Lin-Manuel Miranda

Complex doesn’t often (or ever) champion musicals, but then Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights is not the same old song and dance. The show follows the lives of Latinos in Washington Heights and is full of hip-hop, salsa, merengue, and hot mamis in short shorts—which is to say that seeing it won’t ruin your street cred. Miranda, 28, grew up just north of the Heights in Inwood and wrote the first version of his musical when he was a sophomore at Wesleyan University. Now it’s on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre and nominated for 13 Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Apparently Tony likes the mamis, too.

Interview: Justin Monroe

Complex: How did you get into musical theater?

Lin Manuel: I didn’t get bitten by the bug until I started doing musicals in elementary school. We had a sixth grade play and the entire grade had to do it. I played Conrad Birdie [in Bye Bye Birdie]. I was like 12 years old and three feet tall and I remember all the girls had to pretend to have crushes on me. Some of them started really having crushes on me, and I said, Well, I’m doing this for the rest of my life! [Laughs.]

It just so happens there are some very fine women in your show…

Lin Manuel: Yes, the women in our cast our impossibly good looking, and that has been very nice—but everyone’s there because they are the best at what they do and they can tell stories with their bodies.

When people hear the words “musical theater,” what do you think they envision?

Lin Manuel: Chorus boys and can-cans! It’s funny, there’s this perception that musical theater and the mainstream are really far away [from each other] but I don’t find that to be true. Most of the videos that you see on MTV are aping some sort of musical theater tradition, even if they’re not aware of it. One of the best movie musicals of the past 20 years was the South Park movie, which decimated musical theater structure and used the Disney musical format to tell this ridiculous subversive story about Saddam Hussein taking over the world.

The songs you wrote don’t sound like “show tunes.” What was your thought process while composing?

Lin Manuel: One of the things that I wanted to do with In the Heights was reintroduce contemporary music and theater music to each other. We wanted it to sound like if you walked from 173^rd to 183^rd on Fort Wash [Fort Washington Avenue]. You’d hear hip-hop, you’d hear salsa, and you’d hear merengue. We put them all in a blender. Of course people [in Washington Heights] don’t break into song and go into tightly choreographed musical numbers, but you get the feel of the neighborhood.

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