In the Heights, page 21
I’ve gotta get out of here soon,
This block’s getting worse by the hour!
You can’t even go to a club with a friend
Without having somebody shove you!
DANIELA: Ay, por favor,
Vanessa, don’t pretend that Usnavi’s your friend, we all know
That he love you!
COMPANY: Ohhhh!!
CARLA: Wow, now that you mention that sexual tension, it’s easy to see!
VANESSA: Yo, this is bogus…8
DANIELA: Haven’t you noticed you get all your coffee for free?
SONNY, PIRAGUA GUY, MEN,
DANIELA, CARLA, WOMEN:
Carnaval…
Del barrio…
Carnaval…
Del barrio…
MEN, GRAFFITI
PETE, WOMEN:
¡Carnaval!
¡Barrio!
¡Carnaval!
¡Barrio!
man: Here comes Usnavi!
(USNAVI enters from his apartment.) 9
USNAVI: Yo, yo, yo, y-y-yo-yo
Now, now, everyone gather ’round, sit
Down, listen, I got an announcement!
Wow, it involves large amounts, it’s
Somewhere in the range of ninety-six thousand.
Atención, I’m closin’ shop!
Sonny, grab everybody a soda pop!
Yo, grab a bottle, kiss it up to God,
Cuz Abuela Claudia just won the Lotto!
Yeah, Abuela Claudia won the Lotto
And we’re bookin’ a flight for D.R. tomorrow!
COMPANY: Oh my gah!
(The company hoists USNAVI on their shoulders and begins marching flags around the street. SONNY exits into ABUELA CLAUDIA’s place with a soda bottle.)
COMPANY: ¡Alza la bandera 10
La bandera Dominicana!
¡Alza la bandera
La bandera Puertorriqueña!
¡Alza la bandera
La bandera Mexicana!
¡Alza la bandera
La bandera Cubana!
PIRAGUA GUY:
¡Pa’rriba esa bandera!
¡Álzala donde quiera!
¡Recuerdo de mi tierra!
COMPANY:
Hey!
Hey!
PIRAGUA GUY, USNAVI:
¡Me acuerdo de mi tierra…
Esa bonita bandera!
¡Contiene mi alma entera!
¡Y cuando yo me muera,
Entiérrame en mi tierra! 11
COMPANY:
Hey!
Hey!
(Dance break! USNAVI is in the center, gettin’ love from the ladies, inverse of VANESSA’s club number moment.) 12
DANIELA: Everything changes today
COMPANY: Hey!
DANIELA, CARLA: Usnavi’s on his way
COMPANY: Hey!
DANIELA, CARLA: Off to a better place
COMPANY: Hey!
DANIELA, CARLA: Look at Vanessa’s face!
BENNY: Everything changes today…
COMPANY: Hey!
BENNY: Goodbye, Mr. Rosario…
USNAVI: Okay!
BENNY: I’m taking over the barrio!
USNAVI: Yo!
USNAVI, DANIELA, CARLA: We’re getting out of the barrio!
DANIELA: Hey, Mr. Benny, have you seen any horses today?
COMPANY: Hey!
BENNY: What do you mean?
DANIELA: I heard you and Nina went for a roll in the…
COMPANY: Hay! Hey! Ohhhhhh! 13
WOMEN:
Benny and Nina
Sitting in a tree
K-i-s-s-i-n-g!
¡Qué bochinche!
Nina and Benny!
K-i-s-s-i-n-g!
MEN:
Benny and Nina
Sitting in a tree
K-i-s-s-i-n-g!
¡Qué bochinche!
Nina and Benny!
K-i-s-s-i-n-g!
SONNY:
Hold up, wait a minute!
Usnavi’s leavin’ us
for the
Dominican Republic?
And Benny went and
stole
The girl
That I’m in love with?
She was my babysitter
first! 14
Listen up, is this
What y’all want?
We close the bodega,
The neighborhood
is gone! 15
They selling the dispatch,
And they closing the salon,
And they’ll never turn the
Lights back on cuz—
GRAFFITI PETE, MAN:
Wait a minute!
Hoo!
SONNY, VANESSA: We are powerless, we are powerless! 16
SONNY: And y’all keep dancin’ and singin’ and celebratin’
And it’s gettin’ late and this place is disintegratin’ and—
SONNY, VANESSA: We are powerless, we are powerless!
USNAVI: All right, we’re powerless, we’ll light up a candle!
There’s nothing going on here that we can’t handle!
SONNY: You don’t understand, I’m not trying to be funny!
USNAVI: We’re gonna give a third of the money to you, Sonny!
SONNY: What?
USNAVI: Yeah, yeah…
SONNY: For real?
USNAVI: Yes!
Maybe you’re right, Sonny. Call in the coroners!
Maybe we’re powerless, a corner full of foreigners.
Maybe this neighborhood’s changing forever.
Maybe tonight is our last night together, however!
How do you wanna face it?
Do you wanna waste it, when the end is so close you can taste it?
You could cry with your head in the sand
I’mma fly this flag that I got in my hand!
PIRAGUA GUY:
¡Pa’rriba esa bandera!
PIRAGUA GUY, DANIELA:
¡Álzala donde quiera!
COMPANY:
Hey!
Hey!
USNAVI: Can we raise our voice tonight?
Can we make a little noise tonight?
COMPANY: Hey!
PIRAGUA GUY, DANIELA,
CARLA:
¡Esa bonita bandera
Contiene mi alma entera!
COMPANY:
Hey!
Hey!
USNAVI: In fact, can we sing so loud and raucous
They can hear us across the bridge in East Secaucus? 17
PIRAGUA GUY, SONNY,
MEN, DANIELA, CARLA:
¡Pa’rriba esa bandera!
¡Álzala donde quiera!
WOMEN, BENNY,
GRAFFITI PETE, MEN:
Carnaval del
barrio…
USNAVI: From Puerto Rico to Santo Domingo,
Wherever we go, we rep our people and the beat go…
PIRAGUA GUY, SONNY,
MEN, DANIELA, CARLA:
¡Esa bonita bandera
Contiene mi alma entera!
WOMEN, BENNY,
GRAFFITI PETE, MEN:
Carnaval del
barrio…
(USNAVI confronts VANESSA.)
USNAVI: Vanessa, forget about what coulda been.
Dance with me, one last night, in the hood again.
(A moment.)
DANIELA, CARLA: Wepa!
(The community explodes into a final chorus around VANESSA and USNAVI, as they slowly begin to dance.)
COMPANY: ¡Carnaval del barrio!
¡Carnaval del barrio!
COMPANY:
¡Carnaval del barrio!
¡Carnaval del barrio!
¡Del barrio!
¡Alza la bandera
La bandera Dominicana!
¡Alza la bandera
La bandera Puertorriqueña!
¡Alza la bandera
La bandera
Mexicana! 18
DANIELA:
¡P’arriba esa bandera!
¡Oye!
¡Y cuando yo me muera,
Entiérrame en mi tierra!
¡Del barrio!
¡Alza la bandera!
¡Adiós!
COMPANY: Alza la bandera
La bandera
La bandera
La bandera
La bandera 19
DANIELA, PIRAGUA GUY:
¡Del Barrio!
COMPANY:
¡Alza la bandera!
(All cheer.)
Skip Notes
1. In the first version of “Carnaval,” Camila began the song. The carnaval was an annual community event that she organized. The shift to Daniela happened somewhat organically. As the emphasis of the show shifted from the Rosarios to the neighborhood, it made sense to give the song’s leadership to Daniela. First of all, we made the song impromptu, not a planned event. Second, when we decided that Daniela’s salon was on the way out, the carnaval could become her last hurrah. And as the number developed, we realized this would be our Act Two “check-in” with all the characters. The opening number establishes them, “96,000” encapsulates all their dreams, “Blackout” finds them all in crisis, and “Carnaval” keeps all the story lines moving against the backdrop of the entire community.
2. My everlasting regret is that I spent summers in Puerto Rico and not that many winters: Maybe this is my subconscious aching for the holiday traditions we didn’t get in New York. Vega Alta is my dad’s hometown.
3. There are two types of Nuyoricans: those who have a family coquito recipe and those who have a hookup. My dad makes a pretty mean brew, but my hookup for the better part of a decade has been Javier Muñoz’s parents, who make me five bottles every holiday season.
4. In many ways, this song is a mirror image of the opening number: We’re not establishing characters anymore, but we are establishing where all the characters are against the backdrop of the neighborhood. So we really need to cement this chorus, because the verses are going to be all about story. Let’s go!
5. Just like in “96,000,” I’m chasing the feeling that these lyrics are being improvised in the moment. Which is how all musical theater lyrics should feel, like an honest moment that happens to be musical. But stating it explicitly never hurts!
6. This is a fun lyric with a snappy punch line, but it also contains the whole show: If we’re from everywhere, as so many of us are, what do we claim as our central identities? So many of us contain so many hyphens.
7. It’s nice to have characters who are not on board for this celebration: It keeps it from being all rah-rah-everyone’s-happy and something closer to a raucous town hall.
8. “Bogus”—a Karen Olivo-ism that crept into the score.
9. In the stage version, the community didn’t yet know the lottery winner: Usnavi’s telling the neighborhood in the biggest way possible.
In the movie, Abuela has passed on, so Usnavi’s rap is more personal: He’s announcing that he’s made plans to leave, just like Daniela and Carla. More reason to mourn, more reason to cherish the moment. Here are the movie lyrics:
Yo, yo, yo, y-y-yo-yo
Now, now, everyone gather ’round, sit
Down, listen, I got an announcement!
Wow, there’s nothing here holdin’ me down.
The word is out, tell the whole town I’m bouncin’.
Atención, I’m closin’ shop
Sonny, grab everybody a soda pop
Twist off the bottle, kiss it up to God
And miss Abuela Claudia, it’s time to fly, though.
Daniela, Carla, pack up the carro,
I’m bookin’ a flight for D.R. tomorrow!
10. If I had more lyrical real estate, I’d list even more countries and flags, but alas! We tried to sneak as many in the movie as we could.
11. These lyrics, in English:
Lift up that flag!
Lift it everywhere!
Reminder of my homeland!
I remember my homeland…
That beautiful flag!
Contains my whole soul!
And when I die,
Bury me in my homeland!
I remember being very proud of these lyrics: Remember, I’m pretty English dominant, so to write lyrics that really fly in Spanish takes much more effort.
I’ll also never forget my first time performing this song after my grandfather’s funeral. The whole show, I was steeling myself to perform the eulogy in “Alabanza” later in the act. I was so focused on getting through that song that this reference to “when I die, bury me in my homeland” completely blindsided me, and I felt a sob rising in the happiest song in the show. Eliseo Román, our piragüero, saw it before I did: He squeezed my arm so hard on our dance here, he literally held me up when I felt like I couldn’t keep singing. I’ll always be grateful to him for it.
12. Flash forward to 2019, and I am playing Piragua Guy, and Anthony Ramos is playing Usnavi, and time has folded in on itself.
13. This gossip is more of a bombshell in the stage version than the movie version, but it survives both: I can’t resist a hay/hey pun.
14. I love that this is the only non-rhyming lyric in the whole song: “She was my babysitter first.” God bless Sonny.
15. I’ll never forget our last performance of this on Broadway. Shaun Taylor-Corbett was playing Sonny, and his voice caught on “We close the bodega, the neighborhood is gone.” It’s as if the cast, crew, and audience simultaneously realized this was not only the last hurrah of the neighborhood but the last hurrah of the show at the Rodgers.
16. Again, the hook that keeps on giving, sung by the people most heartbroken over Usnavi leaving.
17. I mean, if the GW Bridge is in the background, you may as well name-check New Jersey on the other side.
18. We did a lot of work between Off-Broadway and Broadway on bringing this number home: “button school,” if you will. Daniela’s riff on “Adiós” in this section is an inversion of the bridge in the Puerto Rican classic “En Mi Viejo San Juan.”
19. And the final touch to bring it home was this harmonic repetition of “la bandera,” which I believe was Lacamoire’s idea. It’s the button of all buttons.
But will it translate? The question has shadowed In the Heights since its days in the bookstore basement. Sure, the show exerts a powerful effect on the artists involved, such as members of the predominantly Latino cast, who have the chance to depict their community with loving specificity. But can it appeal to a broad audience?
A film that’s intended for worldwide release is about as universal as a cultural phenomenon can get. (That’s one reason some studio executives passed up the chance to turn the show into a movie back in 2011: They told Scott Sanders they didn’t know how to find an audience for it.) When Jon Chu’s movie version opens all around the world, it will supply the final answer to the question of how far this story about Usnavi and Vanessa and the GWB can go.
The final answer, but not the only answer—and maybe not the most interesting one.
The whole time that Lin and Quiara and Scott and Mara have been trying to get their movie made, the stage version has been circling the globe. Since 2011, it has been produced by dozens of theater companies scattered across six continents (but only six—penguins lack the steps). It amounts to a fascinating worldwide experiment.
We know what In the Heights means to a largely Latino company and to the city that sees itself reflected in the story. But when it’s performed by and for people who are very far from Washington Heights, measured in miles and every other way, what does it mean for them?
itting in the Richard Rodgers Theatre, transfixed by what he was seeing onstage, Bobby Garcia thought: “This is how I grew up.”
Like Nina, he had traveled a long way for college—all the way to New York. But he had spent his first seventeen years in the Philippines. That’s where, in 2011, he would direct the first foreign production of In the Heights.
