my destiny isn’t here. And I keep looking out over the ocean of life and the experiences that she has to offer.....and I yearn just like Moana for the ocean. And in the end......I’m on my way to finding my own purpose and destiny than letting somebody tell me how and where to find it. I’m going to go out onto those open oceans life keeps calling to me from and I will Find Who I Am. I’m gonna cry.

7. Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse (2018) This.....this movie. Also speaks to me. I cry at the What’s Up Danger every. damn time. i just went to go look up that scene on youtube so i could link it here and i am now actually crying for realsies. that slap of his comic book issue at the end. FUCK. KJGDSHKJGHDSKJGK FUCK FUCK FUCK. that’s gonna be me one day guys. one day i’ll have the courage to make the leap of faith into the person i want to be and the things i want to do and the relationships i want to make and the influence i want to have and it’ll be like whisper of a moment “....like what’s up danger” where the city is upside down and he’s just free falling and then suddenly his mark of web hits and he’s flying into the future, making his mark and doing fucking fantastic fucking things. KGHDSKJGHKJSHGKJ i know i watched it like three weeks ago but i think i need to watch it again now.

I tag @madeinantiquity i actually don’t know what your comfort films are lol we do be tv show ppl doe

i got all deep and emotional in the end and I am NOT fucking sorry. take my emotions.

#I was tagged!!!

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writemarcus · 4 years

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Watch This Space: Playwrights Train for All Media

As dramatists begin to write for all media, the nation’s playwriting programs are starting to teach beyond the stage.

BY MARCUS SCOTT

In 2018, a record 495 original scripted series were released across cable, online, and broadcast platforms, according to a report by FX Networks. And with the growing popularity of streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon (not to mention new players like Disney and Apple), a whopping 146 more shows are up and running on various platforms now than were on air in 2013. So how does peak TV relate to theatre?

Once a way for financially strapped playwrights to land stable income and adequate health insurance, television has since emerged as a rewarding venue for ambitious dramatists looking to forge lifetime careers as working writers. Playwright Tanya Saracho is the current showrunner for “Vida” on Starz. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is the series developer of “Riverdale” and “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.” Sheila Callaghan is executive producer of the long-running black comedy “Shameless.” Sarah Treem, co-creator and showrunner of “The Affair,” recently concluded the Rashomon-esque psychological drama in November.

To satiate demand for more content, showrunners have sought to recruit emerging playwrights to fill their writers’ rooms. It’s now common practice for them to read plays or spec scripts penned prior to a writer’s graduation.

Many aspiring playwrights have caught on, enrolling in drama school intent on flirting with virtually every medium under the umbrella of the performing arts. Several institutions around the country have become gatekeepers for the hopeful—post-graduate MFA boot camps bestowing scribes with the Aristotelian wisdom of plot, character, thought, diction, and spectacle before they’re dropped into the school of hard knocks that is the modern American writers’ room. Indeed, since our culture has emerged from the chrysalis of peak TV, playwriting programs have begun training students for a career that includes not only the stage but multiple mediums, including the screen.

Playwright Zayd Dohrn, who has served as both chair of Northwestern University’s radio/TV/film department and director of the MFA in writing for screen and stage since 2016, said versatility is the strongest tool in the kit of the program’s students.

“We offer classes in playwriting, screenwriting and TV writing, as well as podcasts, video games, interactive media, stand-up, improv, and much more,” he explained. “There’s no one way to approach the craft, and we offer world-class faculty with diverse backgrounds, professional experiences, and perspectives, so students can be exposed to the full range of professional and artistic practice.”

Dominic Taylor, vice chair of graduate studies at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in California, also agrees that multiplicity is the key to the survival of a working writer. “In the industries today, whether one is breaking a story in a writers’ room or writing coverage as an assistant, the ability to recognize and manipulate structure is paramount,” Taylor said. “The primary skill, aside from honing excellent social skills, would be to continue to study the forms as they emerge. Read scripts and note differences and strengths of form to the individual’s skill set. For example, the multi-cam network comedy is very different from the single-cam comedy—‘The Conners’ versus ‘Modern Family,’ let’s say. It’s not just the technology; it is the pace of the comedy.”

Taylor, a distinguished multi-hyphenate theatre artist working on both coasts, said that schools like UCLA offer a lot more than classes, including one with Phyllis Nagy (screenwriter of Carol). UCLA’s program also partners with its film school, and hires professional directors to work with playwrights to develop graduate student plays for productions at UCLA’s one-act festival, ONES, or its New Play Festival. Taylor also teaches four separate classes on Black theatre, giving students the opportunity to study the likes of Alice Childress, Marita Bonner, and Angelina Weld Grimké in a university setting (a rarity outside of historically Black colleges and universities).

Dohrn, a prominent playwright who is currently developing a feature film for Netflix and has TV shows in development at Showtime, BBC America, and NBC/Universal, said that television, like theatre, needs people who can create interesting characters and tell compelling stories, who have singular, unique voices—all of which are emphasized in playwriting training.

“Playwrights are not just good at writing dialogue—they are world creators who bring a unique vision to the stories they tell,” Dohrn emphasized. “More than anything else, a writer needs to develop his/her/their unique voice. Craft can be taught, but talent and creativity are the most important thing for a young writer.”

For playwright David Henry Hwang, who joined the faculty at Columbia University School of the Arts as head of the playwriting MFA program in 2014, success should be a byproduct, not a destination. “As a playwright, I don’t believe it’s possible to ‘game’ the system—i.e., to try and figure out how to write something ‘successful,’” he said. “The finished play is your reward for taking that journey. The thing that makes you different, and uniquely you, is your superpower as a dramatist, because it is the key to writing the play only you can write. Ironically, by focusing not on success but on what you really care about, you are more likely to find success.”

Since arriving at Columbia, one of Hwang’s top priorities was to expand the range of TV writing classes. This led to the creation of separate TV sub-department “concentrations,” housed in both the theatre and film programs. All playwriting students are required to take some television classes.

“We are at a rather anomalous moment in playwriting history, where the ability to write plays is actually a monetizable skill,” said Hwang, whose TV credits include Treem’s “The Affair.” “Playwrights have become increasingly valuable to TV because it has traditionally been a dialogue-driven medium (though shows like ‘Game of Thrones’ push into more cinematic storytelling language), and playwrights are comfortable being in production (unlike screenwriters, some of whom never go to set). Once TV discovered playwrights, we became more valuable for feature films as well.”

Playwrights aren’t the only generative theatremakers moving to the screen. Masi Asare is an assistant professor at Northwestern’s School of Communication, which teaches music theatre history, music theatre writing and composition, and vocal performance. The award-winning composer-lyricist, who recently saw her one-act Mirror of Most Value: A Ms. Marvel Play published by Marvel/Samuel French, said that the world of musical theatre is not all that different either; it’s experiencing a resurgence in both cinema and the small screen: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, Justin Hurwitz, and Benj Pasek and Justin Paul have all written songs that were nominated for or won Oscars. The growth of YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter have offered new ways for musical theatre graduates to market and monetize their songs and build an audience.

“The feeling that a song has to ‘work’ behind a microphone in order to be a good song is really having an impact on young writers,” said Asare. “The song must sound and look good in this encapsulated video that will be posted on the songwriters’ website and circulated via social media.” She noted that in this case, the medium of video is also changing the medium of musical theatre itself. “Certainly it may lead to different kinds of musicals—who knows? New experimentation can be exciting, but I think there is a perception that all you have to have is a series of good video clips to be a songwriter for the musical theatre, a musical storyteller. I think that does something of a disservice to rising composers and lyricists.”

Some playwriting students, of course, are not interested in learning about how to write for television. But many who spoke for this story agreed that learning about the different ways of storytelling can be beneficial. One program in particular that has its eyes on the multiplicity of storytelling mediums is the Writing for Performance program at the California Institute of the Arts. Founded by playwright Suzan-Lori Parks in 2001 as a synergy of immersive environments, visual art installation, screenplay, and the traditional stage play, the program has helped students and visiting artists alike transcend theatrical conventions. Though Parks is no longer on the CalArts faculty, her spirit still infuses the program. As Amanda Shank, assistant dean of the CalArts School of Theater, puts it, “Every time she came to the page, there was a real fidelity to the impulse of what she was trying to communicate with the play, and the form followed that. It’s not her trying to write a ‘correct’ kind of play or to lay things bare in a certain prescribed way.”

That instinct is in the life fiber of CalArts’s Special Topics in Writing, a peer-to-peer incubator for the development of new projects that grants students from across various departments the opportunity to develop and produce writing-based projects. Shank defines the vaguely titled yearlong class, which she began, as a “hybrid of a writing workshop and a dramaturgical project development space.” A playwright and dramaturg, Shank said her class was born of her experience as an MFA candidate; she attended the program between 2010 and 2013, and then noticed her fellow students’ lack of ability to fully shepherd their projects.

“I was finding a lot of students that would have an idea, bring in a few pages or even bring in a full draft, but then they would kind of abandon it,” said Shank. “I wanted a space [that would] marry generative creativity, a place of accountability, but also a place that was working that muscle of really developing a project. Because I think often as artists we look to other institutions, other people to usher our work along. Yes, you need collaborators, yes, you need organizations of supporters—but you have to some degree know how to do those things yourself.”

Program alum Virginia Grise agrees. Grise has been a working artist since her play blu won the 2010 Yale Drama Series Award. She conceived her latest play, rasgos asiaticos, while still attending CalArts. Inspired by her Chicana-Chinese family, the play has evolved into a walk-around theatrical experience with some dialogue pressed into phonograph records that accompany her great uncle’s 1920s-era Chinese opera records. After developing the production over a period of years, with the help of CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP), Grise will premiere rasgos asiaticos in downtown Los Angeles in March 2020, boasting a predominantly female cast, a Black female director, and a design team entirely composed of women of color. Her multidisciplinary work is emblematic of the direction CalArts is hoping to steer the field, with training that is responsive to a growingly diverse body of students who may not want to create theatre in the Western European tradition.

“You cannot recruit students of color into a training program and continue to train actors, writers, and directors in the same way you have trained them prior to recruiting them,” said Grise. “I feel like training programs should look at the diversity of aesthetics, the diversity of storytelling—what are the different ways in which we make performance, and how is that indicative of who we are, and where we are coming from, and who we are speaking to?”

As an educator whose work deals with Asian American identity, including the play M. Butterfly and the high-concept musical Soft Power, Hwang said that one of his goals as an educator is to train a diverse body of students and teach them how to write from a perspective that is uniquely theirs.

“If we assume that people like to see themselves onstage, this requires a range of diverse bodies as well as diverse stories in our theatres,” Hwang said. “Institutions like Columbia have a huge responsibility to address this issue, since we are helping to produce artists of the future. Our program takes diversity as our first core value—not only in terms of aesthetics, but also by trying to cultivate artists and stories which encompass the fullest range of communities, nationalities, races, genders, sexualities, differences, and identities.”

The film business could use similar cultivation. In March 2019, the Think Tank for Inclusion and Equity (TTIE), a self-organized syndicate of working television writers, published “Behind the Scenes: The State of Inclusion and Equity in TV Writing,” a research-driven survey funded by the Pop Culture Collaborative. Data from that report observed hiring, writer advancement, workplace harassment, and bias among diverse writers, examining 282 working Hollywood writers who identify as women or nonbinary, LGBTQ, people of color, and/or people with disabilities, analyzing how they fare within the writers’ room. In positions that range from staff writer to executive story editor, a nearly two thirds majority of this surveyed group reported troubling instances of bias, discrimination, and/or harassment by members of their individual writing staff. Also, 58 percent of them said they experienced pushback when pitching a non-stereotypical diverse character or storyline; 58 percent later experienced micro-aggressions in-house. The biggest slap in the face: When it comes to in-house pitches, 53 percent of this group’s ideas were rejected, only to have white writers pitch exactly the same idea a few minutes later and get accepted. Other key findings from the report: 58 percent say their agents pitch them to shows by highlighting their “otherness,” and 15 percent reported they took a demotion just to get a staff job.

But there was more: 65 percent of people of color in the survey reported being the only one in their writers’ room, and 34 percent of the women and nonbinary writers reported being the only woman or nonbinary member of their writing staff; 38 percent of writers with disabilities reported being the only one, and 68 percent of LGBTQ writers reported being the only one.

For Dominic Taylor, the lack of diversity and inclusion in TV writers’ rooms can be fought in part by opening up the curriculum on college campuses, which he has expanded since joining the faculty at UCLA. “Students need a comprehensive education,” Taylor pointed out. He noted the importance of prospective playwrights being as familiar with Migdalia Cruz, Maria Irene Fornés, James Yoshimura, Julia Cho, and William Yellow Robe as they are with William Shakespeare, and looking at traditions as vast as the Gelede Festival, the Egungun Festival, Shang theatre of China, as well as the Passion Plays of Ancient Egypt.

“All of these modes of performance predate the Greek theatre, which is the starting point for much of theatre history,” explained Taylor. “It is part of my mandate as an educator to complete the education of my students. Inclusion is crucial to that education.”

After all, with the growing variety of platforms for story and expression, why shouldn’t there also be diversity of forms and voices? Whatever the medium of delivery, these are trends worth keeping an eye on.

Marcus Scott is a New York City-based playwright, musical writer, and journalist. He’s written for Elle, Essence, Out, and Playbill, among other publications.

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ryanmeft · 5 years

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Mary Poppins Returns Movie Review

Of all the words I thought I might end up using to describe the new Mary Poppins film, “cynical” was not one. Yet here we are. It is a very pretty thing, engaging the use of many very talented people, that nonetheless feels like it was assembled by a marketing department. What you do to get a movie like this is realize no one’s cashed in on a beloved property in quite some time, see dollar signs, snag some well-respected actors and a musician to give the thing the illusion you cared about it, then sit back and rely on the fact that you’re Disney and everyone is in goddamn love with you to avoid having it criticized. A quarry of sugar wouldn’t help here.

The plot barely needs mentioned. Michael (Ben Whishaw) and Jane (Emily Mortimer) Banks are all growed up, and Michael is having trouble making ends meet after the death of his unseen wife. He still lives in the same house, but has three children of his own, who with one exception feel they have had to grow up quickly in the absence of a mother. Michael very much needs to find proof he owns stock in the bank to prevent them foreclosing and wait just a damn minute here. Disney, we had this conversation, back when you decided to give the Mad Hatter depression: do not inject real-life problems into settings that depend entirely on being ridiculous to work. I do not care about the stocks, and neither does anyone else, especially when you utterly waste Colin Firth on the role of a villainous banker so entirely cliche he could have been lifted straight out of It’s a Wonderful Life. Then Mary Poppins shows up, played by Emily Blunt, and this is the point where the movie should finally wake up.

It does, for a bit, despite the insistence on saddling her with the most cliche plot device possible: Michael and Jane refuse to believe her childhood magic feats were real. I propose an instant punishable-with-lashings moratorium on this most tired of family film developments. But let me take a breath. The shoes of Poppins are switched from the feet of Julie Andrews to those of Emily Blunt, who is a more than satisfactory pick for the role. She wears an updated costume that is either meant to show off Blunt’s figure or does a good job of it entirely by coincidence, has a slightly sharper edge to her sarcasm and the hinted-at presence of such a human emotion as sadness, and in general has been upgraded just enough to capture the rapt attention of modern five-year-olds without sacrificing a bit of the old-school charm that has made the character a classic. She is just a little flirtatious, just a little prideful, and still as inexplicable; my personal theory is she’s some kind of pagan god, but that just opens up a wormhole we probably don’t need.

Speaking of entrances, she insists this time she will not go until “the door is open”. It’s an effective bit of mystery that occasionally hints at more plot than the movie needs, but is resolved in a sweet and touching way. She has the movie’s one truly attention-grabbing musical number, “A Cover is Not The Book”, in which all those strange feelings young you (admit it) had about the character as you approached teenagerdom are made as explicit as a family film can make them. It includes a verse about a tree and its roots that is so obvious to any adults in the audience I’m frankly shocked it made it past the censoring. It’s a raucous, Moulin Rouge-style number in which Poppins-Blunt dons a sensational purple outfit, lets down her practically perfect hair and goes full vaudeville, and the one point in the entire film where it effectively stamps out a distinct identity from the original (the animation it is accompanied by is delightfully throwbackish). Blunt was just about sculpted for this role in every way.

Indeed, perhaps in too many ways, because in nearly every scene where Poppins is not the center of attention, the film rolls over and dies. The original movie is well-known as one of Disney’s best musicals, leaving this one a lot to live up to. A wonderfully unreal song set in the ocean finds the right tone, with the perfect sort of unreality to the special effects that we’ve come to lose appreciation for in the age of computers, but sadly these are the only two memorable numbers. The rest, which include a soporific thing about London’s gas lights and a blatant-but-unsuccessful shot at recapturing that wonderful chimney sweeping routine, were in desperate need of the masterful touch of Lin-Manuel Miranda. The Hamilton mega-star is for some reason in the movie as a somewhat effective replacement for Dick Van Dyke’s Cockney working man, but didn’t get so much as a verse on the soundtrack. That��s incredibly puzzling, given Hamilton was such a sensation it actually got me into a non-movie theatre, and his work on Moana made it the only modern Disney musical with a soundtrack entirely worth having. I don’t see a lot of (read: any) Broadway, so I can’t say if Marc Shaiman and/or Scott Wittman are otherwise worthy as composers and lyricists.

I can say I’m thankful most of their numbers are merely forgettable, because then there’s the tragic case of “Turning Turtle”. This is clearly meant to fill the same hole as “I Love to Laugh”, but fails utterly, with a cringe-inducing cameo from Meryl Streep, doing a horrific Russian caricature that brings any momentum the movie had built to a thunderous halt. It’s a mystery why it, and Streep, are in the movie, especially considering Disney can’t appear to stop paying her despite her arrogant and unfounded rant a few years ago about their founder. That would be fine if she were doing good work, but even the Academy would have to stretch to justify nominating her for this, and that is saying something. Not-so-special appearances from Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury are equally groan-inducing, forced into the film in order to get bonus credit from long-time fans rather than because they actually work. In one respect and one respect only is the film a total success, and that’s visually. Depression-era London (it’s the Great Slump to them) is handled gorgeously, like a fine China vase with almost nothing in it.

The rest of the film, somewhere between unbearably dull and oh-so-brief flashes of brilliance, is a muddled stew of homage, preferring to wink and nod at the audience when a beloved scene is given tribute or an old character is seen (portrayed by a new actor); rather than invent a new ride for us to go on, it is content with slapping different branding on the old one. Most of the film isn’t outright offensive, just horribly dull, and if your standards are somewhere around “anything will do as long as the kids sit still for a few hours”, this is your movie. The trouble with holding onto the past is that, even if you do it well most of the time, the slightest misstep can capsize you. In a time when the Paddington movies have claimed the Mary Poppins magic for themselves, this is a relic already.

The ultimate question concerning this sequel, directed possibly under duress by Chicago helmsman Rob Marshall and written by David Magee (Finding Neverland, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day), is why? Why, if it is neither going to take the property anywhere new nor effectively pay homage to the original, does it need to exist? The obvious answer is money, which it is sure to have thrown at it in oceans. If you want a movie that’s worth the increasingly asinine price for a ticket, though, this, as Mary would say, will not do. No, it will not do at all.

Verdict: Not Recommended (1 and 1/2 out of 4 Stars)

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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newyorktheater · 6 years

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The Broadway composer Richard Rodgers found four things invariably gratifying: “eating, a warm bath, making love and having a successful show.”

But how gratifying is it to read about successful shows – or the people who’ve created them?

That’s the question that lingers over two recently published Broadway biographies — Something Wonderful: Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway Revolution (Henry Holt, 2018, 386 pages) by Todd S. Purdum and Renaissance Man: The Lin-Manuel Miranda Story An Unauthorized Biography (Riverdale Avenue Books, 2018, 184 pages) by Marc Shapiro Both are about people who created Broadway musicals that became cultural phenomena. But they differ so radically in quality it’s almost an offense to consider them together.

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein

South Pacific, 1949. Ezio Pinza an Mary Martin

Carousel (1945 – 1947 Broadway) Music by Richard Rodgers; Book and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II Directed by Rouben Mamoulian Shown from left: Jan Clayton, John Raitt

The King and I 1951. Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner.

Oklahoma! (1955) Directed by Fred Zinnemann Shown from left: Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Charlotte Greenwood

Sound of Music (1959-1963, Broadway) Music by Richard Rogers, Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, Book by Howard Lindsay & Russel Crouse Directed by Vincent J. Donehue Shown from left: (top) Mary Martin, Joseph Stewart, Kathy Dunn, William Snowden, Lauri Peters; (front) Marilyn Rogers, Evanna Lien, Mary Susan Locke

from left to right: Richard Rodgers, Dorothy Hammerstein, Dorothy Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein. Both their wives were named Dorothy, and both were interior decorators.

Composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist/librettist Oscar Hammerstein II together wrote some half dozen musicals between 1943 and 1959 that were the most popular Broadway shows of their time. The songs from these musicals remain among the most beloved and familiar of any that have ever been sung on Broadway. Todd Purdum, a former White House correspondent for the New York Times and current writer for Politico, devotes a chapter to each of these shows – Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, The Sound of Music. We learn where the ideas came from; how Hammerstein figured out the right lyrics (Rodgers’ process was more mysterious and often instantaneous), how the initial productions came together, how the public and the critics reacted. But the author spends almost as much time on some of the movie adaptations of these hits, and on the Rodgers and Hammerstein shows that weren’t hits – Allegro, Me and Juliet, Pipe Dream, Flower Drum Song. And the first two of the book’s 11 chapters are taken up with the individual careers of the two men before they started collaborating with each other. Both had successful partnerships with other theater artists – Oscar Hammerstein with composer Jerome Kern, most notably on Show Boat; Rodgers with lyricist Larry Hart, whose 28 stage musicals together included Pal Joey and On Your Toes. And then there are the shows Purdum writes about that Rodgers and Hammerstein produced but didn’t write, most notably “Annie Get Your Gun,” which they lured Irving Berlin into scoring. And the author also goes into some depth about the projects that each man undertook separately in-between their collaborations, such as “Carmen Jones,” Hammerstein’s adaptation of Bizet’s opera “Carmen” transposed to the American South with an all African-American cast. (A revival of ‘Carmen Jones” is opening this month at the Classic Stage Company) All of this information is well researched and competently written. There are plenty of memorable tidbits. The night after “Oklahoma!” opened, we’re told, the house sold out for the next four years. During “The Sound of Music,” lead actress and investor Mary Martin had befriended a theater-loving nun, who became an advisor on the show. Among Sister Gregory’s advice: “ Please don’t have the nuns giggle. Chuckle, laugh— and even explode with laughter, but not giggle.” Yet after a while, with so much covered in its 320 pages of text, “Something Wonderful” (the title is taken from a song in “The King and I”) feels more like “Many Wonderful Things,” and occasionally even “Too Many Wonderful Things.” One begins to wonder: What’s the point of this book? And also: Why now? Rodgers died in 1979, Hammerstein in 1960. (There’s an entire chapter on what Rodgers did in the years after Hammerstein died; and more details about each of their end-of-life illnesses than I was eager to learn.) Certainly I can be excused for assuming that the book would take advantage of the passage of time to offer fresh critical perspectives. But any critical evaluations are perfunctory – largely brief excerpts from contemporary reviews. The author does offer a line or two of analysis here and there: “If Oklahoma! had satisfied wartime America’s longing for a simpler time and Carousel had tapped into the returning servicemen’s familiarity with death, South Pacific offered a dramatization of a conflict that was still visceral for millions.” But that doesn’t explain why the shows are still popular. A brief section in the Epilogue makes the current case for Rodgers and Hammerstein shows as if they’re under attack, but, again, by briefly quoting critics. Instead of critical insights, Purdum opts for a compact historical overview of two impossibly fruitful careers. We learn that during his lifetime Rodgers had written the music for some 900 songs, and Hammerstein had written the lyrics for 1,589. (The 1,589th was Edelweiss from The Sound of Music. By the end of “Something Wonderful” I can’t claim to have gotten a firm handle on either theater artist – not what made them great, nor even a vivid sense of what they were like as individuals. It is hard to blame the author for this. Mary Rodgers, Richard’s daughter and an accomplished composer in her own right, is quoted as saying: “I don’t think anybody ever knew who he really was, with the possible exception of one of the five psychiatrists he went to.” Stephen Sondheim (Hammerstein’s protégée and Rodgers one-time, unhappy collaborator) is reduced to a kind of unhelpful Zen description of the two: Hammerstein as a man of limited talent but infinite soul, and Rodgers as a man of infinite talent but limited soul. Still, “Something Wonderful” is a reasonably good read about two theater artists whose work remains familiar and beloved 75 years after they first started collaborating.

“The Sound of Music” was one of the many original Broadway cast albums lying around in the Miranda household when Lin-Manuel was growing up in Inwood, we learn in “Renaissance Man: The Lin-Manuel Miranda Story.” Hunter College Elementary School put on Oklahoma when Miranda was in the fourth grade. His senior thesis at Wesleyan was an analysis of the lyrics of Alan Lerner, Stephen Sondheim…and Oscar Hammerstein. So, yes, Rodgers and Hammerstein were among Lin-Manuel’s many influences in an eclectic cultural upbringing that featured, among many other things – as Renaissance Man reminds us — his parents’ many original cast albums, a school bus driver who loved rap, early exposure to Disney animated films, a household full of Puerto Rican culture, schooling that emphasized the arts, especially theater. “Renaissance Man” by Marc Shapiro (who specializes in “unauthorized” celebrity biographies) is a cut-and-paste job, splicing together facts and quotes gathered from newspaper articles and blog posts and podcasts and speeches. This alone wouldn’t necessarily be reason to condemn it. As with “Something Wonderful,” there should be some appeal in revisiting Lin-Manuel Miranda’s extraordinary story, even though it is by this point so thoroughly familiar – how he created “In The Heights” starting when he was a sophomore at Wesleyan; followed by the six year journey to create “Hamilton.” We can even appreciate being reminded of some of Miranda’s other activities as writer and rapper and actor – his improvisational rap group Freestyle Love Supreme, his work on other Broadway shows (co-composing Bring It On The Musical; writing the Spanish translations for a West Side Story revival) the his songwriting for the animated Disney film Moana and a Star Wars movie; his appearance as himself in Fatwa: The Musical in Curb Your Enthusiasm, his forthcoming role in the movie Mary Poppins Returns All of this is mentioned in “Renaissance Man: The Lin-Manuel Miranda Story,” but we don’t wind up caring. The book could hardly be a worse read. It’s poorly written, cliché-ridden, and so full of typos and obvious errors that one wonders what else the author got wrong. (It’s the Outer Critics Circle Awards, not The Outer City Circle Awards. It’s the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Miranda’s friend Chris Hayes is sometimes spelled Chris Harris; Hamilton performer Daveed Diggs is sometimes referred to as David.) Marc Shapiro uses the word “literal” or “literally” incorrectly so many times (“Miranda was a literal babe in the woods”…”Miranda was literally over the moon…”) that I stopped counting. There is no intelligent or even cogent insight into Miranda or his shows, and virtually no original reporting. The only apparent interview the author conducted was with one Irv Steinfink, Miranda’s 11th grade Social Studies teacher, said he assigned him to do a report on the Hamilton-Burr duel “It was a good paper. He got an A on it. As I think about it now, it may have actually been an A plus.” There are so many hilariously awkward sentences and extended forays into incoherence that I briefly wondered whether Renaissance Man was secretly a spoof. Here is a typical paragraph, which purports to explain the reason for the book: “That Lin-Manuel Miranda has emerged as the pop composer/literal renaissance man of his time was the logical reason to profile his life. Hamilton is on everybody’s lips and so, in the immortal words of the publishing bard, strike while the iron is hot became the order of the day. But it soon became something a bit more than cashing in on the latest big thing.” Actually, “Renaissance Man: The Lin-Manuel Story” is never anything more than an attempt to cash in on the latest big thing.

New Broadway Biographies: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Rodgers and Hammerstein The Broadway composer Richard Rodgers found four things invariably gratifying: “eating, a warm bath, making love and having a successful show.”

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lilyrhetoricblog · 3 years

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Roman Theory of Style and Lin Manuel Miranda’s 2016 Tony Acceptance Sonnet

Roman rhetors adapted Greek rhetorical traditions and added their own changes. Cicero and others lead the Romans to center their rhetoric on decorum, to use certain major figures of speech, and to pursue the sublime.

Even and especially now, public speakers (and writers) use figures of speech “for the same reasons Roman orators did - to help meet or create audience expectations when fashioning a speech” (Smith 125).

The 70th Tony Awards took place on June 12, 2016. Hosted by James Corden, the event occurred in the shadow of the Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting that had occurred in the early hours of that same morning. Many attendees showed solidarity with victims of the tragedy by wearing silver ribbons, speaking out their sympathy and commitment to restoration in their speeches, or even altering their performances to reflect their acknowledgement of the tragedy.

That night, Hamilton won 11 Tony awards. Lin-Manuel Miranda, the brilliantly talented lyricist, composer, and author, accepted many of these awards. When Carole King announced him as winner for Best Original Score, Miranda declined to follow his tradition of freestyle rapping his acceptance speech, stating he was “too old.” Instead, he read a sonnet he had written that day.

My wife’s the reason anything gets done She nudges me towards promise by degrees She is a perfect symphony of one Our son is her most beautiful reprise. We chase the melodies that seem to find us Until they’re finished songs and start to play When senseless acts of tragedy remind us That nothing here is promised, not one day. This show is proof that history remembers We lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger; We rise and fall in light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside. I sing Vanessa’s symphony, Eliza tells her story Now fill the world with music, love and pride.

This sonnet and his delivery were stunning examples of several of the major figures of speech espoused by Cicero and others. With respect to the figure of triplets, where one shapes their lists based on the number three so important to Western civilization, I choose to analyze how his sonnet reflects three of the figures outlined in Smith: aposiopesis, paromologia, and epanaphora.

Please watch this video to help you understand some points I’m going to make: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jehrbUGdlE

Aposiopesis is “a figure of speech whereby speakers are so moved by their own words that they break off speaking for [a] moment” (Smith 129). While saying that “love is love cannot be killed or swept aside,” Lin-Manuel chokes up, but powers through (around 2:30 in the video). His display of emotion adds powerful emotion weight to his words; viewers can have intensified sympathy for his sorrow, and will believe him when he says we can still move forward and have hope.

Paromologia is “a tactic in debate where a speaker concedes minor points to solidify his or her position on major points” (Smith 131). Lin-Manuel’s main objective, in my interpretation, was to grieve the loss but also to encourage people that there was reason to have hope. In the lines “When senseless acts of tragedy remind us “ and “We lived through times when hate and fear seemed stronger; / We rise and fall in light from dying embers...” he acknowledges that there are some very negative things about the current situation. In yielding this acknowledgment, he seems more believable when he says we should have hope.

Ephanaphora is “a figure of speech that uses repetition for emphasis” (Smith 129). Lin-Manuel repeats his simple statement - love is love - again and again and again. The effect is strong - the audience begins to cheer, and we are lifted on the power of those repetitions to believe his last statements: love is love cannot be killed or swept aside, and we can fill the world with music, love, and pride.

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s use of these figures of speech made his sonnet a beautiful and powerful tribute to the lives lost and encouragement to those who remain.

#lin-m #rhetoric #tonyaward #2016 #orlando #loveislove

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the-habitual-wordsmith · 6 years

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“I’m no good at this kinda stuff...”

T.J. Love is a poet, spoken word artist and published author. Originally hailing from Brooklyn, New York, he has literally lived all over the place, to the point where he doesn’t want to pinpoint a current location because he might have to edit it about twelve times over the next six months. He is the author of “Speaking In Tongues: Love In Five Languages”, a book of poetry distributed by black publishing company Vital Narrative Press. He has performed all over the country, but not in really awesome places like Nuyorican and the Bowery, though he’s been near those places. Some of his favorite spaces include the Urban Juke Joint in NYC (R.I.P.), The Firehouse Gallery and Cultiv8n Culture at Café Touba and that Cheba Hut in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. He has recorded eight spoken word albums and has a body of work that dates back well over a decade. He has been featured in zines like Flexwriters Café and has had the utmost pleasure of interviewing the incredible Nikky Finney for a radio broadcast in Louisville, Kentucky. Poets like Finney, Ainsley Burrows and Saul Williams, Broadway lyricists like Jonathan Larson and Lin-Manuel Miranda, as well as rappers like Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar all contribute their skills, intellect, abilities and talent as inspirational assets to T.J., and whether they know it or not, (they don’t….Nikky did but she’s since forgotten who he is) he is incredibly awestruck by them and forever in their debts. Love continues to write about love, loss, introspection, politics, being black in America and the social climate changes that incurs, and will be releasing more books under the Vital Narrative banner as long as God allows breath in his lungs and angst in his fingers. He clearly enjoys talking about himself in the first person and it’s not embarrassing, awkward or pretentious to him at all.

#bio #blogs #private #disregard #nothing to see here

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septembersghost · 2 years

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I posted 8,061 times in 2021

792 posts created (10%)

7269 posts reblogged (90%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 9.2 posts.

I added 16,859 tags in 2021

#q - 6005 posts

#supernatural - 2764 posts

#dean winchester - 2117 posts

#taylor swift - 1174 posts

#my sun and stars - 1045 posts

Longest Tag: 143 characters

#and there's the 'unironically blogging about supernatural in 2021' except i've been unironically posting about supernatural since 2005 😂🤦🏻‍��

My Top Posts in 2021

do you ever think about how one of the most beautiful and acclaimed of the disney canon of love songs includes: bittersweet and strange, finding you can change, learning you were wrong? it's an outside point of view, so instead of it being declarative between the characters, it's descriptive of the connection blossoming between them, and noting that it's making them both more genuine and tender and more themselves, and you can be mistaken about something and find goodness IN THAT realization. it's not judging those flaws, it's seeing that they can be rectified and that compassion makes a difference.

472 notes • Posted 2021-09-03 06:23:10 GMT

580 notes • Posted 2021-11-28 02:17:26 GMT

the abundance of love that has happened today for this one fictional man has me feeling some type of way about stories and salvation and where we find humanity, and there’s a half-formed thought in my mind (it is potentially blasphemous but I’m not religious, so give me my sin again) -

there’s an aspect of divinity in Dean, something many of us have chased and tried to define, and that aspect of the other, the celestial, being wrapped in an emblem of humanity, someone so fiercely made of love, so openly flawed but never defined by those fractures, someone pieced back together in beauty and strength, enigmatic and fundamentally himself, we are clinging to it in a way that is spiritual. in a way that has ritual. we are celebrating his birth as if it happened, as if he was brought into our world, walked under our sun. as if there was a guiding star to follow that would lead us to him, or to the paths he created, and perhaps we can find some clarity there. we’ve taken the story and reclaimed it and envisioned it and sanctified it.

and death did not destroy it - death galvanized it. he’s more alive than he was before. we’ve collectively wrapped our hearts around him and said there’s something in him we believe in. vulnerability. courage. the anger, the tenderness. the kaleidoscope of shadow and light and vibrant color. the vivacity and hope and joy at life, not letting the moments of terror and sorrow steal that spirit away.

it is not an ordinary experience with in fiction. it’s something else. we’ve taken up a mantle that says we will keep him safe, prove he’s loved, show his value. we’ll believe for him. it’s not even that it’s merely transformative. it very nearly is something holy. the righteous man and sacred heart. we’re taking him and making our own miracles.

609 notes • Posted 2021-01-25 02:47:01 GMT

889 notes • Posted 2021-09-11 15:38:34 GMT

imagine telling 2012 taylor, who was sad and struggling and felt she had to censor herself from saying or sharing certain things, that in 2021 she'd promote red with an over-the-top satirical video where she flipped everyone off

love this arc for her

997 notes • Posted 2021-11-15 17:10:09 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#tumblr year in review #about me #the q tag is SO BORING and takes up a spot how dare #but what did i tell you all about not needing the information regarding the top two subjects sdkjlgfjsd #tags 6-10 were also all embarrassingly spn centric so i ~removed~ them #the one post i have on here with over 1K notes is from 2020 but i'm actually touched and bemused by the posts that showed up #all of my edits FLOP wbk which is why i've sort of quit making them #but the sondheim post getting notes. i'm moved by that particularly.#and the one from dean's birthday which remains true #AND JENNIFER'S UNHINGED QUOTE BLESS HER <3 #that one choice of ALL the red tv posts i wrote going around is something else #i've written so many things far more expansive or creative or perhaps personal but yeah these are a very good snapshot of my little heart #of the flowers blooming in my little ramshackle garden #and i really love that all five posts are on different subjects but each topic is DEEPLY cherished and a part of me! that's quite beautiful #16859 tags!!! is because i tag EVERYTHING but also because i talk constantly in my tags like! this! ^^^ <333 #long post

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pancaspe · 7 years

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You’re 27. Here Are Millions to Stage Your Musical.

The New York Times, Feb. 18, 2007

IT was late and cold, and outside the nightclub Pacha in far west Midtown a boyish-looking man in a suit and sneakers was walking up to the front doors. Inside, the club was crowded: an eight-piece Latin band was playing, people were dancing and drinking tequila cocktails; it was, as little as the scene may have looked it, an opening-night party for a new Off Broadway musical.

The young man approached the large bouncers out front. “Let me in,” he said, laughing like an under-age teenager who knew he’d get away with it. “I’m the guy who wrote the play.”

Lin-Manuel Miranda was in a good mood, and for good reason. In the Heights, a Latin and hip-hop musical set in a block or two of the Latino neighborhood of Washington Heights, had just opened, after seven years of work, in a $2.5 million Off Broadway production.

The reviews were trickling in, and they ranged from mostly warm (Charles Isherwood in The New York Times called the musical “light and sweet”) to mostly glowing (“bursts with a vitality and freshness” said the New York Post reviewer).

A good night for the creative team, most of whom are at least a decade younger than the average Broadway theatergoer: Mr. Miranda, the conceiver, composer, lyricist and star just turned 27; Quiara Alegría Hudes, who wrote the book, is 29; and Thomas Kail, the director, just turned 30. To see people so young involved with a big project like this could be sweet tonic for those inclined to fret about the Future of the American Musical, which explains the buzz that has followed this production for years.

But all this youth could also prompt a not-preposterous question: How did they get to be at the helm of a $2.5 million commercial production in the first place?

While it may seem that Mr. Miranda brought hip-hop and Latin-flavored sounds to the traditional musical, he was actually a Broadway baby first. His father, a community organizer turned major league political consultant, and his mother, a psychologist — both from Puerto Rico — introduced him early on to Man of La Mancha and The Unsinkable Molly Brown. By the time he graduated from the elite Hunter College High School, Mr. Miranda had acted in a string of school shows, directed a production of West Side Story and written several musicals (including a few “very Les Miz-ish” numbers for a musical adaptation of Chaim Potok’s Chosen).

So he has musical bona fides. What about the experience of growing up in Washington Heights? “Most of my friends were white and Jewish,” said Mr. Miranda, a profoundly affable young man who constantly shifts between energized and self-deprecating. As for the local Latino teenagers, “I was pretty isolated from them.”

With few friends in the neighborhood where he lived, weekends meant a lot of watching television, listening to music and making home-made movies. “I was really a self-entertained kid,” he said.

But later, like countless college students before him, Mr. Miranda discovered where he was from once he had left. At Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Conn., he moved into the Latino student house; one summer in college he got a job covering Washington Heights for Manhattan Times, which became a kind of seminar course on the neighborhood and its residents.

When he decided to write a musical for a theater on campus, he drew on the boleros and traditional Latin sounds he had mostly ignored growing up, and the wordplay of lyrically dexterous rap groups like the Pharcyde and Black Sheep he listened to in high school. The early version of In the Heights was a campus hit his sophomore year.

At first the show centered on a love triangle. Two characters — Nina, a Heights resident who becomes something of an outsider when she leaves for a prestigious university, and Benny, an outsider because he is not Latino — are still part of the show. Another — Lincoln, Nina’s closeted brother, who has a crush on Benny — would be gradually phased out.

The focus on outsiders, people who are in the neighborhood but are not exactly of the neighborhood, was no coincidence given Mr. Miranda’s experience, which also goes some way toward explaining the neighborhood’s rose-tinted portrait. But the genre tends to be filled with those kind of characters anyway.

“It was an amalgam of every musical I’d ever seen,” Mr. Miranda said, citing Rent, West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof in particular.

Mr. Kail, who had graduated from Wesleyan ahead of Mr. Miranda, was given a recording of Heights by fellow alumni with whom he had started a theater company, Back House Productions, in the basement of the Drama Bookshop on West 40th Street in Manhattan. They staged a few workshops, and the buzz grew among the abidingly older and whiter Broadway crowd: A new musical. By a young guy. A Latino guy. And it’s got rap, but rap that appeals to people who normally don’t like rap.

The show might well have languished for years in readings. It could have been picked up for a musical festival. An interested producer could have taken it to a nonprofit. An especially confident producer could have brought in a new, more experienced team to rework it, and presented the show commercially.

But none of that happened. Jill Furman was the first producer to express serious interest; she was followed by Kevin McCollum and Jeffrey Seller, the power hitters whose specialty is finding left-field hits like Rent and Avenue Q.

Mr. Kail stayed onboard. When it became clear that Mr. Miranda, in addition to conceiving, composing, writing lyrics and acting, could not also tackle the book — which everyone agreed needed the most work — Ms. Furman found Ms. Hudes, who, like Mr. Miranda, grew up in a mostly Latino neighborhood (in Philadelphia) and went to a prestigious northeastern university (Yale). She was also, at the time, 25 years old.

Workshops were held at the Manhattan Theater Club, followed by a stint at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Conn., and another semi-staged workshop in New York. But there was no question where the show this was headed.

As the play was being reworked, the producers talked to nonprofit theaters around town in search of a stage big enough to contain a neighborhood. Well, as luck would have it, Mr. McCollum and Mr. Seller are part owners of a young Off Broadway theater, 37 Arts, at 37th Street near 10th Avenue, which had been longing for a show that could draw audiences that far west.

Running a show commercially costs money, but the producers said that if they had put on the show in a nonprofit theater, they would have contributed about $1.5 million — and would have lost control.

“There was so much enthusiasm for the talent involved with this show,” Mr. Seller said, “that spending $1.5 million to do it at a resident theater company versus spending $2.5 million to do it Off Broadway became a wash for us.”

Mr. Kail said that while many Off Broadway shows are scrambling to cut as many characters as possible to save on costs, the producers of Heights hired five more people. The cast has now swelled to 22.

So this is how a 27-year-old more-or-less-untried songwriter and actor ended up at the front of a large, multimillion-dollar production which seems, if not Broadway bound, at least Broadway oriented.

The Seller-McCollum approach — finding already-conceptualized projects, usually in the hands of novices, and getting them onstage — does carry risks for the producers. The last venture they helped produce, the $10 million musical High Fidelity, was loaded with young talent. It closed on Broadway in December within two weeks of opening, one of the high-profile disasters of this season.

But does the approach carry a comparable risk for a young artist? Mr. Seller offers an emphatic no.

“So many young musical theater writers, directors and choreographers are not getting the chance to learn their craft, because no one’s giving them the tools to do a show,” he said. “If they fail, they will learn from it and go on to their next project, and if they succeed, well, they will learn from it and go on to their next project.”

Mr. Miranda of course said he had only been thinking as far as opening night. But after working for seven years on a show that encompasses much of his life, does he worry about a follow-up?

“I have tons of ideas,” he said. “Literally if have a file on my computer which I call Post-“Heights.” It’s growing. But, yeah, I know that a good deal of childhood and my young adulthood is in this show. And so yeah, it’s um, it’s um —” He paused, uncharacteristically. “That’s a great question.”

#lin manuel miranda #In The Heights #off broadway #opening night #in the heights 2007

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