TORONTO – Lin-Manuel Miranda’s life resembles an episode of “Glee.”
The lauded lyricist, composer, rapper and actor has been known to burst into impressive freestyle rhymes with his friends, in his public addresses (check out his Tony Award acceptance speech on YouTube), and at high-profile events like the White House Poetry Jam.
And it seems to rub off on others. When Miranda co-hosted a recent fundraiser, U.S. President Barack Obama spontaneously crooned a bar from Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”
As Miranda’s Toronto-bound touring musical “In the Heights” shows, impromptu song was also a big part of his upbringing with his Puerto Rican family in a north Manhattan immigrant neighbourhood.
“When you’re writing a musical you want a landscape that sings, where it’s plausible for people to break into song, and in my neighbourhood people break into songs all the freakin’ time,” Miranda, who conceived the show, said with a laugh in a recent phone interview from Inwood, just north of Washington Heights.
“It’s one of those neighbourhoods where, on a summer night in Washington Heights, you will hear music coming from at least 10 different sources on any given block, whether it is the music on the radio, in the corner store, or music blasting out of car stereos.
“It’s a very musical landscape.”
Running Feb. 7 to Feb. 19 at the Toronto Centre for the Arts as part of the Dancap Productions lineup, the four-time Tony-winning “In the Heights” features show tunes, hip hop and Latin grooves as it follows characters in Washington Heights.
At the heart of the story is Usnavi (Perry Young), who dreams of moving to his late parents’ homeland of the Dominican Republic while running a family bodega and pining after hair stylist Vanessa.
“Since we opened, I don’t think a day has gone by,” started Miranda, before interrupting his sentence with a few bars of the Stephen Sondheim tune “Not a Day Goes By.”
That “someone hasn’t tweeted me or written to me, ‘When’s the show coming to Canada, when’s the show coming to Canada?’ So I’m so excited that we’re finally there.”
Miranda starred as Usnavi in the Broadway production and wrote the show’s music and lyrics, earning the 2008 Tony for best score and a 2009 Grammy for the cast album. The show also won Tonys for best musical, best choreography and best orchestrations, and was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The 32-year-old Miranda started writing “In the Heights” in his sophomore year at Wesleyan University, taking inspiration from his own surroundings.
“What’s interesting about the neighbourhood is it’s always been an immigrant neighbourhood, even before it was a Latino neighbourhood,” said Miranda, co-founder of the hip-hop comedy troupe Freestyle Love Supreme.
“Before us it was Irish immigrants and it was home to the highest influx of European Jews after World War Two.”
Though Miranda grew up about a block north of Washington Heights in Inwood, “Inwood doesn’t sing nearly as well as Washington Heights does” in a musical, he said with a laugh.
“Try singing ‘Inwood.’ It doesn’t sing. It’s a closed vowel.”
Originally “In the Heights” was an 80-minute, one-act school show that Miranda directed but didn’t star in. After he graduated and started teaching, Miranda reworked the show with director Thomas Kail and book writer Quiara Alegria Hudes for a larger audience.
Miranda took on the lead role of Usnavi at that time because they had trouble finding the right actor.
“They don’t teach you how to rap in musical theatre conservatories, there’s no rap class at Juilliard, so kids would come in to audition, we’d see some really great singers, but the rapping was really lacking a lot of the time,” said Miranda.
As Miranda and his team infused the show with Latin, hip hop and musical theatre rhythms, they felt like they were “the only ones in the sandbox,” writing their own rules on the unique music mix.
“What was fun was (hip hop) was this genre that had never been taken seriously by musical theatre,” he said. “I mean, you see examples of rap in musical theatre all the time, but in terms of hip-hop rap, it’s usually a comment on it.
“It’s, ‘Isn’t it hilarious that we are rapping? How ironic,’ or, ‘We’re white and we’re rapping – HILARIOUS.’ Except for the examples where it’s just taken seriously as a form of storytelling.”
Miranda is now starring in a revival of Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along.” He also wrote the Spanish-language translations for a revival of “West Side Story” that hits Toronto in May, and he co-wrote the score for “Bring it On: The Musical” that will also be here in May.
Miranda said a film adaptation of “In the Heights” is also being worked on.
Given that Miranda is a fan of the Canadian teen series “Degrassi: The Next Generation” and former co-star Toronto rapper Drake, does he think the Canuck recording artist would make a good fit for an “In the Heights” movie?
“Yeah, I think he’s a talented actor and he’s a talented rapper, so I don’t see why he wouldn’t be in contention,” he said.
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