Living in Los Angeles, I get to miss all the amazing NYC theatre happenings. Joy.

Case in point: In the Heights.

I grew up as a bit of a theatre geek. My obsession with the stage started pretty early in life when I enrolled in the theatre program at the Harlem School of the Arts. From there, I went on to Julia Richman’s Talent Unlimited theatre program… and from there, I kept those theatrical juices flowing by writing plays, directing, producing and doing anything I could while working a day job. Eventually, the day job morphed into working at the most prestigious Spanish language theatre in the US, Repertorio Español (The Spanish Repertory Theatre), as the Director of Audience Development. I say most prestigious not only because it’s true, but because I’m extrememly proud of the work that that small-sized, non-profit theater has produced throughout the years. It was one of the most intensely gratifying jobs I’ve ever had, and it allowed me to meet, work and hang out with insanely creative people from all over Latin America and Spain.

Many of the productions that I saw gave me an extremely strong sense of pride in my culture… though I have to say, I never really saw one that spoke to the Dominican-American experience. That’s why I was so excited to hear about In The Heights, the Tony Award winning Broadway musical conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda, a Puerto Rican who grew up in the Washington Heights area of NYC.

Now before you say, “Hey, I thought you said Dominican-American experience…”, you have to understand that if you lived or hung out in the Heights, you were living in a predominantly Dominican neighorhood, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t other cultural sprinklings. A broad-strokes, geographical explanation would go something like this:

Washington Heights (roughly 155th street – 204th street) mostly Dominican

Spanish Harlem (roughly East 96th – 116th street) mostly Puerto Rican

That’s basically the ultra-simplified gist of it, but there is so much more that goes into these two amazingly rich and complex cultures, which I’ll have to leave for a separate post.

In the meantime, I’m just so happy to see more diverse productions making it to the Broadway stage and hitting home runs. I can’t wait see In the Heights when I go back to New York… or hopefully, it will make its way to Los Angeles soon.

Now, hmmm… I’m inspired to look through my ol’ trusty filing cabinet. I wonder what ideas have been simmering there in the dark. ;)

PS: Thanks to Angela Sauceda for bringing it up again this past weekend. Oh, and go buy the cast album!