Backstage at "In The Heights" with Lin-Manuel Miranda

hi I made that my name is lemon well Miranda I'm the composer and lyricist I've been the heights I also play with Snivy in the show and today we're gonna do a little backstage tour so let's go backstage come on dodo dodo this is me thank god I sucked in my guts in that picture Thank You Joan Marcus let's go these are the congratulations letters from the other casts every night when a Broadway show opens you get faxes from all the other casts I didn't know this but you get faxes from all the other cast so this is rent this is Greece got passing strange over there wicked rock and roll and and it's it's lovely it's a lovely tradition and we send him out whenever a show opens these are letters from PS 115 we got to I got to go visit their school for the children will listen program and they came to see the show and I spoke to them afterwards and they were great and they wrote us the sweetest letters and they made us all these dioramas of the show and this was sort of their class assignment and it's wonderful and it's wonderful to see them every day in our hallway is Karen Olivo gets here early to warm up the pipes the pipes and the legs and the voice that she is how you feel today I'm feeling great hi broadway.com we're tired well it's a to show day so we're all just wake it up oh that's the camera no leave a warm-up I've I've been learning it all righty righty now we're headed down to our crossover area where the various departments live wig Department costume department our pit and this mirror I think makes me look fat and I've been lobbying for them to replace it but they have not as of yet but don't film me through that mirror hideous we're headed up towards my dressing room and this is my room it's sort of neat right now this looks like a mess but this is actually the neatest that's been I sleep up here between shows I've got my Cobra Commander and then the is sort of my area we got Gatorades I had a fridge I got some cookies I have the medicine cabinet full of various snacks you can eat at intermission without feeling like fats na'vi for act 2 I basically eat a chicken breast sandwich and matzo ball soup from the Edison diner across the street before every show I've had the chicken ball sandwich I'm waiting for the matzo ball to to cool off and you know I you know what's actually really good those Luna bars that are for ladies guys can eat them too they're very good they're a good intermission snack but I got goldfish and peanuts and all sorts of things and then I got a fridge here it's got like raisin bread it's just sort of if you need to pick me up in the show and you often do because this show takes a lot of energy that's what you do yeah and then this is where I live and then this is my bathroom which is my gift to the rest of the cast having my own bathroom and this is all of these toys these are not like childhood toys I just I'm really good at the claw machine at Dave & Buster's and I won these at Dave and Buster's I'm really good at two things writing musicals and the claw machine a Dave & Buster's and I'm really good at the claw machine when we were off-broadway I used to pass notes with the salon ladies between the Bodega and the salon and so for my Cass gift they framed some of those notes for me yeah and that's that's the bathroom so this is where I sleep and I get to use it mainly uh between shows on Saturday and on Wednesday because Sunday there's not enough time to really get a nap in but it's sort of a nice little lofty area and you can sleep and you can play I can play PlayStation 2 from the bed I got the TV hooked up over there and played a little grand theft auto steal a couple of motorcycles and it's not for kids but I'm a grown-up so I'm allowed I actually knocked the light fixture off of this these exposed light bulbs with my head but I have since learned the error of my ways and now I navigate it pretty smoothly the stuff on the mirror is pretty random this is someone I owe a phone call to these are some letters that I that I I got a letter from from John Kander on opening night that basically had me bawling this I just put up because it's just so random I got a letter from Tim the house manager your childhood dentist is here every day if you if you are lucky enough to open a Broadway show every day is a different episode of this is your life so one day your childhood dentist will show up one day your first-grade teacher will show up that's just sort of what happens and it's sort of one of the joys of being on Broadway this is a picture of my grandfather actually who passed away a week after opening night so it was a it was a very bittersweet opening for me because the next day I had I found out he was actually very sick and and they'd kept it from me because you know I was so busy with the show and they didn't want me distracted but the Monday after we opened not that Monday but the next Monday after he passed away so I had that picture of us from the summer I lived in Puerto Rico and I keep it up there and you know the show is a is a great way to process that in terms of I get to mourn every night so I keep that up there and I got some bananas here that are rapidly ripening and uh yeah that's my room you know I'm here usually uh at two hours ahead of curtain every show either warming up or answering mail or doing stuff and so I live here a lot so the fridge is essential my my compat my home computer here because I actually spend more time here than I do at home and yeah I mean basically your your home is your dressing room because it's eight shows a week and you spend the majority of your time here so there's where I live all right let's go take a look at the stage all right here we go you ever been on a Broadway stage let's do it is the Richard Rodgers stage this is our set those are dance cats and michael Balderrama stretching out his calves here's our dispatch we've got our cheesecake pictures of JLo and Rita Moreno back in the day and this is sort of the the taxi dispatch where the Rosario's work you see a picture of Nina played by Mandy Gonzales in the frame there I got those little trees that you hang from the rearview we got some signed pictures of from Chita Rivera and every kid laziest which I'm just noticing now which are pretty freaking hilarious hi how are you Oh does she plays up well like uh yeah but you wouldn't believe it - look at her she's young as a fresh daisy I don't have any makeup on right now otherwise I don't have any voice so it's fun no no I'm fine I'm fine but I'm saying we do a little steaming with Doolittle the the little herbs hurts she has these little on herbs from Chinatown yeah they're terrifying but they work exactly they work don't they they do yeah so you're you given them all up give her a little time yeah excellent that's this doing here LM about the fool this is a boil a stoop right here and we go in there into like a wonderland of stuff behind there all kinds of stuff happens behind there the whole neighborhood is behind there right yes and and the sub we see the subway back there that's the hundred 81st Street subway station yeah and a hardware store back there that's Washington Heights is here so it's all here that's right all right Thank You Olga bye that's Olga soun away to her dressing room this is my bodega we have our ATM machine which we like to think only distributes $10 bills because when you only have 17 dollars in the bank account you can still get money out it's important believe me I know from experience and uh this is our here we got our our tickets or a lot of tickets we got some Moberly tuna all of which is firmly pasted on we've got Kotex for the ladies we've got dishwashing liquid we've got our coffee which is actually a frozen block of coffee we've got our slushy machine which makes some nuclear-nuclear colors of slushy and I'm sorry I don't care what the president says it's pronounced nuclear and then this is our thing and I've got my prop set up here I'm not going to touch them because I don't wanna mess them up but I got the Milky Way Daily News in the post for and it's actually they've actually treated the Daily News it's a special heatwave no relief in sight as July 4th holiday near so it's at the level of is not specific I mean the Daily News literally has headlines that we need it to have old colony umma Country Club Med egg a Goya pineapple soda mal de Goya awesome and this is our Stonewall if you've ever been to Washington Heights and I recommend you go there is a beautiful park called Fort Tryon Park and there is a there's a street that's sort of a makeout street and it looks like this and then you know we have we've got laundry hanging on the line just like Washington Heights we've got Dominican Flags and Puerto Rican flags and it's Washington Heights it's Anna Louise OSes amazing set and and we we live here we basically live here the salon where the ladies live we've got some we Dodd product we got a lot of curly hair in the cast so we got some we dog product we've got some magazines page 6l 18 cm per demo head we have a picture of Karen Olivo looking like she stepped right off the set of designing women' from high school a short running water this would be a pretty good functioning salon and and this is the house this is our 1,300 seat theater the Richard Rogers if you look all the way up in the booth there is a lava lamp up in the lighting booth we see that a fair amount when we were staring towards the heavens or the sky we're really staring at a lava lamp and also if you look at these monitors those monitors are actually a camera setup to the conductor pit so sometimes we'll get cues from Analects lack of more if we can't look down directly at him he can conduct us from there so we can be looking out and totally cheating one of the things that's extraordinary about this theatre is there's really not a bad seat in the house that it's so steeply raked that everyone even if you're sitting up in the mezzanine you haven't you have an intimate seat and and it's it's really very close I've been to Broadway theaters where the furthest seat is literally a mile back and the furthest seat is not that far from us so everyone gets everyone gets a good view and we had a good view of them too so it's it's a really um it's really intimate interaction with the audience I'm lemon well Miranda thanks for coming and taking this very sleepy tour with me on our to show Wednesday I hope you come see in the heights we're at the Richard Rogers theater on 46th Street and it's a good time you

Channel: Broadwaycom

Views: 356,039

Rating: 4.9895782 out of 5

Keywords: brightcove

Id: en214VS52qE

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 19 2011