BWW TV: When Lin-Manuel Met Nicholas 'IN THE HEIGHTS'

These are bleak times for Broadway, every day it seems another show is closing, this show isn't coming and that show is on its last legs, and every person you speak to tells you it is only going to get worse. Of course they've been saying that for years, but something in the air is bringing a slight chill to the future, that was until a bright ray of light burst in this past week and gave us a wee bit of hope, no it wasn't a brand new Broadway bound hit, well not in the strictest sense, it was a young boy from New Orleans who dared to make his musical theatre dreams come true.

BroadwayWorld's Craig Brockman and Eddie Varley got to the very big "heart" of the story, Craig ventured to the stage of the Richard Rodgers to ask Lin-Manuel Miranda how it all began for BWW TV, while Eddie spoke to Nicholas Dayton, the young man who started all the online excitement.

Eddie: I was excited to get the chance to reach out to Nicholas' mother, Theresa about her son and his passionate interest for In The Heights, "I've always been a big fan of Broadway and with Nicholas the "apple doesn't fall far from the tree", he's always been interested in musicals too, so with In The Heights it was sort of a word of mouth at first , you know, from going to BroadwayWorld, hah, we heard about In The Heights. From there, we found the show website, and Nicholas was immediately captured by the music, he has always been interested in hip hop and modern kinds of music, and having been able to find it in the musical theatre genre, the combination of the two just blew him away." 

There is a sense of such pride as she continues to describe her son's road to "the heights" of Broadway, "So, he began studying it, spending a lot of time in his room listening to the music...and this was even before the cd came out! Then a good friend of mine bought him the cd as a present and it just spoke to him, it was everything he liked about music and theatre in one nice little neat package."

I can't help but join in on her excitement about discovering the magic of the show, I felt the same thrill when I first saw it Off-Broadway at 37 Arts, she clued me into how it brought something special out of him, "He just loved it, he just went with it! There just seems to be something in it for everyone, and the good news for Nicholas was, it just truly spoke to him, it speaks to all of us...

Being from New Orleans, there is not a lot of opportunity to go see Broadway shows, and I'm a school teacher and a single mom, so there isn't a real chance to travel to New York City to see these shows, you know, and after Katrina there hasn't been as many tourists come around, so Nicholas was basically able to take this interest with In The Heights and deal with it the best way he could , by listening to it,  learning it and studying it.

One day he came to me and said, "Mom I really love this show, do you mind recording this video for me, I want to put it up on You Tube." And I always try to encourage him, you know, so I said sure, never imagining that , or thinking that it would ever come to anything. It was just a way to satisfy his creative desires, he had no other way, it was the only way he could do this, not having the ability to see the show. So, I shot the video, we did it in one take, (!), then I helped edit it, and put it up, and slowly but surely it started getting a lot of hits, it was a slow roll to for it to get started, but then it caught on...and the next thing we knew Lin was leaving comments for him and that is when things really hit!

Nicholas was just so excited, he started doing more videos, he knew it all, he knew the music inside and out, backwards and forwards, all of it, haha! Of course, he had never seen it at that point, but he had studied the synopsis, he gets very intense and obsessive when he is inspired, so he wanted to make sure he understood what was going on in the songs and who was singing what to whom, you know.  I was impressed with it, and I'm just really happy that other people were too, it is always nice to hear it from someone else, especially when that someone else is Lin! Straight to the top."

I discussed with her the power of being inspired, how the hope of theatre is to change us, enrich us, In The Heights certainly did with Nicholas, I asked how it took the next step now that it was clear the videos were reaching people, most of all the Broadway cast itself, "Nicholas and Lin started an online friendship, Christopher Jackson too, and I think they saw he really did have a love and passion for musical theatre, so there was a correspondence  that continued, we finally had planned to go to New York, we saved over the summer, and Thanksgiving seemed perfect because school was out, so of course we'd be seeing In The Heights. Nicholas wrote Lin and Chris that he'd be coming to see the show and had hoped to meet the guys at most at the stage door, something like that, but Lin had another "idea", an idea for a new You Tube video, and of course Nicholas couldn't say ‘yes" fast enough, Lin wanted to make sure he was up for it, but you know he was "born up for it!" 

Her voice rises as she details the events leading up to the night of the show, "we went up there to New York, and Nicholas was embraced and supported in a way I never imagined he could be by the cast and crew of the show, and it was absolutely amazing, it was like I told Lin, he peered into my son's imagination and created a reality from that and that is a gift that there is no 'thank you' for, words just seem hollow. What he has done for my son is just beyond words, he gave Nicholas the power to believe that dreams do come true. Just by taking him in, and putting him up on that stage, letting him experience all that around him, but it is just to me a small part of it, because every moment off-stage mattered too, they way they interacted with him, the way they supported him and spoke to him, everybody made him believe in himself and whatever he wanted to do on that stage he could do. That is an amazing gift". 

I tell her that I think that Nicholas inspired them too, Lin-Manuel Miranda had the music of In The Heights in his head since he was an inspired young man, not much older than Nicholas, there is a sense that not only were the cast members inspiring the budding Broadway performer, but he was also inspiring them, by reminding each actor how much they dreamed of the very moment they were giving him by embracing his dream as their own. For isn't that one of the dreams of why we do it, to inspire and touch someone else to create? The very heart of In The Heights is the belief in the simple inspirations that surround us everyday in our lives.

My next question to his mother was what happened at the moment that final note was sung by her son for the video, something that is a thrill to watch on the video as the lights fade, "At the end of the final take the cast began to clap for Nicholas, they completely encircled him and the cast kept clapping for him, they wrapped around him and clapped and clapped and clapped. The look on Nicholas' face at that point, the fact he was soaking up all that support, he was soaking up all the faith they had in him, at that moment the look on his face seemed like he could believe in his own dreams, he could go where he wanted to go, it was the most wonderful transformation, because in the beginning he was scared, but by that final moment,-that final take with them all around him, he was transformed." What a gift, a truly priceless gift.

Isn't that what we all see when we watch the video, we see that pure joy on his face, the joy every one of us wants with our art, why we do it, a life in the theatre? I reveal my personal inspiration to her and Nicholas about Michael Crawford, when my dreams of the theatre really became a fairly unstoppable force, it was after seeing him in The Phantom of the Opera, his power and grace in the role was unlike anything I had ever seen on a stage, much like Nicholas being transported to Washington Heights by Lin's joyous score,  I was pulled deeply into the "Music of the Night" by an actor who seemed to open up his soul as he sang. Imagine my shock when I received a letter back after I had sent one of my own to him in those early days at the Majestic and soon after was invited backstage to meet the man behind the mask himself! Theresa herself is a fan of Michael Crawford, adding he inspires everybody!

Years later Mr. Crawford continues to be a source of guidance for me, just as I'm certain Lin-Manuel Miranda will continue to be for Nicholas, as a matter of fact it is Nicholas himself that best sums it up when I speak to him about his musical theatre adventure "In The Heights", "I really feel that now that everything is out there, I feel that I can make a difference, I feel that dreams can come true, you can do what you want to do, if you work hard, you can do anything if you believe in yourself."  I share with him how much those final moments of the video meant, how emotional it was to watch his dream come true. For every person who dreams of standing on a stage, somewhere , anywhere, for every person who actually does stand on a stage eight times a week, and for every person that cheers them on as they do, Nicholas reminded us why we dream it and do it and live it. Because we love it and need it. That kind of passion will see us through the rough patches, just as it brought a little boy from New Orleans to the stage of the Richard Rodgers Theatre. I think the best way to end this little story is with Lin-Manuel's lyrics for the final moments of the show that inspired Nicholas Dayton to dream big;

"You hear that music in the air?  Take the train to the top of the world, and I'm there, I'm Home!"

Video Shot and Edited by Craig Brockman

Interview by Eddie Varley