In the Heights

The video I chose is the 2008 Tony Award performance of the hit new Broadway musical “In the Heights” written by Lin-Manuel Miranda which took the 2008 “Best musical” award from the Tony’s. The story takes place in one of Manhattan’s predominantly Hispanic communities, the story itself has many main plots or story lines so I will just out line a few. The main character (the guy who starts the song off) dreams of opening a bar back home in the Dominican Republic, Nina (the woman with long dark hair) is in love with Benny (the guy in a white button up and black dress pants) but her father disapproves of their union because he wants his daughter to continue her education at Stanford even if he has to sell his business to finance her, meanwhile their friend wins 96,000 in the lottery (prompting a musical number.)

Why did I outline all of this instead of just analyzing the video? Well sometimes you have to delve deeper into a story and do some research in order to properly understand the true message the video is trying to convey, for example you cant just grab someone from Budapest, sit them down and show them this video and expect them to understand why 96,000 would mean so much to a community like theirs, they would need to know some sort of back ground of the group.

What I enjoy about this video (other than the amazing performance) is the message Lin-Manuel is trying to convey, that he wants a musical or stage show that tells the story of another culture that you don’t see a lot of on the stage and it even does so in a style of music completely different to what regular theater goers are used to.