Interview: VIVO & IN THE HEIGHTS Screenwriter Quiara Alegría Hudes on Music as Medicine & Second Chances

It's a big summer for Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter Quiara Alegría Hudes, who wrote the scripts for both In The Heights and the Netflix animated musical Vivo.

Vivo follows a one-of-kind kinkajou (aka a rainforest "honey bear," voiced by Lin-Manuel Miranda), who spends his days playing music to the crowds in a lively square with his beloved owner Andrés (Buena Vista Social Club's Juan de Marcos). Though they may not speak the same language, Vivo and Andrés are the perfect duo through their common love of music.

The movie also features new music by Miranda. It's directed by Oscar nominee Kirk DeMicco (The Croods) and co-directed by Brandon Jeffords (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2).

BroadwayWorld had the pleasure of speaking to Hudes about the five-year production process on Vivo, discovering the characters (and what they look like), and the core values around which she wrote the script.

Hudes is an American playwright, lyricist and essayist. Her play Elliot, A Soldier's Fugue was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. She won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play Water by the Spoonful.

Read the full interview below!

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First of all, I wanted to congratulate you on the success of the In The Heights film and commend you on Vivo, which I'm sure is going to make just as much of a splash. Was this your first time screenwriting for animation? How was writing Vivo different from your usual work?

Yeah, it's my first animated! It's really different, because when you're doing live action - like with In The Heights - you film the scene and then that's what you have. With animated, you can continue to make adjustments up until you decide to stop adjusting it. It feels a little bit more dynamic and long-term, and there's more opportunities to learn from your mistakes. So, if you're really not happy with how a sequence turned out, you take that as a cue that there's room for improvement, and you go and work on that.

So, it was really fun! That's very comparable to writing stage musicals, which get processed and workshopped and developed over many years. So, in some ways, it felt quite familiar - even though it was the first time I had done animated.

Was this a COVID-era project for you? What was it like being in production on a movie while the world was falling apart?

I had been working on it for probably four or five years, and so it suddenly became one, but that's not how it had always been. I have to give it up for the Sony Animation team - the animation studio worked so relentlessly hard during the lockdown.

But it was sad! I mean, it's a joyous movie, but for me it was very sad to no longer be in the room with Kirk [DeMicco] as we wrote it together, and as he was making directing choices. That's one of the really fun parts of collaboration, is just riding the energy in the room. And that energy doesn't work the same way on Zoom or just on emails. But that is what it is! Both of the movies - we delayed In The Heights a year, we delayed Vivo many months, and then at a certain point it's like, this is where the world is, and this piece is ready to go - so the world will get it now.

What is it like to have these really long-term collaborative relationships with some of the artists you got to work with on both films?

It's really fun to work with people over time! Like, Alex Lacamoire - I know his style really well, so I don't think, usually, it's very standard practice that the score composer and the arranger and orchestrator are emailing the screenwriter about their work. But because we have all worked together so well and we kind of function as a unit, he would ask my input on things.

And 95% of the time, it's just a thumbs-up, this sounds great. But every once in a while they'd have a question or some thoughts to share, and it's cool. And I think he enjoyed being a part of it - seeing how the drafts progressed - also during that time.

You said you've been working on this four, five years - what was the timeline like? When did things really start to get moving? Were there ebbs and flows?

Around 2015 or 16 - we got Kirk DeMicco on board in 2016. I helped choose the director. I wanted to choose a co-writer, too, because I had some other stuff going on. Like, I was also working on the In The Heights screenplay, and I knew I wasn't going to be able to devote 100% of my time. So it was really fun getting to choose a writing collaborator.

And then we just threw ourselves in! We had a lot of story to create, we had characters to create. The central themes we landed on as we were in restaurants just brainstorming and scribbling notes on napkins, it was like - music is medicine. That was a universe we lived in for a while - that kind of abstract thought. Music is medicine.

I also kept thinking, wild child, Gabi. I wanted a wild girl to come in and, like, smash up the refined energy of these dudes. So, that was really exciting to me.

And then the major thing, like, scaffolding before we started really getting into the nuts-and-bolts writing was the delivery of the love song. That's what would be the frame of the story.

At some point, we had more complicated frames, and we were like, "Is that too simple?" And then we were like, "That's okay. Love can be simple sometimes."

So, once we kind of circled in on that, we started the process of drafting, and writing the scenes, and figuring out act two, and how do you get through the Everglades? And what happens when the road trip gets stymied? Those sorts of things.

What did you end up loving most about Vivo?

I loved - because it was my first animated, I didn't know when I would get to see characters drawn. But that happened pretty early in the process. So, I would be in a very rough draft of place with the characters, and all of a sudden I would see Gabi, even when she's only been in the screenplay for one draft. So, those moments are really thrilling - the first moment seeing Andrés, the first moment seeing Marta, and seeing how they were developing the diva. And it was all very exciting, in particular, because body figures and body shape diversity, I had told them, is really important to me as a writer. I want to see different shapes and sizes of bodies. I was just blown away when I saw how they were drawing the characters.

Did you have any input? Did they come out how they looked in your head?

I mean, the crazy thing with Gabi was that character is, in part, based on my sister. But I never showed them a picture of my sister, and then - when I saw how she was drawn - I mean, she had identical clothes to that as a child. Like, I have since shown them the photographs, like, "How did you do this?!" So, that really blew my mind.

You mentioned "Music is medicine" as a theme you wrote the film around - is that the theme you feel ultimately encapsulates the film? What messages do you hope the audience will take away?

There's a few core messages there for me, but one of them - you know, the pandemic gives us a lot of reflection time, for better or for worse, and the notion of what a second chance means is one that still resonates with me. Like, okay, I was writing that draft of the script a few years ago, but that still really hits home. I think as I reflect and think of what I could have done better in my life and what I could have done differently, I do embrace the story of someone who actually seizes on a moment and an opportunity to get a second chance and actually takes it and gets some closure in their life. I find elegance and aspiration in that.

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Watch the trailer for Vivo here: