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| Marcos Voss |
Lin-Manuel Miranda is a well-known name in today's society, your brain might immediately go to the Tony award-winning musical Hamilton. But before he created that Tony winning musical, the first Broadway musical Lin wrote and starred in was called In the Heights, which he began writing it in his Sophomore year of college. This musical put him on the map and earned him his first Tony Award. Now, more than ten years later from its Broadway debut, the production is being performed at the Mesa Encore Theatre and is being directed by Marcos Voss.
“You are getting a look at a slice of life in this predominantly Latinx community in Washington Heights,” Voss explained. “Three days of people celebrating, mourning, finding love, coming home, and what it means to find your identity in the world with the lense of that close community. This show really is driven by music and dance.”
Marcos Voss has a long history of being involved in theatre. But the last time that he directed was 10 years ago because he took a break to spend time with his kids. This musical drew him out of this temporary retirement. Once Mesa Encore Theatre announced that they were including it in their season, he reached out. He knew someone on the board and asked if they had a director yet.
“I really wanted to recommend a Latinx director for them and just make sure they understood the importance of authenticity for this show,” explained Voss. “I recommended a friend of mine to do the job but she said, well do you want to do it? I said I didn’t think I could, but she kept nudging me to think about it. I talked to my wife about it and she said I would regret it if I didn’t at least try. I fell in love with this show the first time I heard it when it came out in 2008. I always kept it in the back of my mind that it would be a show that I would do, whether that would be as an actor, or designer, or director it someday. So I put together a proposal for them and was selected to do it!”
Authenticity was the most crucial element that Voss was striving for. He did an extensive search for actors and actresses that began last year. For him, this show speaks volumes being Latinx himself.
“For me, this show is that first time that I get to see people that look, sound, and live like me,” Voss said. “We are not the butt of jokes, we aren’t thugs, you know these people really are their own heroes. It truly is about family and community. The story speaks to me and I needed to do the work to find the authentic voices, those Latinx voices or the African American voice or the Afro-Latin voice, to meet the authenticity of this story. My goal from the audition notice was to cast as predominantly Latinx as possible. You wouldn’t do The Color Purple with an Asian cast or white cast right? So we have to try to maintain authenticity there. Yes, we have people who are not Latin in the cast but we have Hawaiian and Filipino and people who have in their DNA a connection to the Hispanic/Latin culture. And that didn’t just extend to my cast, my choreographer Nick Floras is a Latinx gentleman along with my music director, and our assistant stage manager is a high school student who is Latina. We are just trying to create opportunities for people to at least see that there are options for Latinx people in the theatre. It was an effort, but what’s that saying? Everything that is worth doing takes time. It really is.”
The dedication and commitment paid off in the end. Once Voss had his team together, he wanted to do something to bring them all together.
“We got together at the beginning of this process and I had each person share a story of someone who they were doing this show for,” Voss explained. “Whether it was themselves, a parent, a grandparent, or a child. Just why this show was important to them and who and what they were doing it for. That helped us build a bond with each other immediately.”
The musical follows Nina, a college student who comes back home to Washington Heights after her first year. The story is told mainly through music and dance, some styles such as hip hop and salsa. Finding a choreographer who was trained in these dance styles and more was crucial for the production. A couple of people fell through and Voss got desperate as the clock was ticking.
“I took to Facebook to this wonderful group called United Colors of Arizona Theatre. It’s a Facebook group for people of color in the theatre community,” Voss began. “And I just said I needed help trying to connect with a choreographer who had Latin, ballroom, and hip hop experience and I’d love for them to be Latinx. Someone recommended Nick who choreographed the professional Phoenix Theatre performance a while back. We talked and he said that this show meant a lot to him. He has raised the caliber of what community theatres can do dance-wise with this show.”
After that success, the next goal was to bring every element together. The musical lyrics that go along with the dancing are a significant piece of storytelling. Some numbers are incredibly impactful and Voss has an emotional attachment to the music in this production on a very personal level.
“My mom passed away five years ago and she was my only parent; my Dad died when I was very young. She had battled a long time with dementia and Alzheimer's,” Voss described. “This musical helped me get through that because of the death of a major female character in the show and the lines in the song ‘Everything I Know’. It really hit home for me when Nina is talking about going through all the pictures and papers that they kept, because that was my mom. She kept everything. Thinking about the line, ‘She saved everything we gave her, every little scrap of paper and our lives are in these boxes, while the woman who held us is gone’, that annihilates me every single time I hear it. The actress we have singing it is tremendously talented, we actually rehearsed it the other night and everyone who was there just broke down. That happens several times during rehearsal for us because everyone has that person that changed their life and they’re not there anymore or that they are so thankful that they are still there in their life that they are emotional about it. That’s the song that really hits home for me but there are snippets in every song where we all know that person being sung about or it reminds us of ourselves at a point in our lives.”
That is what is so marvelous about theatre, one song can bring up so much connection and emotion. This musical holds a lot of weight and the cast hopes to depict this raw vulnerability to the audience. Voss hopes you welcome lessons, feelings, or realizations as he did.
Voss also wanted to point out that if you don’t believe you can relate to this story, you will still find a connection.
“We are at a very divided time in our world’s history and our nation’s history, we are more polarized and segregated than we have been before. I hope that audiences that do come that may feel that this is just a Latinx story, understand that there are themes that are applicable to everyone,” Voss concluded. “Everyone understands the death of a loved one, of a community leader and how that impacts everyone’s lives. Regardless of this being a Latinx story those things are universal no matter what your culture is.”
Mesa Encore Theatre's production of In the Heights, which runs through June 2nd at the Mesa Art Center, is sure to be an emotional, colorful journey about remembering where you are from and the family that you still have. Voss, cast, and crew want audiences to just enjoy themselves and…
“...have a total appreciation of salsa music!” Voss joked. “No honestly, just to come in and have fun. It’s such a joyful show, yes there are moments of sadness but we celebrate that sadness by remembrance and honoring the people who are gone. Just come out and have fun and let your worries go away for a couple of hours.”
CLICK HERE for more information on this production, which runs through June 2
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