American musical theater is currently enjoying an intense resurgence in popularity, with plenty of thanks going to Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose current show Hamilton is a Broadway hit and has gained fans worldwide. But what is so special about Hamilton that the cast album has sold more than any musical in nearly a generation?
Part of the explanation can be found in Miranda’s first Broadway musical, In the Heights, according to Michael Jenkinson, who is directing the Pacific Conservatory Theatre (PCPA) production of the play set to premiere Aug. 11 at the Marian Theatre.
“It’s a story that has a lot of heart; it’s about people that have hopes and dreams and desires, so I think immediately we can all connect with that,” he said. “There’s so many reasons why it’s important, but I think the thing that is most exciting to me is the current energy of the piece—it’s something I enjoy listening to in my car.”
It’s the music that speaks the loudest. Both In the Heights and Hamilton are lauded for a combination of musical theater and hip-hop, infusing dramatic storytelling with the dense rhythmic rhyme of rap.
George Walker, who plays the lead character Usnavi (played by Miranda on Broadway), remarked on the crucial role that poetry plays in adding to the drama of the story, as well as the tongue twisting challenge it entails.
“There’s a lot of words, but luckily like Shakespeare and the way Shakespeare rhymes, it’s actually easier than you think,” Walker said. “The rhymes really help you understand what the thoughts are. When you go through the verses, there are all these interior rhymes going on, and then all of the sudden when the internal conflict happens, the meter changes and gets very complicated, just like in Shakespeare.
“But the difference is, in Shakespeare you get the moment to pause and protect yourself,” he continued. “In this, when the emotional conflict goes up, it gets very complicated and you have to drive, and you have to work to fight and protect yourself as you’re falling apart.”
But instead of waxing poetic on whether “To be, or not to be,” the characters from In the Heights have their feet planted firmly on the pavement. The story takes place in Washington Heights, N.Y., where immigrants and sons and daughters of immigrants struggle to make rent, put food on the table, and keep the lights on.
The play is about real life and real people. Using rap—the prevailing form of popular music today—to tell their story is hardly different from what musical theater composers of the past did. Take what you loved from the past, mix in what you love about the present, and you’ve forged the future.
“This play is bridging gaps between generations,” Walker said. “When you think about the hip-hop narrative, it’s making something from nothing to pass on knowledge, just like the theater. And once you accept hip-hop as a real art form, you’re able to blend the two.”
The play also depicts people who are struggling to find their identity while living jammed in close proximity with cultures from around the world.
The choreographer for PCPA’s production is Matt Williams, who graduated from PCPA in the ’90s, and came to be a part of the production from Washington Heights, N.Y., where he lives. Williams has used his experience living there to help color his choreography for the show and inform the characters’ identities by infusing their movements with specific flair.
“I connected the Bomba style of dance to Puerto Rico,” Williams said. “I connected the Cueca to a Chilean line, and I connected Bachata to the Dominicans.”
The music itself plays a crucial part in illustrating the cultures of the characters as well, explained Jenkinson. He added that the collaboration between himself as the director, Williams as the choreographer, and Matthew R. Meckes as the musical director was paramount in authentically realizing the characters of In the Heights.
“I think musical directors sometimes get lost in the mix because we just show up and think it sounds pretty,” Jenkinson said. “It takes a village to create a piece, and that third voice, that musical director voice, is so dominant.”
But the collaboration is present at every level it seems, and so is the personal touch in a production such as In the Heights. Several members of the hired cast have performed their parts before, explained Jenkinson, and they do have a sense of ownership over the characters.
That collaboration may come up in discussions over any aspect of a character, but one especially near to the actors’ hearts is the costume. Whether what they wear or how they wear it, the actors own the character down to their skin, Jenkinson explained.
“When we’re playing contemporary characters, and especially in this piece, these are people who you might see walking down the street,” he explained. “You will recognize these people in the play who choose a certain thing to wear because that’s who they are. Having lived in New York, I mean, New Yorkers look cool, all the time.”
Actors are always trying to embody their characters in an authentic way, pulling in as much of their own life experience to flesh out the fictional people. Characters like Usnavi, or the hairdresser Vanessa, or the break-dancing Graffiti Pete very well could be found in your neighborhood, so embodying these characters becomes intensely personal for performers.
Walker, who has played characters like the magical chimney sweep Bert from Mary Poppins or the Pirate King in the Pirates of Penzance, told the Sun that he “strongly identifies” with Usnavi, the lead character, whose parents brought him to New York from the Dominican Republic when he was a baby.
“My mom is an immigrant from the Philippines, and I was born in the Philippines, and was brought over here from a very poor background,” he said. “Half of me sort of being first generational, but really I am an immigrant, so my children will be first generational, so finding out what my identity is in America is a very real thing for me.”
The influence of hip-hop and rap is also something close to Walker’s heart, he said. He was a young child living in Oxnard when he saw a group of guys break dancing on some cardboard laid out on the cement just below the window of the condo where he lived. The older kids taught him how to move to the rhythmic sounds of hip-hop, and Walker credits that as an early influence on his artistic path.
And as someone who grew up with rap and hip-hop, watching it change over the decades, Walker can hear the various styles and influences woven throughout his character’s verses from In the Heights.
“A lot of the raps I have are very late ’80s or early ’90s, but then there are a lot of moments where my emotional conflict gets heightened and it starts to edge toward Eminem and Cypress Hill,” Walker said. “But later on Usnavi’s younger cousin starts to pick up right where I left off, and then he starts to go really modern, and sounds like Wu Tang.”
Jenkinson, Williams, and Walker are all PCPA alumni who returned to work there. Both Walker and Jenkinson are resident artists, whereas Williams has returned to choreograph In the Heights. All three said that the feeling of home—especially induced by their formative years there—at PCPA has inspired them to inject as much heart as possible into the show. Because they feel truly at home there, they feel comfortable enough to lay bare the raw emotion of people struggling to find themselves and make a home where they are.
PCPA’s Artistic Director Mark Booher, who sets out to put together the best possible season each year, said that Miranda’s fame is well earned with Hamilton, but In the Heights is what put the young composer and writer on his radar initially.
Booher saw In the Heights in 2007 just before it hit Broadway, and immediately fell in love with it. He said he couldn’t wait to bring the show to Santa Maria. Though the play reflects a multicultural community on the other side of the continent, Booher couldn’t help but think of home and the people on the Central Coast.
“Particularly in our beautifully diverse community, I’ve just increasingly been feeling the conviction to make sure that when we’re holding the mirror up to nature, … that it’s not that antique, whitewashed mirror,” he said. “But a really vibrant, colorful, kind of quintessentially American mirror by virtue of its diversity and modernity.
“That’s what I think is cool, is people are coming back to musical theater, not because they’re sitting in some lecture hall and someone is telling them they ought to like it, but because it speaks to them, it resonates into their lives,” he added. “They hear it and they say, ‘That’s for me, that speaks to a place that I actually reside.’”
Contact Arts Editor Joe Payne at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 4-11, 2016.
