Everybody, we are live, and by live, I mean live in Chicago, and live over the internet
airwaves, via livestream. You are, (sighs) along with me, very privileged to be in a conversation with Lin-Manuel Miranda. (audience applauding) Big, big thanks to our
sponsors Final Draft, when you need to put, to always have the last word, Final Draft. (audience laughs) That is not, that is not who they are. All right, I didn't, I just made that up. We just had a great session
with you a couple hours ago, and we got sort of the
backstory and it's amazing. Who doesn't know all the amazing
things this guy has done? In the Heights, did a little polish on West
Side Story and Working, and like, the most fun show I've seen in a very
long time, Bring It On, and you may not know he is the secret weapon
behind the Tony Awards, all those fun numbers
that everybody raves about how great Neil Patrick Harris is. This man, doing it on the fly. (audience applauding) A lot of help, a lot of help. Every time I watch I'm
like, how does he do that? So you're gonna tell us, today. Sure!
All right, cool. We're gonna start at--
This vodka's amazing. (laughing) We're gonna start in the middle. We know where you came from. I want to know, what are you doing now? What's got you on fire? Right now?
Besides this. Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza has me on fire right now here in Chicago, but I am, I'm pretty single-mindedly working on this Hamilton musical that I've been working on
for about four years now. I've been writing it since I was still in
Heights, writing backstage, when I read this amazing biography by Ron Chernow about
the guy on the $10 bill, and just fell in love. It just, his life story resonated so many of the things I
wanted to write about, and it was this sort of side of history I really knew nothing about. I knew he got shot by the vice-president, but I mean, you know,
Dick Cheney shot a guy while he was vice-president, it's a thing. (laughing) That's nothing new, but I just fell in love with his story, and I've been working on
it for the past four years. We just did a reading of it
near Stage and Film at Vassar, and sort of presented what we had, which was one act and
three songs in act two. There are 30 songs in act one. (laughs) It's a sung through, it's become a sung through
and rapped through show, and so that's my life right
now, with breaks like the Tonys. LARRY: If you don't mind me delving? Yeah? LARRY: What's the conceit? How are you taking history and putting it in a contemporary form? Without giving too much away, I'm just doing what everyone else who writes musicals is doing. I'm finding a musical
vocabulary to tell this story. For me, hiphop seems like the only way to tell an Alexander
Hamilton story because he is, (audience laughs) he is, I know you think that's funny. I really don't. (Larry laughs) Because it's a story about words, and it's a story about using words to save your life and destroy your life. This is a guy who pulled himself
out of his circumstances, because he wrote a poem about a hurricane that had decimated Saint
Croix where he was living. 14 years old, he wanted to
be anywhere but where he was. He wrote a letter to a friend. The first letter we
have from Hamilton says, "I know I am said to be
building sandcastles in the air, "but we have seen such schemes successful "when the projector is constant. "I would conclude by saying
that I wish there was a war." This is an intense 14 year old. (audience laughs) And this hurricane destroys the island, and he writes a poem about the damage. The poem gets used as a way to
raise money for relief funds, and people take up a collection
to send into the mainland to get his education 'cause
he's all self-taught. He is reading what he can, where he can. He out Dickens' any
Dickens character you know, and he makes himself
indispensable to George Washington because he can write really quickly in English and in French, and becomes Washington's aide de camp. All the while, he's lugging books through
the Revolutionary War, boning up on monetary history because he knows we're gonna need it, because the currency
we made up is worthless and we're losing because British troops, Americans are helping British
troops over the revolution, because their money means
something and ours doesn't. This fear of chaos, and basically makes himself
indispensable to Washington. He also thinks he's the smartest
guy in every room he's in, so he makes enemies of pretty
much everybody else because, so there's the Constitutional
Congress, right? And we're deciding what kind
of government we want to have. Hamilton says, "This plan is great, "and if this is the plan, that's fine, "but I have my own idea and
it's five houses of government." And holds forth for six
hours his own version of what the American
government should look like. Half the room goes,
"This kid is a genius." Half the room, Ben Franklin's sitting
in there somewhere going, "What is this?" (audience laughs) And so we see him sort of
make and destroy his career by his own sort of strength of speech and strength of character. LARRY: Cool. And that to me is Tupac. It's this just relentless
torrent of words, some of which are incredible, but also this massive contradiction. Some of his songs are a beautiful ode to his mother like "Dear Mama" then the next one will be "Hit 'Em Up" where he takes out every
other rapper working saying, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, and these contradictions
are all in Hamilton too. LARRY: It sounds amazing, I can't wait. Now you are, you're driving this. You have co-conspirators. I do. I have been working with Tommy Kail, who directed In the Heights, and I was working very much by myself, and I was writing at the
frantic pace of a song a year. (audience laughs) Tommy heard, I played Tommy what I had
written so far and he said, "There's no reason you shouldn't
be writing this faster." And like we did on Heights, we started just setting these deadlines. It's been a very weird road with Hamilton, because we kind of showed
everyone the ultrasound before there was any hint of a baby, like in the top of the first trimester. You know, I performed the first song from the show at the White House, and that's become its
own viral YouTube thing. That was the only thing I had written, and that was the first
public performance of it, but the White House called and said, "We're doing this evening
of spoken word poetry. "You can do something from
In the Heights if you want, "but do you have anything
on the American Experience?" And I had a hot 16 about
Hamilton, that was all I had. (Larry laughs) And so it was, and I just felt like, well, what better place to debut something that's about this country? So, that went viral in its own way. I talked to lots of teachers who used that in their classroom, and to prep them for their
American history seminar, and I just want to say, wait, wait, wait! That's just the first song in the show! So I've just been doing my
best to sort of finish it, and New York Stage and
Film was one benchmark. We're continuing to set deadlines, so that we have a show,
hopefully by next year. LARRY: All right, now did you put that out
there to light a fire to say, I'm doing this and it's
out in the world now, and now I have to finish it? I honestly, a couple of
weird, yes, in one sense, but I didn't know for instance, that HBO filmed that evening. They were following two of their poets who were also performing, and that's why that footage looks like it's out of some surreal
movie about my life, as opposed to just like, stock footage of a
White House performance. It's HBO edited it and put it
together and put it online. I didn't know that was
gonna happen going in. I just knew that, I think
the president will like this, and I didn't know anything
else sort of going in, so that was all sort of a happy accident, but yes, I very much
need deadlines to write, and with this one, the deadlines have all been
weirdly public, which is scary because people have known
about it a long time and you want to live up to that, but at the same time, it's
just the way this one is. Some pregnancies are difficult,
some pregnancies are like, oh, I'm in my third trimester, and I just found out I was pregnant. This one's just been really, I started showing really early
and that's just what it is. (audience laughs) So you kind of have to go with it. I don't think we talked
about collaboration a lot. You obviously have some people you trust. How did you find them? How did you, when did you know? I was very lucky to find Tommy Kail early, early in my career, at
the dawn of my career, really. So I started writing Heights
as, most people know this, so I'm gonna say it quick. But I started writing Heights
as a project in school, in college, and I had a
recording of that and a script. Two kids who were seniors at the time, Neil Stewart and John Mailer,
Norman Mailer's youngest son, saw that show and were
committed to starting their own theater company
when they moved to New York, which was gonna be that year. I went on and I put In
the Heights in the drawer, and kept writing and acting
and stuff in college. They started that company with Tommy Kail, so Tommy had two years of listening to my college version of In the Heights on his own and making notes, and he was aware of it
before I was aware of him, and true to their word,
the week I graduated, they got in touch with me and said, "We love, we're still
interested in Heights. "Happy Graduation, come meet us. "We built, we're building
a black box theater "in the basement of the Drama Bookshop." The Arthur Seelen Theater,
which is down there, was a storeroom and they basically said, "Hey, we'll turn this into a theater, "and you can have all the money from it "if we can have a clubhouse." Which was very smart of them, and so I was in there when it
was still just a storeroom. And Tommy with two years
of wanting to talk to me, but I don't know why he didn't
talk to me, sort of said, "Usnavi's an interesting character, "but he's only in two scenes. "He could be your narrator "'cause all the stories
go through his store, "and Washington Heights "is a really cool song, but it's third. "It should be first, it
establishes your world." And sort hitting me with where, and again, this is where
time is your friend, and everything has to
happen at the right time. If he had said that to me
after my sophomore year, after having just seen it, I would've said, this is a crazy person, and I think I've written
the best thing possible, because at that point in my life, I had. I sort of put everything I know into it. When he came at me with
all his ideas, I said, one, this guy is really smart and all of his ideas would
make the show better, and two, I had two years of
distance and perspective, and I'm sure you've all learned this, but there's the thing of when you let someone in to see your work, and when you let someone say it, because you let 'em in too
soon and they say something, and that kind of kills the thing. It's really to be protected, and I had the benefit of two
years distance on the show. It had been sitting in the drawer, and so I was really ready to hear any and all ideas on
how to make it better, and then I knew this guy
was the guy to get me there, and that conversation had started the week after I graduated and
continued another six years as we worked through the show, and again, we were very lucky to find producers that take chances on new work. Kevin and Jeffrey have
sort of made a career out of finding Johnathan
Larsons, and Bobby Lopez, and Jeff Marks' of the world who have, they're untested but
they have a good idea, and they're willing to work
hard and getting behind that, and they found us, and Tommy proving himself
every step of the way, because a lot of times you'll be paired with a
more experienced director. Tommy just kept proving himself every time he had the
chance to direct a piece. He came along with the work
because he added value to it. He was really an unofficial dramaturge and when Quiara came onboard in 2004, helped us all triangulate,
and did the thing that you hear John Kander and
Fred Ebb say about how Prince, when he's directing their shows, you talk, and you talk, and you talk until you're all writing the same show. That's when musicals go off the rails, when the music and the story
don't necessarily match, or this person wanted to write this, and they made a Frankenstein
instead of a beautiful thing, and so Tommy's really good at that. He's been a really indispensable
ally in that respect. Nice. Now when you were working
it through and developing, I'm sure these producers
weren't the only opportunity. Who did you have to say
no, not naming names, but tell me about saying to
somebody that you were like, this is the biggest mistake,
or I know I'm making, even though everybody's telling me it's the biggest mistake, I know I'm. Yeah. (laughs) I mean I could tell, I could name producers
that you know who said, "It's a really strong musical vocabulary, "but we gotta up the stakes." And up the stakes, if you're
dealing with Latino show is, make Nina pregnant or involve
a drug, some kind of drug plot because that's what the
producers who were talking see on the news when they
hear about Washington Heights. They don't hear the good news stories that come from Washington Heights. They hear about the bad
stuff on the crime blotter, and really, not only producers, but composers who saw the work, would say the exact same thing. Where are the stakes? Where are the drugs? Where's the crime? Which no one says to Woody Allen when he's doing his new work. (audience laughs) I've been mugged once, and it was on the Upper East
Side in Woody Allen's New York. (audience laughs) So, I don't know what that's about. Well, I know exactly what it's about. And so what Kevin and Jeffrey
are really good about doing is saying, write the
best version of your show and this is what doesn't work for us, but they're very rarely prescriptive. They don't say, you need a prostitute. They don't say, you need this in act two. What they say is, this works, this works, this works, this doesn't work, fix it, and then trust us to fix
it and make it better, and tell us what they think is missing. It's very collaborative
in that sense and again, Tommy being great about writing the world, and also finding Quiara, who was writing these beautiful plays about her family and her
community in northern Philly, so that was also a really great marriage because she doesn't shy away from any of the complications
of Latino immigrant life in these struggling neighborhoods, but she also finds the
beauty and truth of it. If you're writing from a place of love, writing about this neighborhood, it can be a joyful thing,
and that's what I think, I think that's what people
take away from the show, is people have this feeling of, I either long for a community like that or I relate to one of these characters because somewhere along the line, whether it was me or
whether it was a parent or a grandparent, someone
sacrificed so I could do better, or I'm killing myself so
that my kid can do better. I think that is something any
parent or child can relate to and we deal with various iterations of that story all through
the plot of Heights. Now was your goal always
to be in the show? No. I always did, I did Usnavi in all of
the readings and workshops because it was just the heaviest lifting and it was the most to teach. So it made Tommy's job
easier for me to play Usnavi, and then charmingly tiptoe
around the plot holes or whatever we had to
solve yet as the writer, while we focused on the other actors and getting them sort of
involved in the world. The way Tommy put is was like, "You'll play Usnavi for now "and we'll get a real actor later." (audience laughs) And that's fine. And that's fine 'cause you know, as you can see from my
manic public energy, that's you know, it works. It works for the character. And so when we met Kevin and Jeffrey, Kevin, I was still writing. I was still doing book, music,
and lyrics at this point, and it was becoming an operetta, because I know how to
solve problems musically. I know how to solve
dramatic problems musically, that's my thing that I'm good at. When it becomes dialogue, it's like all efficiency leaves
and I don't have that gift, and Quiara very much has that gift. And so Kevin has said, you know, here's Kevin, producer of
rent, producer of Avenue Q, which is in previews at this
point in 2003, and he says, "I don't know what this story is "and I don't think you do either, "but I love the musical language "and I like you as that guy." So I sort of fell in the snowball as it rolled down the hill, and I'd always acted and written in equal measure in high
school and in college, I had always, I'd write a show every year but I would also act in
other people's things 'cause it just helped my writing,
like they feed each other. I mean, they're two
sides of the same coin, so it wasn't like, it wasn't
getting the stage manager who doesn't want to be on
stage and shoving him on stage. I had experience, but it
was a very happy accident. Oh yeah, happy for us. (laughing) Who's seen In the Heights? Who's seen it three times? All right. One of my beloved childhood experiences you got a chance to get involved
with and just refresh it, so much delight to
revisit Electric Company. Oh yeah.
You gotta talk about that. Oh, well sure. I mean, that was great. Like, I grew up with Electric Company too, and in my house Rita
Moreno was a patron saint. So the fact that we got
asked, it was not just me, but this hiphop improv
group I'm involved with, we were sort of involved in the creation of the first
test pilot and then we didn't, we weren't as involved as
the show became what it is and moved forward, the
revamped Electric Company, but we still got called on to write songs. Bill Sherman who did the co-orchestrations in the Heights was the musical director. So he would call and say,
"We need four songs." There's a rap about hard G and soft G, a song about silent E, and
they're a joy to write, and now he's a music
director at Sesame Street. So, I write a song or two a year. When Bill calls me and says, "Well yeah, Grover has to
rap about being friends." And so he calls me and it is a joy. The best, the best thing, and this is one of those things that, unexpected gifts that happen
because of the circumstances. When you write for Sesame Street, they send you this PDF that is the vocal ranges
of all of the Muppets. (audience laughs)
Oh. So like, Grover can't song above a D and can't sing below you know, a middle C. Whereas, Big Bird has this range and you can't write one
note outside of that range, and it's super fun to sort
of, the challenge of like, man, I gotta write for Grover! (audience laughs) And so, anytime those assignments come up, I'm happy to sort of put everything to the side and write them. Would you give us a little demo, maybe? Oh gosh, I'm trying to
think of one that was, I don't have a piano here. But there's, a silent E is a ninja, is the one I wrote the fastest, and that is the one that
most people's kids know, and it's about the fact that E, (laughs) E jumps on the ends of words and changes their pronunciation. It was like, ♪ Silent E is a ninja ♪ ♪ Silent E is a ninja ♪ ♪ I didn't notice when he came ♪ ♪ I cannot accept any praise or blame ♪ And then it just like goes
on to like, all these words. (audience laughs) And then like, the E comes in and changes the meaning
then gets like, escapes. So that for some, I was
walking my dog in the park about a month ago and this
kid started following me, this like, 13 year old kid. I finally stopped and said, "Hi." And he said, "Silent E is a ninja?" (audience laughs) And then I went, "Where'd
he go, where'd he go?" And he was like, "Where'd he go?" And walked the other way, it was great. (audience laughs) It was great. Now, you used to teach.
Mm-hmm. Do you miss it?
I do. My first job out of college was teaching seventh grade
English at my old high school, and I taught, and it was fantastic, because I had just gotten out of there. This was four years in college, and then I'm back in my school. All my teachers are there and suddenly, you're at drinks after
parent teacher conferences with your teachers, (audience laughs) which is great, because
some of them are much cooler than you thought they were
when you were a student, and some of them are just as
crazy as you thought they were, even crazier. So that was enormously fun, but what I loved most about
it is that moment when a kid sort of grasps an idea and
wraps their head around it, and it's sort of, my learning
curve on teaching was, it's the opposite of performing actually. A lot of people think it's
this performative thing, but when you're really
doing your job as a teacher, you're talking very little. You're prodding just enough to gets the kids engaged with each other, and you're just kind of
keeping the ball in the air when the volleyball goes to the side. The learning curve from, "Hi, I'm Lin Miranda, I'm your teacher." To like, really just sort
of lobbing a question, and just watching them engage each other, and sort of tease out what they're learning in
discussion was a real joy. So I was asked to do it
again the second year. You know, I did it for a year
and they asked me to come back and it was one of those, I could see myself being very happy doing this for the rest of my life, so I'm going to stop right now 'cause I don't want to Mr. Holland it out, (audience laughs) and think about what might've been, and I took the much
scarier road of being like, a broke writer for a very
long time and substituting, being a professional sub
at Hunter for a long time, but also just doing whatever
I had to do to pay rent. Wow. Let's have some questions.
It's your time, guys. Yeah, hit me. Somebody, anybody. We've got a microphone,
we're recording this, so if you don't mind stepping up. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, I'm a
big fan of hiphop as well, and I just wanted to ask
you kind of what you think about the current state of hiphop music, and also why you feel like it hasn't been more
prevalent in musical theater? Because you see some, but not a lot. It feels like they're
very complementary forms, just kind of what you think about the intersection
of those two things. Yeah, that's a great question. I agree with you that
they're complementary forms. I think the things I love
best about hiphop music are some of the things I like
best about musical theater, which is sometimes this verbal dexterity that takes you to this
other emotional place, and when married with the
right music, transports you. I think that's what musical
theater and hiphop do best, and they both do it best. You know, in terms of the current, I think, and I hope you agree, that the music that you end up writing resembles the music that
mattered to you the most when you were a teenager, 'cause you had the most hormones
coursing through your veins and so when you just felt the most. I listen to a lot of modern hiphop, and I listen to what's on the radio, but my heart is in 1993 'cause I was 13, but that also happened to
be a very interesting time for hiphop because it
was sort of the last, it was just before The Chronic came out, and when there were number one hits that were not all gangster rap songs. There was P.M. Dawn, there
was Arrested Development, there was A Tribe Called
Quest, there was Common. There was this sort of feeling
that it could go anywhere, and then The Chronic sort of, was such a massive crossover hit, that that became the dominant
sound for a very long time. Not that those other
forms didn't still exist, but that was what ruled the radio. I think that what's on the radio and what's being made are
two very different things. I still think there's a lot
of really exciting hiphop. I think, you guys are
probably not hip to this, but right now in the hiphop world, Kendrick Lamar just released
this verse on a mixtape where he names every
other rapper and he says, I respect y'all, but I'm trying to murder
you with every track I do, which is really kind of
unprecedented in hiphop because I think one of
the lessons of the '90s were people would take it very personally, and there was real physical violence associated with these songs
that were being released, and this was a really interesting gauntlet that was thrown down. He said, "Lyrically, I
think you're all great, "but I'm trying to be the best,
what are you trying to do?" And so it made it about lyrical wordplay, and rappers started answering
the next day with songs, and that's really exciting. So I'm excited about that,
because I think that moves the art form forward in
a way that's positive, and Big Daddy Kane wrote
an amazing Tweet about it. He said, "I love that hiphop
can be a competitive sport, "I just don't want it
to be a contact sport." And I think that's a
perfect way, but yeah. That's my thoughts on hiphop right now. LARRY: Very cool. It might be dated in five minutes. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Lin, I have a question. Regarding the bilingual
aspect pf your musical, how much of that did you
have to change anything, and did you have to pull
anything out from the original, or was that ratio of the Spanish English pretty much the way it
was originally presented? Well yeah, I guess it depends on what you mean by originally presented. You know, we probably
doubled the amount of Spanish between Off-Broadway and Broadway, which is sort of an interesting thing 'cause it seems counterintuitive, right? Like, quote unquote Broadway, quote unquote Broadway audience, make it accessible to everyone. That being said, another
one of the fun things about writing Heights specifically, was you're dealing with
a bilingual neighborhood, so we get to play with two languages. My number one job is to make the audience feel taken care of, no
matter who they are, so generally, even though
there's lots of Spanish sections, you're getting the English translation, or you're getting the
gist of it, right away, and it's built into the DNA of the piece, and the fun of trying to
rhyme Spanish with English, and doing our best to
marry those two things, and making that another choice, right? So you know, the old adage in musicals is, when we're feeling too
much to speak, we sing, and when we're feeling too
much to sing, we dance, and adding, when we're feeling
too much to sing, we rap, and adding, when we're feeling too much to sing in English, we sing in Spanish. (audience laughs) It's just sort of like adding
a couple of sides to the die, and so that was really fun to play with. You know, contrast that with
my work on West Side Story, which I was asked to
do by Arthur Laurents. It's one thing when it's built
into the DNA of the piece, it's another thing when you're touching a masterpiece that people
really like, myself included. I don't think I ever
would've undertaken it, had it not been the creators of the show themselves being involved, but you know, we did the experiment. I adapted "I Feel Pretty," the Sharks' section of the quintet, and "A Boy Like That/I Have a Love." By the end of the Broadway run, just "I Feel Pretty" was in Spanish 'cause the audience was like, why are you messing with our show? And there was a lot of pushback, and I think we assumed
everyone knows West Side Story, it's the closest thing to
canon, to legend we have. But there were a lot of
people who wanted to see a production like they had
done in their high school, or like they had experienced
in the movie version, and really didn't want that
messed with, and I get that. Like, I don't take any, you know, I don't take it personally. It was an amazing experience
to work with those people and I'd do it all again, but again, where it's something we
just accepted with Heights because it's sort of
marbled into the recipe, it's different when you're
messing with something people really know and
really take to heart. But it's on the recording.
Yeah, it's on the recording. And you gotta hear it.
It's pretty nuts. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi Lin,
I'm someone who played Maria in West Side Story like, three times as a little Iowa farm girl, so it's a really special musical to me, and I grew up teaching
little kids on the farm that someday they could
do musical theater too. So I moved to New York
City, and I moved to Inwood, and I remember, and this
is about 10 years ago, and you're one of my heroes because I'm a musical theater writer. I write book, lyrics, and choreograph, and teach, just like you. So people in the hood that say,
"Yeah, Lin's doing a show." I mean, they knew of you
on the street Broadway, just you know where
the train and Broadway, where all those little shops? On Broadway?
Uh-huh. They were like, "Yeah, Lin is gonna be,
he's gonna be famous." (Lin laughs) He's gonna be. That's crazy to me. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, it's crazy. I can give you their names, and I'm like, "He is gonna be famous." And I saw your first workshop. Oh, fantastic. AUDIENCE: On In the Heights, and I'm like, he is gonna be famous. So, I tell your story to lots. I live in Chicago now.
Fantastic. AUDIENCE MEMBER: And I
just finished my PhD, and I tell people your story
that are kids all the time. I'm like, you know what? You can write book, music, and lyric. It might take 20 years. (laughing) But I know, there's a show. So you're an example, like
lots of people in the room, but I had to tell you that story, and then I got to meet West
Side Story, Arthur Laurents. Yeah. AUDIENCE MEMBER: And saw the
preview of West Side Story, and I said, "He's doing it again." (laughing) I'll tell you why that
story's so crazy to me. You know, when Heights came out, there were a lot of sort of news pieces or even Broadway news
pieces where they'd say, well, the pitch was always, "Let's walk around your
Washington Heights." And I was like, "Okay, if you want." I think they expected I'd walk into places and people would be like, "Usnavi!" like it is in the show, (audience laughs) and that's not, I'm not really
a Dominican bodega owner. AUDIENCE MEMBER: No. I'm a writer, so I'm the
guy who no one knows. I'm sitting in the corner with
a notepad while other people, while cab drivers are talking, and while people are living their lives. I'm the one who is silent, and I think, you know, the
reporter's always crestfallen. Like, I wish he knew more
people in this neighborhood. (laughing) I'm like, I know 'em but they just don't who I
am or what I'm doing here. I'm sitting in the corner,
and that's my life. AUDIENCE MEMBER: They claim you though, so just so you know. No, I'm very proud they claim me. I still live up there,
so you know, it's nice. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah, I go there often. Well, nice job, thank you so much. Thank you. LARRY: Yes sir? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Hi, how you doing? Hi. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Can you address the true rhyme versus the near rhyme? Which you're very good at doing. Yeah, sure. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Broadway for decades was all about the true rhyme
and pop music back in the day in the jazz era was all
about the true rhyme as well, and then even early rock
'n' roll had the true rhyme, but most pop music, R&B, or country music, or pop, or power pop, or hiphop, it's the near rhyme is really
the art of how you do that. Yeah.
But in Broadway, there's these purists, and
so how do you work with that, and how do you, and also you
trying to get the story across, so the true rhyme does help
people connect with this. So how do you work with that? That's a great question. I touched on that a little
bit in the other panel, but I'm really glad you asked it. The purists just don't like me, (audience laughs) and that's okay, that's okay. You know, I think there's
a couple of things. I think there are things that people have been
handed as lore, right? There is the "I Want" song,
there is the 11 o'clock number. There is this notion that
true rhyme is the only rhyme that makes any sense in the theater, which is just being disproven by every writer working in the theater. I think there are, you know,
it's really interesting. There is this sort of feeling that rhyme denotes intellect, right? You know, Sondheim always complains about his "I Feel Pretty" like, how is she doing these Noel
Coward-esque internal rhymes? She's an immigrant and
she's just gotten here. (audience laughs) And there's, I get that, at the same time, there are so many rappers who are doing such incredible things with the English language who do not have a college education, and it's about fun with language and through my own personal history, with family members who
speak English and Spanish, the fun you can have with syntax, and the fun you can have with the words, it's so much bigger than a pure rhyme versus not a pure rhyme, and there's also what I talked
about in the other panel, is threading the needle. In musical theater, we reward the pure rhyme that
lands with a satisfying snap, but the other half of that that
people don't talk about is, it's also gotta be unexpected, and it's also gotta be surprising. I think people lose the forest
for the trees with that, and with hiphop, often
the unexpected rhyme or the near rhyme is rewarded as being outside of the box thinking. You know, sometimes it falls
flat and sometimes it doesn't, but delivery is a big part
of whether it works or not. So in Heights, I'm trying to write lyrics that will satisfy a musical
theater fan who'll say, there's craft here, but also
the hiphop fan who says, all these rhymes are moon June, who thinks true rhyme is actually boring. And so I was very conscious
of that with Heights, of when to choose my battles, when to do pure rhyme, when to break it, when to do near rhyme, and it's something I've
sort of doubled in intensity on this Hamilton project I'm working on, because there's a lot more hiphop lyrics, and there's a lot more internal assonance, and there's just lots more work, but I think people use,
there's no true rhyme, as a shorthand for there's no craft there, and I don't think that's
necessarily the case. I think that you should break the rhyme, but you gotta have a damn
good reason to do it. I think that's an important lesson that gets lost in the shuffle
of true rhyme or get out. So that, thus endeth the
lesson on true rhyme. (laughing) LARRY: Now, you did "In the Heights" for how many performances? I did the show the first year, and then I did it in L.A.
and Puerto Rico on the tour, and I did the last two
weeks to close it out. LARRY: Is there a rhyme
that night after night tickled you every time you did it, that you were like? (claps) (audience laughs) Uh...
Come on, fess up. Well, the first thing that sprang to mind, and again, not a pure rhyme (laughs) is, "Me and the GWB thinking,
gee Nina, what'll you be?" And I just really liked the way that sat. It said exactly what she needed to say, and you know, I was also in the bodega, so I got to like, watch
her do it. (laughs) You know, that's the other thing, I had a perspective of the show for a year as someone inside it, which is very different from
getting to watch your show. So there's whole sections of this show when I go to see a student production or someone's inviting me to
their production going, oh yeah. I was backstage going to the bathroom 'cause that was the
only time I could do it. So, it's fun to rediscover
the show that way. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I was just wondering, one of the things I love about
the "In the Heights" score is that it incorporates
pop and hiphop genres, but it's still at its
core a theatrical score, which is what I find so
interesting about it. I feel like that's what makes the hiphop aspects all
the rapping, all that, I feel like that's what makes it work. I was just wondering, I noticed a trend in some Broadway shows, I can't name any off the
top of my head right now, but that sort of, that
are heavy on the pop, but not so much on the theatrical, so I was wondering what
your advice would be to up and coming composers who want to incorporate pop more successfully in a theatrical score. Yeah, you know, that's a great question. I think the kind of music I write is very much informed by the kind of music I grew up listening to, so that has a contemporary sound to it, I come by it honestly. I think any writer just should
come by their work honestly, whether they're working in
the genre or regardless, like, it's gotta come
from your kishkes, right? (audience laughs) And so, sorry to use Yiddish. And so, I see what you're saying. I think that one of the things that still gets lost in
the shuffle and is so, we learn it when we learn Peter
and the Wolf in fifth grade. It's like, every character's
got their own rhythm, and every character's got their own internal combustion engine, and I very much write from that place. When Usnavi enters, he's got
an energy and he's got a tempo, and a musical language, and then Abuela is like old school Cuban and she's got her tempo,
and she's got her thing, and when they sing together, those tempos match together
and it makes its own song. It sounds simple, but you'd
be amazed how many writers, particularly first time writers, and so that's why it happens, just sort of throw songs at
situations without regard to, why does he sing like this? Or why does she sing like that? It's the reason 95% of
jukebox musicals don't work. You haven't solved the initial question of why everyone sounds
like this catalog, right? Like, why do they all sound like that? You know, Jersey Boys is genius because that's the story
of their ascendance, and the music is organically
coming out of their rise. But you know, I've seen
workshops of, I won't name names, but I've seen workshops of
jukebox musicals of pop catalogs and it's like, why do they all sound like this pop artist
whose music you're doing? And you haven't answered the
essential dramatic question, do we live in a world where he's God, and that's why they all sound like that? (audience laughs) You know, if you're choosing this artist, there must be some sort of
variety in their work that, okay, this era of this artist's life
sounds like this character. Like, you've gotta do
that work of the most, the musicals I love, like
there's that character's song, and every time they come
in, they've got that energy, and they're bringing it to the story, and that's what people forget. They just sort of throw
songs at the story, as opposed to really delving
into doing the playwright work of delving into character. How does this person tick, and then how is that expressed musically? That's what's missing. Thanks, one more.
Oh, uh-oh, throw down. (audience laughs) AUDIENCE MEMBER: You're the book writer, you're the lyricist, you're the composer. What comes first when
you're in your process? Hamilton is the first thing
where I'm doing all three, and that's because it's sung through. We actually, Tommy and I, went down the road with
a playwright for a bit, and we realized there's so much
hiphop and heightened speech that this was gonna be
a sung through project, and I didn't want to work
with a great playwright and not get to hear any of their words. So I sort of took up the mantle of doing all three with
this one, and again, if we're extending the pregnancy metaphor to its logical, torturous extreme, I was already way too
pregnant with the show to sort of begin working
with another writer on this particular project. It always starts with character,
and with the situation, and then music and lyrics
come in when they come in. Every single song is different, and I'll say my favorite
Leonard Cohen quote, which is, "Being a songwriter is like being a nun, "you're married to a mystery." (audience laughs) And your job is to create this thing, and you don't know, at every stage you don't
know what's gonna come first. The situation may suggest
an urgency and a tempo, and you start from the
tempo and work backwards. With "Bring It On" that was set
in the world on cheerleading so really, I built that score
by Andy singing a tempo at me and an energy at me, and
writing down what he did, and Andy's a very, if you
know Andy Blankenbuehler, he's a very expressive guy
and it was to feel like, (singing gibberish expressively) and I would write down, (audience laughs) I would notate, ka-ka-ka-ka, ka. (audience laughs) And the tempo he spat it at me, that would be the first thing on the page and I build from that. And he'd go, "How'd you
know what I wanted?" And I'd go, "'Cause I wrote down "the gibberish you yelled at me." (audience laughs) And started there, and so
it very much felt of a piece with the energy he was trying to bring in. With Heights, we had these, we were trying to figure
out how to write it, figure out the story, the
language, and the characters, all at the same time,
so it took a long time, because you write this great song, and it derailed three things in act two. It was like a 12-sided Rubik's Cube, and then with Hamilton, I had this great narrative
spine of this guy's life, and the torturous part is what to omit, and you know, what moves us forward? This guy is relentless. He lives in turbo. He never stops, he slept
three hours a night, and he's verbose, so it's like,
you gotta fill that machine. So I've been actually, it's been a lot of Sweeney
Todd and Gypsy for me, because those are musicals that are built around a personality. The structure is, Gypsy's
this whirling dervish, and she's gonna go. You know, Mama Rose is gonna go, and everyone's reacting to
what she's gonna do next. And so, that's how I'm sort
of approaching Hamilton, is this guy's gonna go, whether you're with him or you're not, and it's both inspiring, and
terrifying, and intimidating, to all of the other
opposing forces in his life. LARRY: We are out of time, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, I know. You can ask afterwards.
Oh, he had one. He can ask.
All right, all right. I'll answer real fast. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. As another former teacher
turned starving writer, (Lin laughs) how are you currently or how
would you like to be helping other early career artists
move into the field, and sort of as a corollary to that, do you think there's
a best way to do that? There's no shortcut for writing. You know, I am, because I never
got enough hugs as a child, I'm quite addicted to Twitter. (audience laughs) It's an audience whenever I want, and so I get a lot of
variations on that question, and you have to write,
and you have to write, and write, and write, and write, and you will write through your bad stuff, and you will write
through your good stuff, and you'll write your
way back to bad stuff. But I, you gotta have something to show, and I think that's the number one step. You know, people come
up to me and they go, "I have this idea for a musical." It's like, well, you
can't show me your idea. You can show me your musical, and you can show me a demo of songs, but you know, I think, what
I love are things like this. I've been attending panels all day. My brain is still burning
from John Wideman's Writing History seminar at three o'clock, and listening to Theresa Rebeck's stories of writing Hollywood this morning. So take solace in your fellow writers, and find those like minded souls. I'm so grateful, Steve Schwartz
is sitting here who is, (Larry laughs) (audience applauding) in addition to being the
inspiration that he is, when we were working on Heights, Alex Lacamoire, our music director, was the conductor at Wicked, so I learned more about orchestrating by sitting in the pit at Wicked,
which I did about 10 times, just sitting next to the guitarist, figuring out how a pit worked, and figuring how this amazing score was spread across these instruments. I owe him an invaluable debt for that, and a million other things, but you know, take solace in each and other
and have fun this weekend. Thanks for coming. Very cool, Lin-Manuel Miranda. (audience applauding) (cheering)
