Lin-Manuel Miranda on Disney, Sondheim and Hamilton
2021 was a busy year for Lin- Manuel Miranda, the film version of his musical In The Heights was released in theatres, he composed the soundtrack for Disney’s Encanto and made his directorial debut with Tick, Tick... Boom!
The Emmy, Grammy and Tony award winner is now in the running for joining the illustrious EGOT club after the song Dos Oruguitas from Encanto has been nominated for an Oscar.
He took time out of his busy schedule to speak to Nihal Arthanayake on the Headliners podcast about his career, what inspires him and how he’s subconsciously combined elements of all his current projects!
Tick, Tick... Boom! was like a ‘message in a bottle’
Tick, Tick... Boom! is based on a musical of the same name by Jonathan Larson, who went on to create the Tony award winning musical Rent.
He said watching the stage version of Tick, Tick... Boom! as a “terrified senior at university” helped him decide to pursue musical theatre.
“It was like a message in a bottle from Jonathan Larson,” he said.
“It was a show about Jonathan spending his 20s writing a musical that no one wanted to see, and about turning 30 and still having nothing to show for it.
“[The show] also asked the very tough question, are you OK doing this if the world never notices while you’re alive that you are writing these things?
“That clarified my resolve… it made me realise I would [create musical theatre] even if I had to do another job to pay the rent, I was OK with that.”
The pandemic forced him to multitask
Due to Covid-19 lockdowns pausing some of the productions he was working on, Lin-Manuel found himself having to work on multiple projects at once.
“I was editing Tick, Tick... Boom! by day, writing songs by night and I’m also talking to Alan Menken about songs we’re writing for Little Mermaid,” he said.
“The way I would approach it when I felt overwhelmed was like I’m back in college and [each project] was a class.
“When I step back and think of it that way, it gives me energy and also allows me to see connections between the things I’m making.
“There are folks who have pointed out that there’s a little Tick, Tick... Boom! reference in the lyrics to Encanto’s song Surface Pressure.
“That’s certainly subconscious but it’s because I was working on these things in tandem and I was thinking about the ways in which these different works of art I’m working on are connected.”
Boredom as a child taught him to be creative
Lin-Manuel says he doesn’t remember a time in his life where his parents had “less than three jobs at minimum”, which, coupled with a sister who was several years older than him, left him often alone as a child.
“Being left to your own devices is really quite a gift when you’re young,” he said.
“This was pre-smartphone era where you had to entertain yourself and so I was always making something, and whiling away the hours drawing or writing or making up songs or making a movie with my dad’s enormous camcorder.
“I’m happiest when I’m making something because I sort of fell in love with that as a way of, as Jonathan Larson put it, what a way to spend the day.”
He considers Stephen Sondheim a mentor
Jonathan Larson was mentored by the late Stephen Sondheim, composer of West Side Story and Sweeney Todd, and as such his character appears throughout Tick, Tick... Boom!
Nihal asked who Lin-Manuel’s looked up to in musical theatre as a mentor.
“Well that’s the crazy thing about Stephen Sondheim, he was that to all of us,” he said.
“What was so stunning and beautiful in the wake of his passing, that was a heart-breaking moment, but the gift in it was seeing how many hundreds of people he inspired and took the time to write to and took the time to mentor and encourage.
“Even if it wasn’t a close mentorship, it was a ‘keep going’, or it was founding Young Playwrights Inc. so the next generation of playwrights would have an impetus to write within this field. And that legacy is neck and neck with his legacy of incredible writings.
“So, Steve was that to all of us and I certainly have my heroes in this field and really great models.
“I feel like I have great heroes and role models and I’ve been lucky enough to meet them and learn from them.”
He believes the arts are vital for building empathy
When asked if he thinks art can be a catalyst for change, Lin-Manuel said art can be anything the artist wants it to be.
"I think we look to art for escape sometimes,” he said.
"One of the great gifts of Hamilton is the way in which that show’s score is immersive enough… I’ve talked to a lot of folks who use it as a place to feel feelings that they didn’t want to feel in their real lives.
"They’re like, ‘let me go into Hamilton’s life or Eliza’s life and put that soundtrack on for two hours and I can kind of reset my brain’.
"I think the greatest tool, or the greatest asset, of the arts is empathy. You know reading a great novel allows you to be inside the brain of someone who may be nothing like you.
"Seeing a great film may put you in the shoes of, or in the part of the world you may never get to visit, and come away with a new understanding that you didn’t have before. That’s a wonderful side effect of the arts.”
