In The Heights: Taking it from stage to screen

In the heights
(New York – 6/9/21 – “In The Heights” World Premiere Opening Night 2021 Tribeca Festival )

Lin-Manuel Miranda completed his first draft of the stage musical In The Heights during his sophomore year at Wesleyan University, where it was performed as part of the school’s Second Stage.

There, the 80-minute one-act played for a mere three days, but the potential for a grander production was evident from the start. Even now, after a wildly successful Broadway run and film adaptation, Miranda is amazed that it all started when he was still that young. Having recently seen a stage production of the work, he muses, “I went to see something a child wrote—a child version of me.”

It wasn’t until later, when Miranda and his team were building towards an off-Broadway run, that playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes joined the project. Hudes had recently moved to New York and a reading of a play she had written about the Latino community in Philadelphia had attracted the attention of producer Jill Furman, who arranged a meeting between Hudes and Miranda.

Hudes points to this first meeting with Miranda as not only a turning point for the project, but also for her life. “I think when we had our first meal together, the things that we had in common were how much the family stories that we held meant to us—they fueled us, gave us joy, purpose— even when we were asking big questions about identity: are we Puerto Rican enough? are we American enough? We both had really strong cores, which was clear from that meal together. That’s the stuff that true friendship is built on.”

Their collaboration would later earn them both Tony Awards, numerous world tours and legions of fans. After a stint off-Broadway, where it collected nine Drama Desk nominations with two wins (including Miranda’s Most Promising Male Performer), In the Heights opened in the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway on March 9, 2008. It ran for nearly 1,200 performances and racked up 13 Tony nominations, earning four—Best Musical, Original Score, Choreography and Orchestrations.

The accolades did not end there, as the Original Cast Recording won the production a Grammy for Best Musical Show Album, and the Pulitzer Prize committee named the show a finalist for its accolade for drama.

Later, while In the Heights was winding its 10-year path from Broadway stage to motion picture screen, Miranda transformed the theatrical landscape with Hamilton, which found itself at the center of zeitgeist discussions about culture and representation, presenting the story of the founding and shaping of America as a whip-smart, hip-hop musical epic forged by immigrants.

Miranda and the show were steeped in awards, among them a Pulitzer Prize in Drama, 11 Tonys (out of a record-tying 16 nominations) and a special Kennedy Center Honors (for Miranda, Thomas Kail, Andy Blankenbuehler, and Alex Lacamoire) for their collaborative achievement in “Hamilton” and its continued artistic impact.

By the time the film In the Heights landed Chu as director, translating the show from stage to screen had already been at the forefront of filmmaker discussion. Hudes boils it down: “On the stage, In the Heights runs two-and-a-half hours. There are many lead characters, and if we tried to get all that onscreen, the movie would be too long and lack focus. For me, it wasn’t about cutting, it was about focusing.”

The Difficult Choices

Hard choices were made, like saying goodbye to a handful of numbers and the character Camilla Rosario (Nina’s mother and Kevin’s wife) from the original production. After that decision, “it was important to me to still have a traditional married couple in the piece, so I decided that couple would now be Daniela and Carla, and they own the salon together,” Hudes supplies.

This allowed her to pay tribute to the impact queer individuals have had on communities like Washington Heights and, at the same time, shine some light on an oft-omitted group in media. “I didn’t know any queer women from the culture on stage and screen that were iconic for me… but I did in the community, big time. And so, it’s really nice to introduce Daniela and Carla as a couple now.”

Some characters’ stories were also enlarged and given more resonance for an audience in 2021. Nina’s reticence to return to Stanford is no longer fueled only by financial concerns, and Sonny is now facing immigration issues. “The amount of heat and intensity surrounding people like Sonny feels different now,” Hudes notes. “I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to fold a more immediate immigrant story into his character.”


RELATED: Lin-Manuel Miranda on In The Heights neighborhood


Miranda adds, “When you hear Sonny say, ‘racism latent to blatant,’ it’s more true now than it was in 2008.” He continues, “Quiara has written an incredible screenplay. I’ve always thought the themes of ‘In the Heights’ are home, community, and how America is made better by the people who come here to start new chapters in their lives. All of that is even more important now than when I first wrote the show.”

Choosing Jon M. Chu as director

For Miranda and Hudes, the most exciting element in the journey from stage to screen was bringing on Jon M. Chu as director. His passion for directing music and dance onscreen is in abundance in his films and his League of Extraordinary Dancers project. His critically and commercially successful adaptation of the bestselling novel Crazy Rich Asians was colorful and dynamic and changed the perception in Hollywood of how a blockbuster is supposed to look.

In The Heights World Premiere Opening Night 2021 Tribeca Festival – Pictured: Jon M. Chu (Director), Quiara Alegría Hudes, Lin Manuel-Miranda – Photo By: StarPix/Dave Allocca for Warner Bros. Studios – Location: Washington Heights, New York

Chu likewise felt the adaptation process was one of plumbing greater depths: “People kept asking me, ‘How will you make it cinematic? How will you blow it up? What will you do to make it big?’ In fact, we went inside. We went internal to blow it up, because internally, there’s no small story. In your mind, your dreams and your hopes are bigger than any journey to the moon, any adventure to some deserted island.”

Chu adds, “To show what people in Washington Heights dream about and imagine themselves as is as exciting as anything else. I credit Quiara and Lin with allowing us to find the cinematic voice of the piece. Not a lot of people would understand that translation. I’m sure it was scary at times, breaking it and re-breaking it, trying to find the right fit. But, without such an amazing partnership, we wouldn’t have been able to present it in film.”

Hudes assures any anxious fans of the show that no matter how it may have evolved for the screen, its essence remains the same: “‘In the Heights’ is a piece about joy. That has never changed.”

In the Heights is now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.

In the heights
(New York – 6/9/21 – “In The Heights” World Premiere Opening Night 2021 Tribeca Festival )

Lin-Manuel Miranda completed his first draft of the stage musical In The Heights during his sophomore year at Wesleyan University, where it was performed as part of the school’s Second Stage.

There, the 80-minute one-act played for a mere three days, but the potential for a grander production was evident from the start. Even now, after a wildly successful Broadway run and film adaptation, Miranda is amazed that it all started when he was still that young. Having recently seen a stage production of the work, he muses, “I went to see something a child wrote—a child version of me.”

It wasn’t until later, when Miranda and his team were building towards an off-Broadway run, that playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes joined the project. Hudes had recently moved to New York and a reading of a play she had written about the Latino community in Philadelphia had attracted the attention of producer Jill Furman, who arranged a meeting between Hudes and Miranda.

Hudes points to this first meeting with Miranda as not only a turning point for the project, but also for her life. “I think when we had our first meal together, the things that we had in common were how much the family stories that we held meant to us—they fueled us, gave us joy, purpose— even when we were asking big questions about identity: are we Puerto Rican enough? are we American enough? We both had really strong cores, which was clear from that meal together. That’s the stuff that true friendship is built on.”

Their collaboration would later earn them both Tony Awards, numerous world tours and legions of fans. After a stint off-Broadway, where it collected nine Drama Desk nominations with two wins (including Miranda’s Most Promising Male Performer), In the Heights opened in the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway on March 9, 2008. It ran for nearly 1,200 performances and racked up 13 Tony nominations, earning four—Best Musical, Original Score, Choreography and Orchestrations.

The accolades did not end there, as the Original Cast Recording won the production a Grammy for Best Musical Show Album, and the Pulitzer Prize committee named the show a finalist for its accolade for drama.

Later, while In the Heights was winding its 10-year path from Broadway stage to motion picture screen, Miranda transformed the theatrical landscape with Hamilton, which found itself at the center of zeitgeist discussions about culture and representation, presenting the story of the founding and shaping of America as a whip-smart, hip-hop musical epic forged by immigrants.

Miranda and the show were steeped in awards, among them a Pulitzer Prize in Drama, 11 Tonys (out of a record-tying 16 nominations) and a special Kennedy Center Honors (for Miranda, Thomas Kail, Andy Blankenbuehler, and Alex Lacamoire) for their collaborative achievement in “Hamilton” and its continued artistic impact.

By the time the film In the Heights landed Chu as director, translating the show from stage to screen had already been at the forefront of filmmaker discussion. Hudes boils it down: “On the stage, In the Heights runs two-and-a-half hours. There are many lead characters, and if we tried to get all that onscreen, the movie would be too long and lack focus. For me, it wasn’t about cutting, it was about focusing.”

The Difficult Choices

Hard choices were made, like saying goodbye to a handful of numbers and the character Camilla Rosario (Nina’s mother and Kevin’s wife) from the original production. After that decision, “it was important to me to still have a traditional married couple in the piece, so I decided that couple would now be Daniela and Carla, and they own the salon together,” Hudes supplies.

This allowed her to pay tribute to the impact queer individuals have had on communities like Washington Heights and, at the same time, shine some light on an oft-omitted group in media. “I didn’t know any queer women from the culture on stage and screen that were iconic for me… but I did in the community, big time. And so, it’s really nice to introduce Daniela and Carla as a couple now.”

Some characters’ stories were also enlarged and given more resonance for an audience in 2021. Nina’s reticence to return to Stanford is no longer fueled only by financial concerns, and Sonny is now facing immigration issues. “The amount of heat and intensity surrounding people like Sonny feels different now,” Hudes notes. “I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to fold a more immediate immigrant story into his character.”


RELATED: Lin-Manuel Miranda on In The Heights neighborhood


Miranda adds, “When you hear Sonny say, ‘racism latent to blatant,’ it’s more true now than it was in 2008.” He continues, “Quiara has written an incredible screenplay. I’ve always thought the themes of ‘In the Heights’ are home, community, and how America is made better by the people who come here to start new chapters in their lives. All of that is even more important now than when I first wrote the show.”

Choosing Jon M. Chu as director

For Miranda and Hudes, the most exciting element in the journey from stage to screen was bringing on Jon M. Chu as director. His passion for directing music and dance onscreen is in abundance in his films and his League of Extraordinary Dancers project. His critically and commercially successful adaptation of the bestselling novel Crazy Rich Asians was colorful and dynamic and changed the perception in Hollywood of how a blockbuster is supposed to look.

In The Heights World Premiere Opening Night 2021 Tribeca Festival – Pictured: Jon M. Chu (Director), Quiara Alegría Hudes, Lin Manuel-Miranda – Photo By: StarPix/Dave Allocca for Warner Bros. Studios – Location: Washington Heights, New York

Chu likewise felt the adaptation process was one of plumbing greater depths: “People kept asking me, ‘How will you make it cinematic? How will you blow it up? What will you do to make it big?’ In fact, we went inside. We went internal to blow it up, because internally, there’s no small story. In your mind, your dreams and your hopes are bigger than any journey to the moon, any adventure to some deserted island.”

Chu adds, “To show what people in Washington Heights dream about and imagine themselves as is as exciting as anything else. I credit Quiara and Lin with allowing us to find the cinematic voice of the piece. Not a lot of people would understand that translation. I’m sure it was scary at times, breaking it and re-breaking it, trying to find the right fit. But, without such an amazing partnership, we wouldn’t have been able to present it in film.”

Hudes assures any anxious fans of the show that no matter how it may have evolved for the screen, its essence remains the same: “‘In the Heights’ is a piece about joy. That has never changed.”

In the Heights is now in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.