Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out - 148. Lin-Manuel Miranda: Everything is Basically the School Play

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

In celebration of his new album, Warriors, Lin-Manuel Miranda sits down with Mike for a wide ranging talk about writing musicals, riding the subway, and taking big creative risks. Lin explains why you need so many ideas to write a musical, and he shares the important lessons he learns from writing and performing in school plays as a student. Plus, Lin recalls the origins of Hamilton and some of the more chaotic performances in the show’s run.Please consider donating to RISE Theatre.Get tickets for Mike’s shows at the Beacon Theatre in New York here.

If someone's listening to this today, it's like, what would be your advice? You know, if something's holding you back from unloading it all, what would be your tactic to get there? Well, it's interesting because after I saw Rent, I wrote a bunch of 15-minute musicals that sounded like Rent. Yeah. You know, like, you chase the things that you like

and you're going to fall short. And then, like, if you chase enough different stuff, you'll end up sounding like yourself. Yes. I think that's... Applause right there. That's the whole thing. ["The Voice of the Great Lin-Manuel Miranda"]

That is the voice of the great Lin-Manuel Miranda. Can you believe it? This is an all-timer. I have been asking Lin-Manuel Miranda to come on this show since the dawn and inception of working it out in 2020. We finally got him. What a great episode. He's one of the people I admire most in all creative work.

He created a show you might have heard of called Hamilton in the Heights, freestyle of Supreme. He did the music for the movie in Canto as well as Moana and others. He co-created a new concept album with Issa Davis called Warriors. It's so good. It is based on the 1979 film, The Warriors, an iconic film.

If you haven't seen the film, I recommend it. It's a very gritty New York movie, very kind of classic New York 70s movie about a street gang called the Warriors who are falsely accused of killing the leader of another gang. I'm giving you the all-in background because we talk about The Warriors album a bunch today.

So the Warriors have to escape from the Bronx to their home turf in Coney Island. And that's the plot of a bunch today. So the Warriors have to escape from the Bronx to their home turf in Coney Island. And that's the plot of the whole movie. They're going home. They're getting home. It's a cult classic. Lin-Manuel Miranda and East Davis did an amazing adaptation of this

into a concept hip hop album. I couldn't recommend it more highly. It is out wherever you get your music. It is a big day today for the tour because we are officially announcing I'm bringing my new show which is called The Good Life to New York City to the iconic Beacon, March 21 and 22. I've been touring this show for the past year. Under the banner, Please Stop the Ride, I've been to 50 cities.

The Good Life is the final version of that show. So if you saw the show, people ask me this a lot, how much is it different? How much is the same? I would say it's 50% different than it was a year ago. I would say it's 40% different than it was in March. I would say it's 30% different than it was in July. Like you get the idea.

Every show along the way is different from the one before it. Every night I'm trying new lines, new structural differences. I think it is gonna be spectacular. I'm feeling really awesome about the show right now. If you're listening to this Monday, October 21st, after 10 a.m. Eastern, you can get tickets at burbigs.com right now

for these shows using the code GOODLIFE. It's the pre-sale. The pre-sale is today and tomorrow with the code GOODLIFE. Those will be the best seats. The code is GOODLIFE, one word, good life. G-O-O-D-L-I-F-E. If you're listening before 10 a.m.,

set an alarm, mark your calendar, tie a string around your finger, 10 a.m. The pre-sale begins. By the way, this is the New York run. It's not gonna be on Broadway, it's not gonna be off Broadway. I wanted to do something a little different with this show. I did The Beacon in June. If you saw that show and you're like,

is it gonna be different than that? 30 or 40%, plus it'll have the full design and lighting. So it'll be more of a fully realized show. The Beacon is an incredible place to see show. I've seen over the years, I've seen the National there many times. I saw Hall and Oates. I saw the Allman Brothers Band.

It's just an iconic venue. So I hope to see you there. And then this week I will be in Madison, Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Still a few tickets left for those shows. And then I go to Champaign, Illinois. I think only a few seats left. And then I end off the week in Indianapolis at Clues Hall. I think that one sold out. Gorgeous, gorgeous Clues Hall. And then I go to Ann Arbor, which I think is sold out, but Detroit has a few tickets at the Fillmore,

which I love. Dayton, Ohio has a few tickets, which I love. I love going back there. That's where my sister Gina went to college. I always love going to Dayton, great town. Pittsburgh, a few seats left. Louisville, the same, the Brown Theater, gorgeous theater. Nashville, I'm at the Ryman, gorgeous theater.

Knoxville, I'm at the Tennessee Theater. Then I'll be in Asheville, as well as Charleston, South Carolina. I love this talk with Lin-Manuel Miranda. To give a little background, I met him years ago. He performed at This American Life Live at BAM Opera House, and I performed it. I met him years ago. He performed at This American Life Live at BAM Opera House and I performed it.

He did a musical, like a short musical called 21 Chump Street, which is fantastic if you ever have a chance to listen to that. It's like a 20 minute musical, it's incredible. He plays Ira Glass in it. But I love talking to him. We talk about his new album, based on the Warriors. He played the whole album for me right before we recorded

this. So it was a pretty surreal experience. I highly recommend the album. Very powerful, great songs, great story. We talked about that. We talked about Hamilton. We talked about how many ideas you need to write a musical. That was something I'm really interested in. Lynn just has so many insightful ideas about the creative process and so many great stories. So I think you're gonna love this one. Enjoy my chat with the great Lin-Manuel Miranda.

["Workin' It"] Ooh, ooh, working it. The thing I've always admired about your work is you go big. You know what I mean? Like you, and this concept album is a perfect example of that. I mean, first of all, it's star studded.

I mean, Lauryn Hill is on it, Ghostface Kill is on it. You know, like it's kind of endless amounts of stars, of musicals and acting. And what's the thing in your life that encouraged you to go big? That's really interesting. My first instinct is, I think if you're a product of the school play,

you go big because when you are, I was a kid who figured out where I was in the context of like the drama clubs at my school, and you wanna play with lots of parts. You want lots of parts for women because they audition to boys at like an eight to one ratio. I remember every year trying to convince like friends of mine who were really good dancers,

like don't do basketball this year. You can balance basketball with the musical if you want. And so I think a part of my brain is always just trying to make the best school play, like lots of parts, lots for everyone to do. But I really think subconsciously that's it. Like, I just want to make a really big school play. And it's funny in the Heights,

which I started like the first draft I wrote my sophomore year at Wesleyan. And even then when it was like an extracurricular project, it was bigger than it had a right to be. Like I had written a club scene and there's like 20 kids who were in it who were just in the night club scene and they don't appear anywhere else in the musical.

But I would have separate rehearsals because like they were in it, but they were just in the one sequence, which is insane in retrospect. It's so funny, and that's how I view you, because I've known you a little bit for a long time, right? Like we did this American Life stuff together, you were on Broadway when I was off Broadway,

Freestyle Love Supreme 2004. I've always had this sense of you of like, you're this wide-eyed, optimistic artist. But what's amazing to me is you still are. Like you were in your 20s and you are in your 40s and what keeps the light shining so bright? Why do you keep taking risks that are so big? I think, I don't know.

I mean, I don't know, they're all terrifying. Like that's the funny thing about it. Like I was terrified to play that for you today. I'm terrified to see like what people make of this concept. First of all, people don't even listen to albums. I'm like, everybody check it. I built this zoetrope. Everybody gather around and look in this slit.

And there's gonna be a moving man. Like I've built a thing that people don't really make. And I want to preface this by saying that like, I co-wrote this with Issa Davis. Almost every good idea in there is Issa Davis'. Oh, that's nice. And so a lot of the work Issa did was just like really making the structure work beautifully as an album.

And in a really satisfying way, because she wasn't as precious about the original movie as I was. And also like fighting for that dream. Like what is it that actually gets us out of our houses? It's actually the promise that we get to come home at the end of the day. And I think she just did that so beautifully.

So like I kind of brought fear and she brought hope. And like, there's a really interesting, like we kind of met in the middle in terms of what we ended up making. It's interesting because it's a reverse engineering of making a film or making a stage musical. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. You made an album. Right. Like you're saying is like, but it's actually great for people who listen to this podcast, because there's tons of creators and a lot of the questions that we get

have to do from our listeners, have to do with like, how do you make a thing? And it's kind of this, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. You make a thing by making a thing. Yeah. And then, and an album is a perfect example of like, anyone could make an album with GarageBand and a microphone and your phone kind of thing.

And you could, it won't be, it won't be the production quality that yours does and the stars and all that stuff, but you can start there. And is that part of the reason why you went back to making an album before a movie or a show? Yeah, I honestly, yeah, it was one. Well, one of the big things in that first email

I wrote to my friend was, how do you do the action sequences? Because Warriors, more than anything, is an action movie. And action movies, porno movies, and musicals are all fighting for the same real estate story-wise. When you can't talk anymore and emotion is heightened, you fight, fuck, or sing. Oh, wow.

I never thought about it that way. That was, so my first instinct when I heard it was like, Can you unpack that for a second? Because I don't fully understand. So you're saying porn, action, and musicals have that in common. Yeah, there's a scene, there's like a baseline scene, people meet each other, the emotions get heightened.

And an action movie, it's some kind of standoff and a sequence, an action sequence starts. In a porno movie, it's, you know, I brought you a pizza. My stepsister doesn't know I'm here. Right, right. Whatever. And then in a musical, it's, you know, what is it that brings them to the brink of song or dance?

Right. And so part of doing it as an album was like, well, I get to kind of short circuit that because I'm actually creating the action sequences in your head. Yeah. And so Issa and I really like approached each action sequence with like, how does this one work?

Do we wanna dilate time and like break down what's literally happening? Do we wanna have a amazing like sort of musical montage at the end of it, they're beat up. And we really kind of approached each action sequence really differently to paint it in your head, which was a really fun and exciting challenge and kind of a workaround for what I saw

as the biggest obstacle to making Woz musical, which is like, but they can't sing while they're fighting each other. You need your breath control in your lungs and how's that gonna work? It's so funny. I have a couple memories of you. One is I saw Hamilton at the Public

and to see that show on Broadway is stunning. To see it in a room with a few hundred people is almost experiential. Because how many people are on stage? 50? Yeah, it's 34 of us versus the 300 in the audience. Yes! Versus...

It's got a little West Side story going on with the audience. Like, it really is experiential if you see it in a room like that. And it was stunning. And then afterwards, after you put your soul on the floor, you were out in the lobby shaking hands, signing programs and taking selfies.

Yeah, I really missed that vibe of it because there's something about you all just come out into the same lobby that creates a civility. Once you put up a barricade, there's something about you all just come out into the same lobby that creates a civility. Yeah. Once you put up a barricade, there's like, oh, I'm to be barricaded against, I'm going to have to scream and grab for the person as opposed to like, no, we're all just in the lobby.

Yeah, we're all just here. We're all just here. Well, which is one of the great lines on your album, which is we're all just in the subway going home. Yeah. It's beautiful. Yeah. What's beautiful. What's the menial task, Lin Miranda day to day,

that people don't think of the icon Lin Miranda doing? I mean, I'm picking up shit three times a day for my dog. My dog's probably heard more lyrics in process than any other person, any other collaborator or person in my life. Because you're walking right. Yeah, I'll life. Because you walk and I walk and write. Yeah. I'll make the loop and then I'll like walk the dog.

My dog is getting older now, so now it's, it's less lyrics. Yeah. But was around for a lot of it. Um, I don't know. You jot stuff as I understand it, you jot stuff in your voice memo on your phone. Yeah, sometimes. And then do you carry notes? Do you carry a notebook?

With this one, Issa and I went, I mean, Issa and I really co-wrote this thing. So sometimes she would send me like a musical idea that came to her and I would just throw it in the pot. So there's a lot of musical motifs that are Issa's as well. In fact, in the first song, you can actually, I actually put Issa's voice memo at the top of it. You hear her going,

do do do do, do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do. And that's the horn line that you hear throughout the opening. Oh, I love that. So like, I tried to kind of bake everything into the pie. What do people who have never written a musical not understand about writing a musical? What can you not understand?

You can't understand how many ideas you need. Oh, that's it. It looks like you're bored. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it's not just the one idea. I have an idea. They'll break into song. Like that's not gonna get you very far.

You have to, I mean, Warrior's a great example. Like we look at a moment that happens in the movie and we go, what is the attack on this? Like who is singing? What is the perspective on it? Like it is singing? What is the perspective on it? Like it's kind of a lot of ideas. And you invariably bring all of yourself into it. Like there's a song that Luther sings.

Luther's the villain of Warriors, played by David Patrick Kelly in the movie and Kim Dracula in ours. And the first stanza of it is actually a really weird memory I have of being a little kid. They sing every stop on the map is a Pac-Man dot. And I always saw the subway map.

There's like a little Pac-Man shaped arrow in the corner of every subway map. It's like black, little black Pac-Man. And I always used to imagine, like when I was bored and had nothing to do like black, little black Pac-Man. And I always used to imagine, like when I was bored and had nothing to do, I would imagine the Pac-Man eating up all the subway stops and like the transfer stops were power pellets. Like this was like a thing I spent many hours

doing in my head as a kid going from, you know, West 4th Street where I went to nursery school all the way up to 200th Street where I got off. And so like, again, switching that to the metaphor of like, Luther sees himself as a ghost hunting down Miss Pac-Man. But again, like that's an idea I pulled from when I was five years old into a lyric.

So it's, one idea is not enough. You're constantly kind of, what is the best line of attack on this moment? What feels true? But it's interesting in Warriors, it's like, I don't know, in some ways the train is a metaphor for the way that in New York City, and we're all together. Yeah, and to me, that's the most beautiful scene

in the film, you know, there's a moment where the Warriors have like fought fucking everybody and they're on that last stretch on the yellow line from Union Square to, you know, Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island. And these other couples get on and they're the same age as the Warriors, but they're like rich.

They're clearly coming from a party, having a great time, like a prom or a disco, and they look and see this completely different lived experience, and they're just staring at each other from across, and it's the most beautiful scene. And it's really like the moment where, like the warriors also assert their dignity and their personhood and that like,

and we all share this city. And it's what I love the most about this city is how many different types of people share it and how many worlds and experiences you see every time you get on the train. I think it's a testament to, in this city, that we're all choosing to live in this place where we're all gonna be kind of on the dirty subway

for part of the day. Yeah. So a funny thing when you and I met, you did This American Life Live and I did it and I met, you did This American Life Live, and I did it, and I told a story, the Massachusetts story, and then you did 21 Chump Street, which is a 20 minute musical, roughly. Based on a story. Yeah, like a journalism piece. From This American Life, and you play Ira Glass in it, a singing Ira Glass.

Anthony Ramos is in it. Yeah. I remember being outside of BAM Opera House, me and Jenny, right after the live event, this American live event with Anthony. He was just like this wide-eyed young guy. Yeah, he still is. Now he's in twisters.

Yeah. And he was just like, yeah, just Lin just found me and asked me to do all this stuff. And he was literally like, now my life has changed. His life is very, yeah. It's pretty crazy. He was actually auditioning for something else. It was like a cell phone commercial at Telsey Casting.

And the casting director was like, have they seen you for Hamilton yet? Really? Yeah, and he was like, what's Hamilton? It's interesting, because like you have your stamp on so many people's rising careers. You know, like Anthony blew up from that. A lot of these guys who you work with blew up from it.

Do you take pride in that? Do you think wistfully about it? Oh, absolutely. It's kind of the best part because in making the thing you make, you get to see all these other people do what they do brilliantly. Do you think of yourself as that part of your role?

As being, because you went from being the young person, the young upstart kid, to being like a veteran. Do you see it as a responsibility? I never thought of it that consciously until Steven Sondheim died, who was kind of the encourager in chief for our entire line of work.

I'm sure you saw like after he passed, there was like, there's a Instagram handle called Sondheim Letters, where it's just like letters of encouragement or response. He wrote, he somehow wrote everybody back all the time. I have no idea how he wrote so many shows. But it was, that was one of those moments where like you're looking around for the grownups

and now you're the grownups. You're the seniors. Yeah, the word the grownups thing is really interesting because it's like... I don't feel like a grownup. No, I know. Well, that's what I was saying earlier is like you have this wide-eyed kid thing about you

and you're always game to take on big stuff. You took on Alexander Hamilton. You took on even, you know, in Warriors, it was like 1970s New York City is a big, big topic. Yeah. And it's like, and you relate everything to being kind of like a school play. It's like, how is the level you're working at right now,

which is the highest level, how is it similar to the school play and how is it different from the school play? It's exactly the same as the school play. No differences. It's just more people coming into the school play and how is it different from the school play? It's exactly the same as the school play. No differences. It's just more people coming to the school play. Honestly, that's really how I think of it is what's gonna be the most interesting,

exciting thing you can do. I mean, when you're writing it at any given moment and with Issa, a lot of the fun of this was her coming at me with structure questions that I'd never considered because I saw the movie as a sacred text and still do. And I think fans of the movie will still really enjoy this because all of the moments, I also felt like,

oh, I'm the guardian of like the things that like, if you're making a Warner's musical, that has to be in it. That moment has to be in it. But also the fun of it also was like, okay, 1979 New York is a really exciting musical time. So what genres do we get to play in? We can play in, you know, Paris's burning ballroom. We can play in punk and in metal and in lots of rock music.

I mean, it's a rock score. That movie has an amazing Barry DeVore Zahn rock score. So we're jumping off of that and the 79 cents into all this other different territory. I mean, that's one of the things I find most interesting about your work and really like a lot of my favorite art from the last 20 years, I always think of like Hamilton and I think of like Jordan Peele's Get Out,

where it's like a perfect, both of those are examples of, it's a hybrid, his is a hybrid of horror and comedy and social commentary and it's all in one. And Hamilton is, it's a historical musical with hip hop. And it's just like, you know, and this, you know, Warriors is like, it's hip hop, it's metal, it's rock and roll, it's all these things. And is that on purpose or is that just what you got in you?

Yeah, part of it. And again, like I think, you know, you go to your influences. For me, Jonathan Larson, and Jonathan Larson is the composer of Rent. And Rent was the show that made me go from liking musicals to thinking, oh, I could write a musical. Yeah. Because it was the first really contemporary show I saw.

I was like, oh, this takes place now. So you saw Rent? I saw it in the first year. I saw it for my 17th birthday, 1997. Oh my gosh. And I just was like, oh, you can tell this guy is writing from a very personal place. It's about New York.

It's about his community, this artistic community, and wrestling with the same things that I'm wrestling with. Like, I'm scared to die Like I'm scared to die. I'm scared of like making art and nobody noticing. I'm scared, like all of the things that I was scared of as I was barreling towards a life in the arts. It was like, there it is up on stage. And that's when I went from like being in the school play

to starting to write musicals was from seeing that. And the other thing that was, and it's a roundabout answer to your question, but Jonathan Larson really believed that theater music should be in conversation with the music we actually listen to every day. Like wanted to bring in those outside influences. Like I think in his character description of Mark

wrote Eddie Vedder, like think Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain type of voice, which again, no other musical theater writer was doing at the time. Wow, so you saw that when you were 17. I saw that when I was 17. Had you seen a musical? I'd seen the holy 80s Trinity of like Phantom, Les Mis,

and I got TKTS tickets, and I guess cats, I saw cats when I was a kid. I was on a school trip, I was very scared. Yeah, wow. But those were the only three I'd seen, but I'd listened to a lot more, and I'd been in the school play. So I really learned musicals by being in shows,

being in Pirates of Penzance and Godspell and stuff. There was nothing, I remember listening to Rent. I never saw it, but I remember listening to it when the cast album came out and just being completely floored. Yeah, just being like, well, this sounds like music I would really, like there's real pop music here,

there's real rock and roll here. Like it's telling a story, so it's not exactly, it doesn't sound like Pearl Jam or Nirvana, but it's reaching for it, and it's in conversation with popular music. Yeah, it sounds singular. It sounds like someone, in this case, Larson, just like, just kind of unloading everything from his heart

and his soul and it's just all there. Yeah. If someone's listening to this today, it's like, what would be your advice for arriving, because I feel like you're like that as well. How do you arrive at that point where, if something's holding you back from unloading it all, what would be your tactic to get there?

What would be your advice? Well, it's interesting because after I saw Rent, I wrote a bunch of 15-minute musicals that sounded like Rent. You know, like they're vaguely pop-rocky and they all just sound like, you know, Jonathan Larson D-sides. And I think what happens is you form your taste, you chase the things that you like,

and you're gonna fall short. And then, like, if you chase enough different stuff, you'll end up sounding like yourself. Yes. I think that's... Applause break. That's the whole thing. Working it out, applause break.

That's it, right? End of story. Yeah, you will sound like the heroes are chasing it first, and then you will figure out what is the thing that only you can write. But you have to get there through trial and error. What was the leap of Hamilton going from this musical you worked on and lived in for years and years and years to, in the pandemic, it exploding into the world.

The entire world. It was... Cause it was streaming. The film of it was streaming. And so it went from probably an audience of millions to hundreds of millions? Yeah. I went back to therapy pretty quick.

Like, I've had the same therapist since I was 19. I go for specific times and I called him, I think, July 5th. The first spit take. Because also we were home. Working it out. There was no, it's almost too much to let in. You know, in a lot of ways, it was almost too much to let in. Yeah, of course it is.

It was all the discourse about Hamilton, positive and negative at the same time. Yes. Like to an nth magnitude. The internet exploded. And you can't take all that in. And there was nowhere to go with it. Like when I was in Hamilton,

my therapy over like the reaction to Hamilton was being in Hamilton. Like for two and a half hours every night, I had one job. And it was like, live that life from the beginning to the end of the show. And during the pandemic, everyone had it. Everyone was yelling at me. And that's how I experienced it.

And loving it. And loving it and hating it. And all of it. And I had nowhere to go with it. I was just home. Much more people loving it. And loving it and hating it. And all of it. And I didn't, I had nowhere to go with it. I was just home. Much more people loving it. The louder people hated it. Yeah.

And the lesser group of people hated it. But they're so loud on the internet. Right, they're all the same volume on the internet. They're all the same font. Yeah, yeah, they're all the same font. They're all the font of the New York Times. I called my shrink back up and was like, I have some more stuff for you for us to,

like literally the shrink I saw when I was 19 years old and had my first breakup. I was like, I got more stuff, it's different stuff, let's go. Yeah, it's crazy because it was so, it's such a revolutionary show and the casting of the show, I feel like has been repeated in so many other shows now.

Yeah, that's been a very nice legacy of it. Yes. I mean, how do you feel when you see shows that have just casts that you wouldn't expect? Well, again, like taking it back to when I first met Isa, that was Passing Strange and In the Heights, and we were the black and brown shows.

Like we were it. And I remember people asking me like, wow, such diversity, two shows. And people asking me at the time, do you think this is going to change the makeup of what we see on Broadway? And I said, no, because I know Stu started writing his show in 2000. I started writing my show in 2000. It took us seven years to get here. So if anything's gonna change,

it's not gonna be next season. And it wasn't. And what was exciting about Hamilton was that we had a cast as diverse as the cast we had, and it did well. Yes. So it was sort of like destroyed the notion of- It exploded the concept of you need to cast literally.

Hamilton has to be a white guy, et cetera. Yeah. Or has to be a white guy, et cetera. Right. It completely changed the game. Yeah, and again, like not, that wasn't particularly intentional. Like I just-

Where'd you come up with that? No, no, in the initial idea, the initial idea for it was when I read the book, when I read his biography, every moment, and you'll relate to this, every moment at which his life changes because he wrote something. And it's very rare for a biography. Normally like shit just happens to people.

Wait, can you unpack that? Everything changed for him when he wrote something. Yeah, so he writes his way out of his like upbringing in St. Croix because a hurricane hits the island and he writes an account of the island, of the hurricane. That account is so vivid that it gets published in the Danish American Gazette and used for relief efforts, like as a testimonial of why you need to send money

to help us. People realize this kid is smart, we'll take up a collection so he can go get his education on the mainland, he never comes back. Then he starts writing about how we need to have an American revolution. He writes under a pseudonym, which again, there's nothing more hip hop than writing under a pseudonym.

Taking your pen name or your MC name. And he becomes George Washington's aide-de-camp because he's a good writer. He's like, okay, you'll be my secretary. So most biographies, you don't usually have someone who literally creates so much of their destiny by virtue of their writing. Right, so he's an artist in his own right.

Yeah, and then therein lies his success. That's what connected it to hip hop for me, was he writes about his circumstances so well that he transcends them. And so I was always picturing who is the MC who represents Hamilton? Who is the MC who represents? So I was never picturing white guys. MC who represents Hamilton, who is the MC who represents, so I was never picturing white guys.

I know what the white guys look like, they're in my wallet. Yeah, yeah. Like I just never, I just like, that was never what I was thinking when I was writing the songs. Right. So it just proceeded from the style of music I was writing

and the impulse to make him a writer. Did Hamilton ever go, it's so precise, did it ever go off the tracks? Because with my shows, if it goes off the tracks, I can be like, oh, by the way, I missed this line, so I'm going to go back and tell this part of the story first. I can talk through it. In Hamilton, it just feels like, oh, you're kind of screwed

if you miss a beat or you jump to the second act or you jump to a different song. Well, you know, what's interesting is, I think part of the reason it's like that is I thought of it as a concept album first. For years, I called it the Hamilton Mixed Tape. And just thinking of it that way made me write denser lyrics.

I was like, I can get away with this because they can press rewind if they miss it. I literally like, in just that mental shift of like, no, it's going to be an album. It's going to be an album. They can press rewind. If they miss it, they can go back. And then it started turning into a musical in spite of us

and becoming a show and very clearly, like this wants to live on stage pretty urgently. If the lead of Hamilton now got COVID, could you go on tonight? Ah. My God, talk about the anxiety dream. Um, I could probably pull off 70%. I would kill to see that 70%.

Most of the lyrics are in the costume. Like, if I put the costume on and we're in the track, stuff would come out of my mouth. Oh my God. You know what? It's funny, because I had a three year break. I didn't do it. And then I went back in to do it for Puerto Rico for fundraiser.

And the stuff I had the most trouble memorizing was the stuff I didn't write. Because there's times where I actually quote the historical Hamilton, like the Reynolds pamphlet. That's Hamilton's writing. Washington'sphlet. That's Hamilton's writing. Washington's farewell address, that's Hamilton's writing. And I really ate shit on some of those. Like when I went back to do it, I'd be like,

in the course of my life, there have been many, I'm trying to do the farewell address and I don't have it anywhere. Wow. I mean, what's crazy too is like that, as the lore goes, you performed this at the White House for Obama. In 2009. Before it was a full musical.

I had not even finished writing that song. Like. You're working it out at the White House. The gig was like, all right, I got to write a hook for these two verses I have. What? Like how do you get the confidence to work out new material at the White House for the president?

In retrospect, I would never do that today. In retrospect. Why'd you do it? Because I had nothing to lose, and also they asked for something about the American experience, and it was the only thing I had about the American experience.

But you knew it was great, right? Like you kind of knew it was great. I knew I liked it. I also knew that if this audience doesn't like it, this is probably a bad idea. True. You know, it was sort of like, this is, I mean, this is like the White House evening

of poetry and spoken word. If it doesn't play here, like let's reconsider what we've been working on. That era, is this 2008 or so? 2009. 2009, yeah. It's like the moment of hope in America, Obama's president is, I remember it very well. Yeah.

It feels different now. Does it feel different to you? Yeah, but it's funny, like the show is the show. Right. So, you know, and again, like one idea can't get you through writing a musical. Right. So, you know, there are people who kind of talk about it

as an Obama era musical, and I guess technically that is true, that is the era in which I wrote it, but I also remember how the line, immigrants, we get the job done, played when Trump was president. And it went from like, ha ha ha ha to like, fuck. Yeah, like it became this like defiant thing. It's anthemic, it's an immigrant anthem.

Just different things hit differently. In the same way that when you revisit a piece of art in a different point in your life, different things sort of jump out. ["Slow Round"] Okay, this is the slow round. What are people's favorite and least favorite thing about you? Like your friends and family. I think they...

I think I'm... I think that I'll start with the least favorite. I think that just like my focus and presence. Like, are you here? Are you actually here with me? Are you daydreaming? Are you in your phone? Like I can, you know, a thing my wife has said often is like,

are you here? Because I'll spin out. And so that's probably the most annoying thing about me is that like we can be in a conversation and then I can go somewhere else over here. That's fucking annoying. And then, you know, but I'm a pretty loyal friend. I'm a pretty loyal friend. I'm a pretty good hang.

Like my friends that I like are all my friends from elementary school and high school and college. Like I haven't changed a lot. Yeah. Did your life go the way you expected it to go? Beyond my wildest dreams, but I'd be lying if I said they weren't my wildest dreams. Like it wasn't like I never expected it.

Like I wrote shows and I hoped people would see them. I worked very hard. And then they did. And then they did. And that's the part that's great and the part I'm really grateful for. But there's, you know, I also wanted to be like a Hollywood stunt man when I was a kid,

because I watched lots of action movies as a kid, but I don't like getting hurt or heights or falling. Sure, yeah, yeah. That was, that was, Chevy Chase like falling at the beginning of Saturday Night Live was about as stunty as I could get. Yeah. And anything else was scarier.

What's the best piece of advice someone's given you that you used? I mean, my mom, who I think intuited that I was a very sensitive kid, like really hit me with, it's all grist for the mill. It's all material. Like when I was really young, she'd say like, well, if you want to be a writer, like, remember this. Like if I was really going through a hard time, she'd go, don't run from it, remember it.

You're gonna need it. At some point. And it's in the Nora Ephron documentary, they talk about that a lot. Yeah, it's all copy, right? Yeah, it's all copy, right? Yeah, it's all copy. Yeah, yeah, so my mom hit me with that young and it became a lifesaver.

In your darkest moments, there's a part of you that's, as Sondheim said, always standing by, like observing it so that you can use it later if you need to. That's what I always, I say it on this podcast all the time, is just the most frustrating things, things you're angry about, just write them down.

It just, it's so therapeutic to just zoom out. And look at it. And look at it. As opposed to like how much space it takes up in your head. Yeah. Do you remember a time in your life where you were an inauthentic version of yourself? Huh.

It's interesting, like I think that the code switching that happens when your parents speak Spanish at home and you speak English at school, it happened for me really young, because I got into Hunter, which is, you know, it's like a, it's a public school, but you take a test to get in. And I went from just being Ling Manuel all the time to Lyn at school and Ling Manuel at home and suddenly had two names.

And this is not like breaking news for anyone who's got like a hard to pronounce name who suddenly has to go into the school system. But like that was the beginning of it. And it happened so young that I didn't even really notice. And I think that to your earlier question of like, how do we find our voice? I think in the Heights, which I started writing my sophomore year,

was the first time I brought Ling-Manuel and Lin into the same room, onto the same page at the same time. It was like the stuff I was learning in theater and it was the music I grew up with, the neighborhood I grew up in, and like all the stuff that mattered to me. And it's like the moment where you, I never felt like I was being inauthentic

in either of those places. I was just being the easiest to, the easiest to pronounce version of myself. How would you describe those two people? I mean, beyond just Spanish versus English, I think I learned really early that when you're around really smart kids, I was in a school full of really smart kids,

I didn't feel particularly smart, funny's actually the only currency. And Matt was like, if I'm funny, no one will look at my C grades in math or my needs improvement. Like funny, funny covers all manner of sins. So like. Yeah, funny smooths over a lot of situations.

It does, it does. And it allows you to, like, I was never like in one click in high school. I was like, I could kind of float around pretty well because I would like hit a laugh line, like get the fuck out. Hit a laugh line and get out. Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting how, but humor does that. Yeah. And also did theater do that for you? Yeah, well, what theater did for me also was give me the zoom out that you sometimes need, especially in high school when it's like, we hate that girl now, we don't like that kid anymore. And like, you have no idea why the alliances

are shifting or changing. That's how I experienced much of high school, but if you're doing theater, one, you're all making something because you wanna make it. None of us are getting a grade for this. And two, you make friends in other grades. So if my grade is being really fucking weird because someone dated someone,

or I don't even know why we all hate this kid today. Like, I could go into a hallway full of older kids who are like, Lynn, hi. And it just like- Common purpose. Common purpose and just like, the problems in our grade aren't really a big deal. It's just a thing that's happening in this hallway.

And there's another hallway with kids that are also nice and they might be older and younger, but the world does not begin and end with the kids you're in a class with. And by the way, I'm sure that was the case within the Heights or Hamilton where there's disputes with producers or the cast or the crew or whatever, and then you're on stage and you gotta do it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, again, like. What was the most chaos around any of your live shows in your professional career where you just have to ultimately do it? Oh, God. I mean, there's all manner of, it's always when someone's out. Like, I remember the week after In the Heights opened,

KO, who played Vanessa, was out, like sick, like voice was gone. And understudy went in, no put in, as morett. And it was sort of like, she's literally never done this before. What do you mean no put in? Like we never had time to do a put in rehearsal for her. She didn't have a rehearsal? No, we walked through the, like there was no time

and we were off Broadway, so we didn't even have like the staff to do it. Like we were just very understaffed. And so it was like, you're gonna play Vanessa, we're all gonna walk you through every dance sequence. I mean, she was in the ensemble and she covered, but we'd never had the understudy rehearsals. But we had just opened.

We were just trying to get the show on. Where was the show off Broadway? It was at a place that, it's now the Brish and DeKalb Dance Center, but it was 37 Arts and it used to be a theater space. So she went on and you hadn't done a rehearsal. And it was never, I mean, it was never better. Because she was so present that she was,

what we're always chasing when we're trying to be on stage is completely in the moment at all times. She literally didn't know what was gonna, I mean she knew the songs obviously, and like what to sing, but in terms of the blocking, like we were all guiding her around, and she was incredible. In your entire career,

when have you felt the most present on stage? It's always freestyle. Oh really? Yeah, because we don't know what we're going to do. It's the anxiety dream made flesh. We're going on stage, we're getting a verb, and we're going to do a show, and we'll just proceed from there.

I think it's the secret. For me, it's the opposing muscle group of my writing, because I can never buy into the notion of writer's block. Like I did a 90 minute show with my friends last week and we came up with something. One thing I'm doing in my new show, which is, I think it's going to be announced by the time we get to this, this comes out is I'm playing the beacon and it's called The Good Life. And one of the stories I tell, because I'm talking about like,

yeah, I'm sure you can relate to this. You have two kids. It's like, you have this thing where you just go, it's like we were talking about earlier, you realize you are the adult. Yes. Right? And you go, oh, they have questions

and I do not have all the answers. Right? And so I talk about that in relation, a lot of thematically that's what a lot of the show is about and like, and I talk a lot of, how do I explain drugs? You know, it's like, you know, I say the good life because we walked by on this corner in Brooklyn

is like this like weed store. It's called like the good life. And one day, it was like, dad, what's The Good Life? And I was like, I don't even know, it's not what I'm doing, you know what I mean? I'm trying to explain drugs, I can't really do it. And then I have a flashback, like in a lot of my shows, to I did the DARE program in sixth grade.

You have that? We didn't have it, but I remember the commercials. So drug abuse resistance education. And there's Officer Babin came to school and she was like, we dare you not to use drugs. And we're like, wait, you dare us to do drugs or to not use, to not, you know, like it's an acronym. We don't know what acronyms are.

Is that a type of drug? And so, okay, so here, this is the real life thing that happened. And this end of, you'll see why I'm asking you about it in moments. I asked Officer Babin, she said there's a graduation ceremony next week for dear. I asked Officer Babin,

this is very school play of me. Is it possible at the graduation ceremony, I could perform a rap song that I wrote called, wait for it, Bust Them Drugs. Bust. Based on, I bet you guess what it's based on. Bust, it was a hit song from 1989. Mine was Bust Them Drugs.

Bust a Move, by Young MC. Yeah, yeah. You want it. Yeah, and so Officer Raven goes, that's a great idea. It was not a great idea. Total malpractice on her part. The anxiety we talked about, I'm feeling for you in the past right now.

So she goes, great idea. On the day of their graduation, she goes, now before we give out the diplomas, there's going to be a musical presentation from your fellow sixth grader, Mike Babilia. And I went up, young MC, audio, cassette single, put in, press play. I'm immediately three beats behind the rhythm of the song. I mean, but by the way, it wasn't the instrumental. It was, they predated even instrumental singles.

Sometimes you'd get the instrumental on the B side. That didn't happen. Yeah, didn't have it. So my lyrics competed with the actual Bustamove lyrics. It was like an early mashup. And I was just like, this is a tale for all the sixth graders trying to blah blah blah. You know, and it's like, okay, Smarty, go to a party, offer me angel dust, no thanks, sorry. Mom's at home. She's offering me hugs and just say no and bust them drugs. And I say to the audience, and it was not well received, but I haven't used drugs to this very day, so in a way, that program worked.

I also didn't lose my virginity until I was 20, so I worked on a lot of levels. And then I go, so how do I explain that to my daughter? I'm like, that's what the good life is. That's great. But what, so if you could go back and coach the sixth grade Mike Verbiglia on how to rap about drugs, what would that advice be?

Oh, Jesus Christ. I would coach you to not do it. Of course. Of course. Of course. So the last thing we do in the show is working out for a cause. Is there an organization you'd like to contribute to

we will contribute and link to them in the show notes. There's always the Rise Network that I've been a part of, which is, it's similar to Ava DuVernay's Array Network, which is basically, it's a free database for people from underrepresented groups who work in theater. So it's kind of trying to tackle the other side of the diversity issue theater has, which is the lie that there are no talented designers of color, technicians of color.

It is literally a database full of resumes of exactly that. And so we've been, you know, we launched it like a year and a half ago. And what a phenomenal idea. Yeah. And it's just, you know, I have a profile on there. If you work in theater, you should put your profile on there. And it's just a way of trying to create the same diversity behind the scenes that we've tried to create with,

you know, Hamilton and shows on stage. I don't know how you do all this stuff. You've won Tony's in a pool, it's all on the stuff, and you're on the subway, and you're walking your dog, you know, around Manhattan. I did get recognized on the subway and you're walking your dog, you know, around Manhattan. I did get recognized on the train here in my transfer from the A to the F. At J Street? At J Street. A lady and her daughter was like, you look lost.

And she was like, we're big fans and you look lost. That's gonna do it for another episode of Working It Out. You can follow Lin-Manuel Miranda on Instagram at lin underscore Manuel. You can get the new album at warriorsalbum.com. You can watch the full video of this episode, which is totally worth it for the body language on our YouTube channel at Mike Birbiglia. Subscribe while you're there, by the way. We're posting more and more videos by the day. Tons of great stuff.

I was actually re-watching the Ira Glass one the other day. I found it to be very inspiring. Even though I'm close with Ira, I talk to him all the time. I found the video of me talking to him to be very inspiring. He has so much wisdom. Check out Berbigs.com to sign up for the mailing list and to be the first to know about my upcoming shows. Our producers of Working It Out are myself along with Peter Salomon, Joseph Berbiglia, and Mabel Lewis associate producer Gary Simons. Sound mix by Ben Cruz, supervising engineer Kate Belinski. Special thanks to Jack Andonoff and Bleachers for their music, special thanks to my wife, the poet J. Hope Stein.

Special thanks as always to my daughter, who built the original radio fort made of pillows. Thanks most of all to you who are listening, if you enjoy it. If you enjoy this show you're listening to right now, which I'm saying chances are you are, because you made it to the end, you're in the credits for God's sakes.

Please go over to the Apple Podcast and rate and review it. We are almost at 4,000 stars on Apple Podcasts, which is great because it helps people find the show. If you're new to the podcast and you enjoy this episode, we have almost 150 episodes that we've done since June 2020 and they're all free. They're not behind a paywall like some other podcasts. We've had some incredible guests, Jack Anson off Pete Holmes,

Taylor Tomlinson, on and on and on, Stephen Colbert. Check out our back catalog, comment on Apple podcasts, which one is your favorite? Thanks most of all to you who are listening. Tell your friends, tell your enemies. Maybe you're with your friends and you have to escape from the Bronx to Coney Island. Happens to the best of us.

You're on the train and maybe the gang called the Baseball Furies catches up to you and your friends. Here's what you do. You play them the Working It Out podcast and that should resolve the conflict pretty quickly. I mean, they're creative types, they wear baseball jerseys for no reason and carry bats.

Thanks everybody, we're working it out. We'll see you next time.