Lin Manuel Miranda Essay

Lin-Manuel Miranda Brings Life onto a Latino Stage

Tony winning composer-lyricist, Lin-Manuel Miranda, said that, "Life is like a play, and a script can be created with each experience lived". His father always told him, "Lin Manuel...to be successful you must study." (Univision) That's because he always liked best the arts, music, and other afterschool activities. His parents helped him realize that an education was necessary and that his dreams would come true by finishing his studies and with the help from his parents, he did just that. Lin-Manuel was able to create a musical that reflected his own life, for which he won numerous accolades: records in sales, a Grammy, four wins out of a record breaking thirteen nominations at the 62nd Annual

In the winter of 1999, college sophomore Miranda applied to put up a new show in the student-run ’92 Theatre at Wesleyan University. Being away from his Puerto Rican culture, he began to feel homesick and was soon inspired to write the biggest show of his career. At this time, he had one song and a title: In the Heights. He was given the theater for weekend the following semester in April and Miranda began the first revision of In the Heights his sophomore year of college. Because of the short amount of time, he barely slept, barely ate; he just wrote. Miranda put in all the things he’d always he’d always wanted to see onstage such as, propulsive freestyle rap scenes outside of bodegas and salsa numbers that also revealed character and story. He tried to write the kind of musical that he’d want to be in. He also saw Rent and it was the first time he'd seen a musical that took place "now" and a light bulb really went off. "You can write a musical about 'you'; about your 'life'." (PBS) Once he realized this, Miranda began writing about his life living in Washington Heights. Once his original college production was put up, two remarkable things happened for Miranda. First, In the Heights broke box-office

We felt we could spend two days in this world without a knife showing up… The real dramatic issue in Heights is really economic, understandably a hard thing to dramatize and feel really prevalent…So for some critics who said there wasn’t enough conflict in the story, I don’t think they get how hard it is to own a small business in New York City… You don’t need a knife or a crack dealer on the corner to understand that this is not an easy life.”