Eisa Davis and Lin-Manuel Miranda have created a musical primarily based on the cult traditional The Warriors.
Jimmy Fontaine/Atlantic Data
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Jimmy Fontaine/Atlantic Data
Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator of Hamilton, and playwright Eisa Davis, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, have created a brand new Broadway musical — which isn’t really on Broadway.
As an alternative, it is a idea album, meant to be listened to in a single sitting. That concept happened as a result of Miranda wished to write down one thing about The Warriors, the 1979 cult-classic film about members of a Coney Island road gang who’re attempting to get again dwelling to Brooklyn after they’re accused of assassinating a pacesetter advocating for peace.
It is one in all his favourite motion pictures. And he could not cease eager about how he might do his personal love letter to it. Then he introduced Davis on board — and so they began eager about the Nineteen Seventies.
“We have been impressed by the idea albums from the ’70s that we love,” Miranda mentioned, “the place you’d sit in your lounge ground and skim the liner notes to your vinyl. And we wished to create that feeling.”
The album tells the Warriors’ story by utilizing music that crosses genres, together with hip hop, rock, ska and salsa; it is sung by a solid that features everybody from artists like Lauryn Hill, Nas, Ghostface Killah and Billy Porter to Broadway stars Phillipa Soo, Jasmine Cephas Jones and Amber Grey.
“We simply bought this dream group” of musical artists, Miranda mentioned. “So it was very releasing, all the time filled with pleasure.”
Mixing it up
The ladies of the Warriors
Jimmy Fontaine/Atlantic Data
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Jimmy Fontaine/Atlantic Data
Miranda and Davis flipped the gender of the Warriors in order that, of their model, the gang is all girls. This implies a central romance is one between girls as nicely.
“The gender flipping allowed us to angle in on the sexism and homophobia within the movie and be sure that we left that in ’79,” Davis mentioned. “We’re in 2024 right here.”
Miranda and Davis say they haven’t any plans for Warriors to come back to Broadway, however that “We would like to see a stage adaptation of this down the street.”
There doubtless will not be a film model, although, as a result of, as Miranda says, “That already exists.”
Ciera Crawford edited the audio and digital variations of this story. Chloee Weiner combined the audio.
