'In the Heights' On Stage
Tickets are now on sale for HCC's fall production, "In the Heights"
Before his "Hamilton" became a Broadway phenomenon, Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote "In the Heights," a Tony-award winning musical celebrating Latino culture, music and dance.
The Holyoke Community College Theater Department will bring "In the Heights" to the stage in November for a full-scale production with a cast comprising HCC students, staff and alumni, students from Holyoke High School, and other talented local actors and singers.
"We want to celebrate the Latino community at HCC and the Latino community in the city of Holyoke," said HCC theater professor and director Patricia Sandoval '84. "We want to celebrate the talents of the community and give visibility to the youth of Holyoke. Bringing this show to campus does just that."
The show will be performed seven times over two weekends, Nov. 8-10, and Nov. 15-17. Show times are 7 p.m. each night with a 2 p.m. matinee on Sat., Nov. 10, in HCC's Leslie Phillips Theater. The Friday, Nov. 16, performance will be ASL interpreted.
Tickets are now on sale on line for all dates and times through Brown Paper Tickets at hcctheater.brownpapertickets.com ($10 general admission, $8 students and seniors, $5 for members of the HCC community).
Tickets will also be available at the door if the shows do not sell out in advance.
"It's incredibly exciting," said Alberto Sandoval-Sanchez, professor emeritus at Mount Holyoke College, an expert in Latino Studies who is serving as a consultant for the production and scholar-in-residence at HCC for the semester. "We're expecting large audiences because it's so contemporary and it has so much to offer young audiences."
Lin-Manuel Miranda started writing "In the Heights" when he was a sophomore at Wesleyan University. The story is set around Fourth of July celebrations in the primarily Latino neighborhood of Washington Heights in New York City where Miranda grew up. The original Broadway production was nominated for 13 Tony Awards and won four: Best Musical, Best Original Score, Best Choreography, and Best Orchestrations. It also won a Grammy Award for Best Musical Show Album and was nominated for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The production is supported by grants from the Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts (MiFA) and MassHumanities.
HCC music professor and college chorale director Ellen Cogen will serve as musical director for the production. Tiffany Joseph has been hired as the choreographer. There will also be a 10-piece band to perform the score. HCC theater professor Matthew Whiton is handling scenic design and lighting.
PHOTO by CHRIS YURKO: The cast of the HCC Theater Dept. production of "In the Heights."
