At this morning’s assembly Archivist Rick Teller explained the word “commencement.” It’s a strange word, considering it is, in fact, the ceremony that marks the end of ones school career. But, as he said, it also marks the beginning of the rest of the graduates’ lives. Our graduates are about to embark on new, uncharted territory and have thrilling new adventures. They are curious to see what the future holds. Theater students will get a glimpse of what that this future might look when two alums visit campus this Thursday.

If you happened to set foot in the Williston Theatre between 2011 and 2014 the names Oliver and Ben will be familiar to you. Both graduates of the Williston class of  2014, Ben Sarat and Oliver Demers  delighted audiences onstage in plays like Rumors, The Servant of Two Masters, and Urinetown. Both skilled comedians, their senior project, a combination of live improv and filmed sketch-comedy, played to a sold-out house. Ben and Oliver were more than skilled performers. Like many of our theatre students, Ben and Oliver were role models. Our younger actors and designers (now seniors themselves!) wanted to be just like them. From Ben and Oliver these younger students learned about the dedication it takes to do theatre and how critical it is to set up a welcoming and safe environment for everyone.

It is no surprise that Ben and Oliver went off to do some pretty exciting stuff at college.  Both rising college juniors now studying theatre, Oliver has already performed off-off Broadway and Ben’s college improv team, The Dimple Divers, won the top prize at ImprovBoston’s College Comedy Festival.  They’ve both studied at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade and other legendary comedy institutions. You can imagine my delight when they expressed interest in coming back to share what they’ve learned with current Williston students. It’s safe to say that their expertise has now outpaced mine!

The two will be returning to campus tomorrow, Thursday May 26th from 3-4  in the Studio Theatre, to lead an improv masterclass with our current students. We invite anyone who has taken a theatre class at Williston to join us for an afternoon of true hilarity. Be prepared to try some new improv games and learn new tricks of the comedy game. I can’t wait to see what Ben and Oliver have up their sleeves. If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at editkovski@williston.com.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator and star of In the Heights, used people in his own life as inspiration for the characters in his play. (In fact, Nina is based on his sister; Vanessa, his sister’s best friend.) As we discovered while talking with members of the original Broadway cast back in January, the experiences of the characters from In the Heights felt very real to the lives of the cast members’ families and loved ones. Part of our responsibility in producing In the Heights is to educate our community about the struggles of traditionally under served, immigrant communities like the one we see in the play. So, without further ado we introduce you to the characters from In the Heights. Be sure to check out the links below for more information about the community and people of Washington Heights.

THE COMMUNITY

Mr. Miranda writes the ensemble into nearly every song in his play– songs that would normally be solos like BREATHE and PACIENCIA Y FE have the entire ensemble  bring the song to life. This is not an accident. Mr. Miranda wants the audience to feel the presence of the community in Washington Heights. When they sing “Mira, alli esta nuestra estrella!” (Look, there is our star!) during Breathe we feel their faith for Nina and what her accomplishments mean to them. When they sing “You better learn Ingles” with Abuela Claudia, we feel the pressures that immigrants, past and present, have faced and continue to face today. It’s unusual for a musical to have the ensemble woven in to the story like this, but thankfully Mr. Miranda gives us the gift of these characters who enrich the play.  Without them the community wouldn’t feel like home, and the end of the play (no spoilers– come see the show!) would make little sense. Read this article to learn more about Washington Heights.

PIRAGUA GUY and GRAFFITI PETE

Piragua Guy is a beloved character from In the Heights. Played on Broadway by Eliseo Roman (who we had the honor of meeting on our trip to New York in January), Piragua Guy’s character grew in the development of the show because Mr. Roman brought so much depth to the role.  Anyone who has spent any time in New York City in the summer has probably seen a Piraguero– Spanish for Piragua Guy.  More than just giving New Yorkers relief on those humid summer days piragua, Puerto Rican snow cones, provide a link back to the islands and gives locals a taste of home. Piraguero’s are typically recent immigrants. They do what they can to survive, often sending money back home, while speaking very little English.  Watch this YouTube video about Piragua. Try not to let your mouth water too much, though!

While Unsavi calls Graffiti Pete “this little punk I gotta chase away,” Graffiti Pete saves the day. To learn more about graffiti read this blog post about our work with Wane COD, a graffiti writer from the Bronx.

DANIELA  AND CARLA

Daniela and Carla are brash and fun. Daniela owns the salon next to Usnavi’s bodega. They both love to spend their days gossiping about what’s going on in the neighborhood. Despite their love of a good piece of juicy gossip, Daniela and Carla’s support for their friends runs deep. After years in business, Daniela is closing the doors of her salon and moving to the Bronx because she can no longer pay the skyrocketing rents in Washington Heights. This is an all-too real conflict for mom and pop shops in communities all over New York City.  Read this article  from December 2015 to find out more about the current state of gentrification in Washington Heights.

THE ROSARIOS

Kevin and Camila Rosario immigrated from Puerto Rico when they were eighteen. They worked and saved for years before they were able to open a car service in Washington Heights. Taxi cabs are a way of life for wealthy New Yorkers, but many taxis won’t take passengers to low-income communities.  In response, local, mostly family-owned, car services provide the transportation yellow cabs refuse to. The Rosarios have done everything they can so their daughter, Nina can truly live the American Dream. They represent the voices of hundreds of thousands of immigrants to the U.S. and the sacrifices they must make in order to make a better life.

BENNY AND NINA

Benny has worked at Kevin’s dispatch booth since he was a kid. He has big dreams of going to business school and opening his own dispatch one day. Nina Rosario comes home after her first year at Stanford University. Nina was the star of her neighborhood. She defied the odds and got a full scholarship to Stanford– the first in her family to go to college. The challenges of transitioning from an underserved neighborhood to an Ivy League college proved to be greater than she’d imagined and she returns home after dropping out of school. The phenomenon of high-achieving first-generation college students struggling when they leave home is all too real. Listen to this story from This American Life, which Julia Wise used as character research, to learn more. It’s about an hour, but worth every minute.

ABUELA CLAUDIA AND SONNY

Abuela immigrated to Washington Heights from Cuba in the 1940’s. While Abuela means grandmother in Spanish, as Usnavi says “She’s not really my “abuela,” She practically raised me. This corner is her escuela (school).”  Abuela Claudia is the caretaker on the block. She looks after the neighborhood kids whose parents are working and makes sure they all stay on the right track. Through her song “Paciencia Y Fe” we see the correlation between the immigrant experience in 1943 and now. Sadly, not much has changed.

Sonny is the youngest character in the play. He works with his cousin Usnavi in the bodega but he has big dreams of becoming a community organizer. With his rap in 96,000 we get a glimpse into the changes he wants to bring to the neighborhood, and the world. See this list of community organizations working to empower the residents of Washington Heights.

USNAVI AND NINA

Usnavi, born in the Dominican Republic but raised in Washington Heights by Abuela Claudia, is a bodega owner. Bodega’s are a way of life in New York City (see a brief definition in this article from the Gothamist) and the owners are the caretakers of the block (a skill Usnavi undoubtedly learned from Claudia). They know what everyone orders for breakfast in the morning and exactly how they take their coffee. Usnavi dreams of returning to D.R. one day and opening a small bar near his parents’ hometown. He harbors a long-time crush on Vanessa, who has big dreams of her own. Growing up with a dysfunctional mother, Vanessa has worked at Daniela’s salon with hopes of saving enough money to move out of Washington Heights. Sadly, she lacks the good credit necessary to get an apartment in downtown Manhattan.

To learn more or to purchase tickets to the show visit our ticket website.  Seats are going fast so make your reservations soon.

On closing night of In the Heights, which ran for over twelve-hundred performances, Lin-Manuel Miranda, the show’s creator, composer, and star gave an impassioned speech. Freestyling in rhyme for almost eleven minutes, Mr. Miranda thanked everyone who helped bring the show to life. (The speech is on YouTube but– be warned– it contains some pretty colorful language!) He closed by assuring fans of the show that In the Heights would not end with its close on Broadway– it would have a second life in high schools all over the country. High school was, after all, where Mr. Miranda discovered his passion for musical theatre. He hoped In the Heights would, amongst other things, “teach kids in Ohio what a Puerto Rican flag looks like.”

In the Heights brings to life stories that typically don’t get told on the Broadway stage. The actors involved in the original Broadway production, most of whom were first or second generation, were able to play characters that reflected the experiences of their families—something that is, sadly, incredibly rare in the entertainment industry. How then, does a school like Williston take on a production like In the Heights? If Mr. Miranda had not explicitly urged high schools all over the U.S. to produce the show with actors who, likely, did not share the cultural background of the characters they would be portraying, we would not be doing the show. With a widespread practice of white actors playing non-white characters on the stage and screen (which still occurs at a disturbingly frequent rate) the voices of actors, directors, and writers of color have been systematically excluded from mainstream media. We see this continue today in the hashtag #oscarssowhite. But Mr. Miranda, the child of Puerto Rican immigrants, asks non-Latino communities to do his play. More than that he asks us learn about the immigrant community of Washington Heights. I took Miranda’s message to heart– not only because he asks us to, but because it brought back memories from one of the best times of my life.

In September of 2002 I started teaching theatre to seventh graders at IS 90,  a middle school on 168^th and Jumel Place, the southeast corner of Washington Heights.  All but two of my students spoke Spanish as their first language and many hopped between the Dominican Republic and New York frequently.  My students’ drive to connect was fierce and their positivity was overwhelming. Do you guys want to do a talent show? Yes! Do you want to go downtown to the Metropolitan Museum of Art? Yes! Do you want to see a commedia play at Julliard? Yes! Families with whom I could barely communicate did their best to connect with me and I learned as much Spanish as I could.  Life was not perfect by any means. Outside of their neighborhood my students felt invisible. They wondered how they would survive past high school and help support their families back in Puerto Rico and D.R. But the closeness of the community made life’s challenges more bearable. I was only in my second year of teaching when I started at I.S. 90 but it was the relationships with students and families there that set me on a path as an educator.  It is no surprise then, that I have always wanted to direct In the Heights– I see the stories of my former students onstage in Mr. Miranda’s play.

My connection to Washington Heights made it even more important to follow Mr. Miranda’s directive.  Luckily, the production team of Williston’s In the Heights was on board. (In fact, without Debra and Aaron Vega we would not have had half of the amazing experiences we had!).  Heshima Moja, an international recording artist, came on board as dialect coach. Moja not only taught us the difference between how Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans might say “Por Favor,” he taught us the cultural significance of each Spanish phrase and brought to life the exhaustion of trying to communicate in a language you do not speak. Knowing that the neighborhood is as much a character in the play as any of the people on the stage, we brought the cast to Washington Heights. We walked past I.S. 90 and the bodega where my students used to buy soda and lollipops after school. We saw Caridad (the Dominican restaurant Kevin Rosario refers to in Act I). We heard Spanish being spoken on the street and, sadly, witnessed first-hand the gentrification Usnavi warns about at the end of the play. (To read more about our trip to New York read this blog post from January.)

We came back to Easthampton armed with enough research to start building our characters—almost. That’s when our panel of Dominican and Puerto Rican community leaders from Holyoke came to visit. Sharing stories of what it feels like to constantly feel pulled between to homes, two cultures, two languages, it almost felt like Sonny, Vanessa, Nina, and Usnavi were in the room with us. All of these experiences deepened our connection to the characters in the play, but more than that they taught us about the contemporary immigrant experience.

We invite you to come talk with us about what we’ve learned. Share your family’s story with us, or about the time you discovered the true meaning of home. Hopefully this will make the reach of our research a little larger and open the door to make lasting change where all voices and experiences are heard with equal weight.

In the Heights is a play about the power of community, and this production would not have been possible without the thoughtful contribution of members of our own community. We are very grateful to those who have given their support along the way, especially the following:  the Academic Dean and Dean of Students’ office who approved our New York trip, athletic coaches who let their players out of games or practices to attend the trip, Williston parents who drove their children to school at the crack of dawn so we could get the most out of our time in New York, Debra and Aaron Vega who graciously invited their friends to contribute our panels and discussions, Priscilla Kane Hellweg at Enchanted Circle Theater who connected us with Heshima Moja, and Austin Sarat and Stephanie Sandler’s whose donation to the theatre program helped fund our trip to New York.

IN THE HEIGHTS runs April 28-30 and May 5-7. For tickets and more information visit our ticket website. 

I’m sure most of you haven’t heard that word before. It’s a German word that means “seated rehearsal.” Sitzprobes came to prominence in the opera world. They soon became part of the musical theatre process and something everyone on a show looks forward to because it can only mean one thing—opening night is coming soon.

You are still probably wondering what we actually do at a sitzprobe. Well, sorry to disappoint you hardcore German speakers out there, but we don’t actually sit at all. We stand!   And the most exciting part of the sitzprobe: we get to sing through the show  with an orchestra for the first time!

During most musical rehearsals a pianist plays along with the singers while the team works their way through the show. Separately,  musicians learn their music and have rehearsals with their conductor. In Williston productions the orchestra doesn’t come in until tech week. Sitzprobe, in this case about a week before our first tech rehearsal, is the opportunity for the musicians, singers, and music director to work together.

It’s an exciting time! Our sitzprobe was Monday, April 18.  With the orchestra playing with us we certainly felt the reality of our situation—opening night is coming up fast. It was also particularly special because the music in In the Heights is as much of a character as any person you will see on the stage. The sounds of the neighborhood are in the percussion. The feeling of the Caribbean comes through in the horns. Suddenly the hustle and bustle of New York City and the smell of salt air in  Puerta Plata D.R.; La Vibora, Cuba; and Arecibo, Puerto Rico don’t feel so far away.

The excitement is even greater this year because thanks to the generous senior class gift, the Williston Theatre program is now the proud owner of a set of individual wireless microphones. These mics, which will be worn by anyone with a singing solo, will enable our audience to hear the actors perfectly. While we rented them for our last musical, Urinetown, these mics are ours!

Sitzprobe was a busy night. We tested mic levels and orchestra tempo. We had to make sure the mic packs fit the actors and the mics themselves were staying in place. Despite all that, spirits were pretty high as we put more of the finishing touches of the musical in place.

In the Heights runs April 28-30 and May 5-7. For tickets and more information visit our ticket website. 

Graffiti plays an important role in the story of In the Heights. Without giving too much away, I will say that one character is named Graffiti Pete. My knowledge about graffiti and its origins was pretty minimal at the start of this rehearsal process. I knew that Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator, composer, and star of In the Heights, wouldn’t have put Graffiti Pete in the show without a reason, and so I needed to learn more about the origins of the art form.

Luckily, our choreographer, Debra Vega, invited Wane COD, a graffiti artist who grew up in New York and has worked for corporations like Sean Jean and Nike,  to help us out. Wane is a legend in the graffiti world, so we are enormously lucky to have had the opportunity to work with him!

Back in February Wane came to visit the cast of In the Heights. He gave us a presentation on the evolution of graffiti from an underground community of taggers to a widely respected art form practiced all over the world. Since its inception in the 1970s, graffiti was an art form of survival.

Practiced mostly by teenagers, writers (as graffiti artists are known) were kids who took their moms’ kitchen cleaner to help make their writing thicker and more visible. Younger writers were mentored by older kids who had been around longer—traditions were handed down from one generation of taggers to another, who then built on those traditions. It was a community and a home for the writers. (This is when the light bulbs started to go off in my head. Community! Home! This is what In the Heights is all about! Aha!)

While gang members did capitalize on the work of the graffiti pioneers, that was a small piece of a much larger movement, the goal of which was to represent underserved neighborhoods. While graffiti actually started in Philadelphia, it came to prominence with writers in The Bronx. Graffiti art soon got the attention of the downtown art scene in Manhattan, and writers could see a way out of their circumstances through their art. Graffiti is now practiced all over the world and its role in empowering and celebrating communities through public art is well established.

Wane came back to Williston in early April to teach tech theatre students about the origins of graffiti and to show them some skills they’ll apply to the set for In the Heights. He also spent some time with Gabby Record ’17, who is playing Graffiti Pete in our production, so she could get to know how to handle a spray can. Wane will also put his own mark on the show with an original work, but you’ll have to come see the show to get more details.

Again, I don’t want to give away any plot points, but as I suspected, Miranda’s rendition of Graffiti Pete is another way to celebrate community and the power of art. One of the many reasons I love this play!

For more information on the production or to order tickets visit our ticket website.