Latin Post
Changing The Game: Lin-Manuel Miranda
Latin Post’s latest “Changing the Game” series features composer, lyricist and performer Lin-Manuel Miranda.
From Wikipedia:
Miranda was born in Manhattan, New York City, and grew up in the neighborhood of Inwood. He is of Puerto Rican descent. His father is a former political advisor, who advised Ed Koch. Growing up, Lin helped create jingles, including one used for Eliot Spitzer’s 2006 campaign.
After graduating from Hunter College High School, Miranda went on to attend Wesleyan University and graduated in 2002. During his time there, he co-founded a hip-hop comedy troupe called Freestyle Love Supreme. He wrote the earliest draft of In the Heights in 1999, his sophomore year of college. After the show was accepted by Second Stage, Wesleyan’s student theater company, Miranda worked on adding “freestyle rap … bodegas, and salsa numbers.”[5] It played from April 20-April 22, 1999. He wrote and directed several other musicals at Wesleyan. He also acted in many other productions, ranging from musicals to Shakespeare. In 2015, he received an honorary doctorate from Wesleyan.
There’s more at his official website:
Lin-Manuel Miranda is an award-winning composer, lyricist, and performer, as well as a 2015 MacArthur Foundation Award recipient. His current musical, Hamilton – with book, music and lyrics by Mr. Miranda, in addition to him playing the title role – opened on Broadway in 2015 following a sold-out run at New York’s Public Theater. The Original Broadway Cast Recording of Hamilton won the 2016 Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album. Off-Broadway, Hamilton received a record-breaking 10 Lortel Awards, as well as 3 Outer Critic Circle Awards, 8 Drama Desk Awards, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best New Musical, and an OBIE for Best New American Play. Hamilton is the 2015 recipient of the the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History. Material from the show was previewed at the White House during its first-ever Evening of Poetry & Spoken Word in 2009, in Lincoln Center Theater’s 2012 American Songbook Series and at New York Stage and Film’s 2013 Powerhouse Theatre Season at Vassar College.
