![]() “Here is someone who worked so hard without the world noticing at all what he was creating. “As I was editing Tick, Tick …BOOM! by day, and then writing songs for Encanto by night, I couldn’t help but feel grateful,” he says now, connecting this feeling to Larson’s legacy. The result was In the Heights, the beginning of a resume now known to pretty much everyone, and what would eventually result in Miranda’s dizzying schedule. He followed Larson’s lead in setting his story in the neighborhood and among the people he’d grown up around. Rent would be the inspiration for his own first musical. ![]() It was a dream gig for Miranda, who had fallen head over heels for Rent when he first saw it as a teenager. In 2014, it got a revival starring a then-little known composer named Lin-Manuel Miranda. Since then, Rent has become one of the most popular and important pieces of musical theater in American history, and that boosted the fortunes of Tick, Tick …BOOM!, which gained a cult following and a small, off-Broadway presence. He died suddenly at 35, the very day of Rent’ s first preview. His sense of morality turned out to be darkly prescient. It was, suffice to say, a hit - but Larson would never know it. It wasn’t a big hit, but it did OK and attracted the attention of some deep pockets who wanted to see what else Larson had going for him. So he wrote Tick, Tick …BOOM!, a small production that didn’t need many investors. All of this impressed upon Larson a sense of looming morality beyond his years. He was also reeling from the news that his friend Matt O’Grady had been diagnosed with HIV. He was a young man, but he was already feeling like a failure, his first attempt at a big sci-fi musical withering on the vine for lack of investor interest. Larson wrote Tick, Tick …BOOM! in 1989, on the cusp of turning 30. Larson’s impact on Miranda’s life is very direct and very literal. Miranda isn’t speaking metaphorically here. That’s his direct effect on my work and the things that seep into my work.” I don’t think it’s an accident that my Alexander Hamilton and Jonathan Larson share that same DNA. “Because Jonathan Larson is the artist that made me want to write musicals in the first place. “It was very easy to connect to that original impulse working on Tick, Tick …BOOM!, every day,” he says. Fortunately, in this case, it came naturally. For a guy like Miranda, the latter is every bit as vital as the former. That, obviously, is what it takes when you say “yes” to as many projects as Miranda does. “But I found myself having to multitask a great amount because the pandemic sort of squished all my projects into the same timeframe.” He says he put together a daily schedule ( Tick, Tick …BOOM! in the mornings, Encanto in the evenings, for example) and returned to the type of grind that got his career off the ground in the first place. “I’m not a great multitasker,” he says, impossibly. This year alone he’s released his feature film debut Tick, Tick …BOOM! - a movie adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s autobiographical musical - along with handling the music for Disney’s Encanto, to say nothing of the film adaptation of his first Broadway play In the Heights, not to mention the writing he’s doing on the live action adaptation of Little Mermaid, while also juggling …you know what, just go check out his IMDb page. On the day of our conversation, Miranda appears relaxed although he claims to be stressed. “Why do you write like you’re running out of time?” Why indeed? It’s hard not to map that onto Miranda’s own career, not to see his eyes peeking out from behind all his work. His characters, from his Broadway riff on Alexander Hamilton to Tick, Tick …BOOM! ’s Jonathan Larson, are chasing the beating heart of life, desperate to make something of their one, wild, beautiful life. He’s not only fascinated by making art, but in making art about the artistic process. If you know any of Miranda’s work - and how on earth could you not? - you’re probably aware that he’s obsessed with this idea. “I think the hardest and most important thing we can do as artists is connect to the original impulse that got us doing this in the first place,” says Lin-Manuel Miranda.
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