Why you can't see Lin-Manuel Miranda's newest musical on Broadway
When Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis decided to make an album off the classic cult 1970's hit movie "The Warriors," they decided the gang members needed to all be women.
"It was very important to make sure that we're not just changing their names and telling the same story, we're really making it unique to this female gang that has kept Coney safe and is trying to get back home," Miranda says of the concept album released Oct. 18.
The album "Warriors," featuring Broadway stars like Phillipa Soo and Amber Gray alongside musicians Lauryn Hill, Nas, and Ghostface Killah, is in some ways a Broadway musical but without the stage. It was created to be listened to in one sitting, in order.
Whether the album will get a musical adaptation is still in question. "We're really asking folks to sit and listen to a story. I hope we get to explore this in another medium, but at the same time, I'm excited that you're not hearing a recording of a thing you're really supposed to go see. You're hearing the thing we made, and we worked very hard to make this an immersive storytelling experience," Miranda says.
"The Warriors" told the story of a gang trying to make its way from from the Bronx after one of its members is accused of assassinating a respected gang member. It was one of Miranda's favorites as a child.
"It's a beautiful movie," he says. "As a kid, it was really a primal fear starter kit for being a kid growing up in New York City. Whether it's the fear of wandering into the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time, or meeting the wrong cop on the wrong night, or just being too close to the subway tracks, there's something in it for everyone. It was really my mental map of the five boroughs growing up. It has stayed with me,"
Miranda, creator of "Hamilton", along with Davis, a playwright and Pulitzer finalist, worked to tell the story across musical genres, from rap to SKA.
They didn't want to simply remake the movie, but write a love letter to it. And swapping the men for women in the gang helped accomplish that.
"It was really, really crucial to make sure that it wasn't just women who were actually doing men's things, but women doing women's things on their way back. I think that's what really makes this such a beautiful story, is that it's women in really tough situations, and surviving with losses but thriving in a dream of peace. That's what I really, really laid into and got excited about in this adaptation," Davis says.