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!
