“Many of us assume that some people come into the world as inherent creators, and we imagine masterpieces springing, fully formed, from the brains of those unique geniuses,” writes author Daniel Pollack-Pelzner in the prologue of his new book, “Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist.” The prologue continues: “And yet I soon learned that was not how most people who knew Lin-Manuel as a child would have described him.”
The authorized biography about the “In the Heights” and “Hamilton” creator will be released by Simon & Schuster on Sept. 9. Through interviews with Miranda as well as more than 150 of his teachers and collaborators, “from his elementary-school bus drive to Andrew Lloyd Webber,” Pollack-Pelzner writes, the tome pieces together a portrait of Miranda not only as an award-winning creator, but as a perpetual student of craft.
Pollack-Pelzner took trips to Puerto Rico and Miranda’s childhood home, listened to rough early recordings, watched old home movies and more to get inside the process and discover the essence of the person. In this exclusive excerpt, Pollack-Pelzner delves into Miranda’s first Tony Award-winning musical: “In the Heights.” He describes the process of turning the song “96,000” from a decent track into a showstopper.
Chapter 10: Broadway
Jeffrey Seller had a plan. For “In the Heights” to get ready for Broadway, it needed showstoppers — musical numbers that soared until the audience exploded with applause. That would not only allow ticket buyers to feel that they’d had an ecstatic experience but also address the critics’ concern that the musical didn’t feel momentous enough, that it didn’t have high enough stakes. If the creative team could show that the barrio characters’ dreams of education, economic security and finding home felt epic and urgent to them, perhaps audiences would feel it too.
Jeffrey turned to their reliable model: “Fiddler on the Roof.” He’d read a book, “The Making of a Musical,” by Jerome Robbins’s assistant director, that described the development of “Fiddler”’s big first-act number, “To Life.” The song started with a single voice—Tevye toasting the occasion of his daughter’s engagement — then swelled into a communal celebration, a lively dance, a dream of prosperity, a rousing affirmation of life. Jeffrey thought that was a lesson for the big first-act number in “Heights,” “96,000,” when each character imagined what they’d do if they won the lottery. “When we did ‘96,000’ Off-Broadway, it was a great number, but it never got over the rafters,” he recalls. Instead of building to an emphatic climax, the song faded away like a fleeting dream. Jeffrey handed each of the six creatives—Lin-Manuel, Tommy [Kail], Quiara [Alegría Hudes], Bill [Sherman], [Alex] Lac[amoire] and Andy [Blankenbuehler] — a copy of “The Making of a Musical” and told them, “You must turn ‘96,000’ into ‘To Life.’”
