Next on our stage: GOD OF CARNAGE MAKING GOD LAUGH MOTHERS AND SONS SEPT. 13-OCT. 14 NOV. 15-DEC. 23 JAN. 17-FEB. 17 HIGHLIGHTS A companion guide to “In the Heights” music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda July 12-Aug. 19, book by Quiara Alegría Hudes conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda 2018 directed by Jeffrey Bracco Synopsis In the Heights tells the universal story of a vibrant community in New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood — a place where the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music. It’s a community on the brink of change, full of hopes, dreams and pressures, where the biggest struggles can be deciding which traditions you take with you, and which ones you leave behind. Characters Along with a lively ensemble, In the Heights features several unforgettable principal and featured characters. Usnavi (Oklys Pimentel): From his corner bodega, our charmingly awkward narrator sees all the neighborhood’s stories, even as he yearns to write a new one for himself by returning to his family’s home in the Dominican Republic. Vanessa (Alycia Adame): Sassy and determined, Vanessa has big plans to make it out of the barrio and build a new life downtown. Nina (Cristina Hernandez): Nina may be “the one who made it out,” but balancing her studies and workload at Stanford Above: Usnavi (Oklys Pimentel, left) owns the corner barrio where he University hasn’t been a dream. misses nothing in the neighborhood. Especially Vanessa (Alycia Adame). Previous page: Washington Heights neighbors are, from Benny (Robbie Reign): The ambitious Benny dreams of a future left: Vanessa (Alycia Adame), Abuela Claudia (Gloria Stanley), Nina beyond working for Nina’s father at his cab company, and those (Cristina Hernandez), Benny (Robbie Reign) and Usnavi (Oklys dreams just may include Nina. Pimentel, front). All production photos by Taylor Sanders. Abuela Claudia (Gloria Stanley): She practically raised Usnavi after his parents died, and is like an abuela (grandmother) to him and many others. Kevin (Dave Leon): There isn’t much that Nina’s father won’t do to defend his family, or to give Nina more than he had. Camila (Marsha Dimalanta): Fiercely loving and level-headed, Nina’s mother is devoted to her family and community. Sonny (Jomar Martinez): Younger cousin to Usnavi, Sonny seems cheerfully lazy in his work at the bodega, but also has a social-justice bent. Daniela (Stephanie Baumann): Owner of the neighborhood salon, this outspoken gossip girl never heard a hot story she didn’t like to pass on. Carla (Chlöe Angst): Daniela’s BFF works at the salon along with Vanessa. If she doesn’t get all the jokes, she’s still happy to join in the chatter. Piragua Guy (Nick Rodrigues): One of the street’s many troubadours, he’s determined to keep his little piragua (Puerto Rican shaved ice) stand thriving against competition from Mister Softee. Graffiti Pete (Phillip Jaco): Is he a punk or an artist? Stay tuned. The show and its creators During sophomore year of college, there’s lots of fun to be had and learning to absorb, but most of us aren’t writing a musical that will light up Broadway. Then again, most of us aren’t Lin-Manuel Miranda. There he was in 1999, a young New Yorker of mostly Puerto Rican descent, loving Sondheim, rap and salsa, and yearning to see more stories on the big stage about people who shared his background. In his second year at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, he penned a show about Latin American characters in Washington Heights. He had a theater space nailed down for an April weekend, and he spent his whole winter break getting the musical in shape. “I put in all the things I’d always wanted to see onstage: propulsive freestyle rap scenes outside of bodegas, salsa numbers that also revealed character and story,” he told Wesleyan magazine. The 80-minute one-act, featuring 14 songs, was a hit. As the musical grew and played to larger audiences, Miranda brought on playwright No, the guy on the right didn’t help create Quiara Alegría Hudes to write the show’s book. “She made the work much more “In the Heights,” but he is a big fan of about the neighborhood and characters living in a larger place,” he told Wesleyan. composer-lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda Meanwhile, Miranda’s character of Usnavi also grew, and before long Abuela (left). Photo from Miranda’s Twitter. Claudia was added, inspired by a real-life, beloved friend of Miranda’s family. In the Heights opened off-Broadway in 2007, and the following year traveled to Broadway, where the show and Miranda's performance were a revelation. “As you watch Mr. Miranda bound jubilantly across the stage, tossing out the rhymed verse currently known as rap like fistfuls of flowers, you might find yourself imagining that this young man is music personified—a sprightly new Harold Hill from the barrio,” the New York Times wrote. Pretty heady stuff for a young theater-maker. And it was just the beginning, for Miranda and Hudes. Directed by fellow Wesleyan grad Thomas Kail, In the Heights won four 2008 Tony Awards: Best Musical, Best Score, Best Choreography and Best Orchestration. It was also a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Speaking of Pulitzers, Hudes saw her play Water by the Spoonful win the 2012 Pulitzer for Drama, and Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue was a Pulitzer finalist. A professor at Wesleyan, she is playwright in residence at Signature Theater in New York. Oh, and Miranda has done a few other things. His Founding Father phenomenon Hamilton, for which he wrote the book, music and lyrics and also originated the title role, has been showered with accolades and sold-out houses on Broadway, with awards including 11 Tony Awards and the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Other credits include co-composer and co-lyricist of Bring it On: The Musical, which was nominated for the 2013 Tony Award for Best Musical. Miranda has also been an active supporter of the relief work in Puerto Rico following last year’s Hurricane Maria. His benefit single “Almost Like Praying” and its salsa remix have aided those Miranda, left, with fellow “Hamilton” cast members performing at the White House in struggling on the island. 2016, when the Obamas hosted a celebration of the arts. White House photo. Washington Heights: A very brief history “I used to think we lived at the top of the world,” Nina sings in In the Heights. Why not? Her neighborhood of Washington Heights is high north on the subway map. Geographically, it’s the highest ground in Manhattan. And lately it’s crowned many a list of “up-and-coming” and “growing” areas in NYC. In June, the New York Post dubbed Washington Heights a “hipster haven” after U.S. Census data showed it had more millennials than any other area in the city. Crowds are relocating to the neighborhood, drawn to its proximity to Midtown and Columbia University, the lively diversity and lovely architecture, and (relatively) reasonable rents. It’s the latest chapter in a fascinating, if checkered, neighborhood story. Long before the Heights became an area named after George Washington, the narrow swath of land was home to Lenape and Munsee tribes. Later came Revolutionary War forts, then country estates and farms. When the streetcars began running and lower Manhattan got crowded in the late 1800s, residents fled uptown, and the subways kicked off another construction boom in the early 1900s. Washington Heights evolved into an exciting mix of cultures. “In the 19th century, the Germans, Finn, Scotch and Irish came (to the Heights),” author Francesca Burns wrote in an article for the New York Public Library’s TeachNYPL program. “Near the turn of the century, the Italians came. During the 1930s and ‘40s, the German Jews came. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, the Greeks, Cubans and Puerto Ricans came. Starting in the mid-sixties and continuing to the present day, the Dominicans came and keep coming. While small in number, Ecuadoran, Mexican, Russian, Serbian and Syrian immigrants are the newest groups in the area today.” (continued on the next page) Washington Heights’ different cultures did not always coexist peacefully. Highbridge Park next to the Harlem River often saw clashes between white gangs and black and Hispanic residents. In 1957, one teenaged boy was killed and another seriously wounded during one such altercation. The neighborhood’s Audubon Ballroom was also the site of the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X. And by the ‘80s, much of the violence in the area could be linked to the growing crack epidemic and other drug-related turmoil. “The late eighties and early nineties were the nadir for the neighborhood,” Jon Michaud wrote in the New Yorker in 2015. “The population dropped; poverty increased.” Schools languished and the murder rate climbed. Fortunately, The Heights has assets that aided in its gradual rebirth. Historian Robert W. Snyder, author of the book “Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City,” told the New Yorker that the neighborhood has been anchored by its institutions, including George Washington High School, Yeshiva University, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and The Cloisters, a venerable museum of medieval history set in a park of four acres. In addition, Washington Heights streets house a wealth of historic architecture. When New York Times writer Dominique Browning first got off the subway there in 2012, she felt she was back in time.