Latest news with #MarcoRamirez
The Guardian
20 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Tony awards 2025: full list of winners
Best book of a musical Marco Ramirez, Buena Vista Social Club Itamar Moses, Dead Outlaw Marco Pennette, Death Becomes HerWill Aronson and Hue Park, Maybe Happy Ending, – WINNER! David Cumming, Felix Hagan, Natasha Hodgson, and Zoë Roberts, Operation Mincemeat: A New Musical Best sound design of a playPaul Arditti, Stranger Things: The First Shadow – WINNER! Palmer Hefferan, John Proctor is the Villain Daniel Kluger, Good Night, and Good Luck Nick Powell, The Hills of California Clemence Williams, The Picture of Dorian Gray Best sound design of a musicalJonathan Deans, Buena Vista Social Club – WINNER! Adam Fisher, Sunset Blvd. Peter Hylenski, Just in Time Peter Hylenski, Maybe Happy Ending Dan Moses Schreier, Floyd Collins Best orchestrations Andrew Resnick and Michael Thurber, Just in Time Will Aronson, Maybe Happy Ending Bruce Coughlin, Floyd CollinsMarco Paguia, Buena Vista Social Club – WINNER! David Cullen and Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sunset Blvd.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New York's food banks brace for triple whammy of federal cuts, tariffs and even higher costs
A tiny storefront in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, has been a lifeline for Marco Ramirez and his family of four. Three years ago, the 56-year-old began visiting the food pantry operated by Reaching-Out Community Services after his hours as a restaurant cook were cut. Every two weeks, he stops by to select items from a computer kiosk and waits for staff to wheel out his order, free of charge. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Ramirez packed his bags with staples like rice, meat, cooking oil and juice. Without the pantry's help, he said, his family wouldn't be able to afford pricey items like eggs. The pantry is part of a vast network supported by the Food Bank for New York City, which recently lost 75 tractor trailer loads of food — 2.5 million meals — due to cancelled shipments from the US Department of Agriculture following President Donald Trump's abrupt cancellation of over $1 billion in nutrition funding in March. 'We're the country's largest USDA-supplied food bank, and anytime there's a cut or a rollback or a pause, the impact to us is that much more exponential,' said president Leslie Gordon. The organization serves the New York City area, where a recent study estimated the poverty rate hit a new high of 25 percent. For food banks across New York state, the state of emergency that began with the pandemic in 2020 never ended. Already stretched thin from years of rising food costs and food insecurity, hunger relief organizations are now contending with a panoply of federal cuts and tariffs, which are expected to severely disrupt supply chains and further hike prices. Headlines about steep declines in port activity have renewed fears that shelves nationwide could go empty in a matter of weeks. Trump's cuts have derailed programs like the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA), which allowed food banks to purchase food from local farms, and the Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which ships food directly to banks and helps cover operational costs. In recent years, the USDA has expanded TEFAP to meet increased demand from more Americans turning to pantries to stay afloat. New York's newly passed state budget provided little relief. For months, advocates had urged Governor Kathy Hochul to join the legislature in increasing funding for two state-run hunger programs as a way to cushion the blow of federal cuts. But funding for both programs remained largely unchanged in the final deal released last week. Nourish New York will see a modest increase of $750,000 for a total of $55 million, while the Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program will remain flat at $57.8 million. The legislature had proposed funding the programs at $75 million each. In the wake of federal cuts, the Regional Food Bank will distribute 2 million less meals across 23 eastern New York counties, which span from just north of Westchester to the Canadian border — after opening a new 50,000-square-foot distribution center in Montgomery in December. 'These cuts mean families going hungry; kids, veterans, and seniors going hungry, and farmers going out of business,' said Congressman Pat Ryan after visiting the food bank last month. 'Trump needs to put country before politics, reverse these cuts immediately, and restore the food shipments to put money back in our farmers' pockets and nutritious meals back on Hudson Valley families' tables.' Over 16 million pounds of food across the state will no longer be distributed due to federal cuts, according to Ryan Healy, advocacy manager of Feeding New York State, which represents 10 food banks across the state, including the ones interviewed for this story. 'Not only is the impact of these cuts felt by our food banks and community partners, it's felt by the farmers and agricultural producers,' Healy said. In addition to USDA shipments, eight of the network's food banks received LFPA funding, which has been a boon to local farms across the state. 'We had about a million pounds of food that were cancelled that we were expected to be distributing right about now,' said Ryan Brisk, vice president of operations and procurement at Feeding Westchester. 'A million pounds is 25 tractor trailer loads of food.' That particular shipment included what Brisk called the 'most highly coveted items' sought by food pantry users, like fresh produce and frozen meat. TEFAP shipments have accounted for a quarter of the organization's food supply. In 2024, Feeding Westchester saw an average of 229,000 visits each month, including 80,000 children and 36,000 seniors. Many visits come from families where adults work multiple jobs, as well as veterans and seniors living on fixed incomes, Brisk said. That need has not tapered off since the onset of Covid-19: 'It was the pandemic passing the torch to inflation.' In Long Island's Nassau and Suffolk counties, Island Harvest has doubled the amount of food it distributes since 2019. 'The need for emergency food is greater now than it was during the pandemic,' said Gregory May, director of government and community relations. 'The trends are really going in the wrong direction.' Island Harvest relies heavily on donated food, which makes up roughly 75 percent of its stock. May worries whether those donations will continue as businesses feel the crunch of a tightening economy. The situation could become even more grim if the federal government moves forward with cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program(SNAP), also known as food stamps, May said. Congressional Republicans are now considering a drastic overhaul of the program as a way to partially cover another round of Trump tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. 'I don't think a lot of people realize how connected they are to the emergency food system,' May said. 'A cut to one program is really a cut to every program.' Staff at FeedMore Western New York are still trying to make sense of how a variety of cuts — TEFAP, LFPA, and funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has also been paused — will impact their bottom line. Feedmore serves Erie, Niagara, Cattaraugus, and Chautauqua counties. 'We are being impacted in every way you can imagine by decisions being made by the federal government,' said public relations manager Catherine Shick. Last year, the organization received nearly $15 million in federal support to operate its food bank network, provide SNAP outreach, deliver meals to the homebound, and supply community kitchens. FeedMore has increased the number of people it serves by 46 percent since 2021. Tariffs add yet another 'unknown' that FeedMore has to monitor, with some vendors warning of potential food price increases, Shick said. Inflation was cited as a top affordability concern for Billi-Jo Mendez, a first-time pantry user in Brooklyn who was next in line to Ramirez on Wednesday. 'In all my years, I've never come to a pantry,' said Mendez, 52. 'I came for extra help.' Mendez said she and her husband have been making do on their own, but recently received custody of their three grandchildren. Her basket included sacks of apples and carrots, as well as cereal and baked chips for the kids. 'It's so sad,' Mendez said of federal cuts. 'A lot of people are going to go hungry without assistance from a program like this.' Gordon at Food Bank for New York City said it's too soon to tell exactly what impact tariffs will have, but the the current situation is unlike past 'rough patches.' 'There's a lack of predictability that is causing things to be more upended than they have been before,' Gordon said. 'We definitely have not seen this convergence of external factors to this degree, and all at once, impacting the good work we're trying to do for people who need us.'
Geek Culture
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Geek Culture
‘Creed' Spin-off Series, 'Delphi', Lands First Blow At Amazon
The long-gestating Creed universe is now a reality, as Adonis 'Donnie' Creed will step back into the ring for its first live-action series. Titled Delphi , it focuses on young boxers at the titular gym from the Rocky and Creed films, with franchise star Michael B. Jordan and La Máquina creator Marco Ramirez onboard as executive producer and showrunner, respectively. No other details, including casting and a release date, were shared, but the spin-off is set to premiere and air on Prime Video in 240 countries and territories. It's one of the several projects planned for the 'Creed-verse', which is looking to explore more feature instalments and animated films. 'The series that takes us back to where it all began,' said the actor of the upcoming show. 'What I love about this story is that it stays true to what the Rocky and Creed franchise is all about: hard work, determination, fighting for something bigger than yourself. It's about family, the ones we're born into and the ones that we created. We're building something special here, and I'm excited to introduce you to new fighters that will walk into the Delphi . As always, in Creed we say, one step, one round, one punch at a time.' This comes amid Jordan's post-release glow of the highly successful Sinners , reuniting him with frequent collaborator and Black Panther director Ryan Coogler. Before the horror stint, he was last seen in Creed III , the latest movie in the franchise that contributed US$276 million to the combined haul of over S$660 million at the global box office. The actor portrayed Adonis in all three films, which began in 2015 as the reinvigoration of Sylvester Stallone's Rocky franchise. A fourth entry is in the works, with Jordan returning to star and direct. Si Jia is a casual geek at heart – or as casual as someone with Sephiroth's theme on her Spotify playlist can get. A fan of movies, games, and Japanese culture, Si Jia's greatest weakness is the Steam Summer Sale. Or any Steam sale, really. Amazon creed Delphi Michael B Jordan Prime Video
Yahoo
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'Buena Vista Social Club,' writer Marco Ramirez ushers Broadway into the golden age of Cuban music
Officially, playwright and screenwriter Marco Ramirez began working on the Broadway musical 'Buena Vista Social Club' a little more than six years ago. But if you start the clock when the Cuban supergroup's music first seeped into his soul, he's been penning it for decades. Like many Cubans and Cuban Americans, the silky crooning of band member Ibrahim Ferrer and the insatiable rhythm of 'Candela' wafted through his grandparents' living room and into his teenage ears. For him, the album represented a bond not just to Cuba, but to each other: 'My grandfather is as much of a music nerd as I was,' says Ramirez. 'We connected the same way two teenagers would, opening the liner notes and saying, 'Look at these lyrics, look at this stuff.' ' The electrifying new musical began an open-ended run at Broadway's Schoenfeld Theatre on March 19 and traces the origins of the Cuban music supergroup that rose to international fame after the success of their eponymous Grammy-winning 1997 album and the 1999 Wim Wenders documentary of the same name. The show's creative team boasts a pedigree on par with the band itself, including Tony-nominated director Saheem Ali, two-time Tony-winner Justin Peck ( ("Illinoise," "Carousel") and his co-choreographer Patricia Delgado and Tony-winning producer Orin Wolf ('The Band's Visit,' 'Once'). Unfolding across two timelines, the show follows the golden age Cuban musicians as they navigate Havana's segregated social scene at the onset of the Cuban Revolution, and 40 years later during their twilight years as they hurtle toward the Carnegie Hall concert depicted in the documentary. While all of the songs are performed in their original Spanish, the dialogue is completely in English. 'Right now, you and I are a thousand miles away, speaking very different tongues, on a very different island,' explains character Juan de Marcos, inspired by his real-life counterpart. 'But a sound like this? It tends to travel.' Like the 'Buena Vista' musicians, Ramirez also followed his dream thousands of miles from home, his artistic pursuits carrying the first-generation son of Cuban immigrants from his Hialeah hometown to New York, where he studied playwriting at NYU and Juilliard. Before he could even accept his master's degree from the latter, he was off again, this time to Los Angeles, where he joined the staffs of award-winning television series, including 'Sons of Anarchy' and 'Orange Is the New Black.' More recently, he served as showrunner on 'Daredevil' and 'La Máquina,' and judging by the multiple projects he's contractually-forbidden from discussing, he's cemented his status as one of Hollywood's most in-demand scribes. Right now, though, Ramirez and I are thousands of miles away from L.A. in a very different metropolis: New York City,, where we break bread at Margon, a counter serve Cuban restaurant two blocks from the show's theater on 45th Street. Our conversation lasted just 15 minutes before Ramirez was called back to the theater for a last-minute creative discussion about his Broadway debut. So, like the 'Buena Vista' band members, we too took our show on the road, through Times Square, finally concluding at a nearby bar. After all, a conversation like this, occurring just days before opening night? It tends to travel. You grew up with this music. What does this music mean to you now? I think it's entirely about honoring what came before us and also — we live in a world that is fascinated with what's new and what's young. Music is the only place where they really respect when an instrument ages. When a laptop ages, it gets thrown away. But in the world of music, it's like, 'This violin is 100 years old. This piano is 200 years old.' Age is seen as a sign of quality because it has endured. I'm Cuban. You're Cuban. We grew up with this music. As you started working on this show, did you feel any anxiety or nervousness about holding up the mantle of — I don't know — our entire Cuban identity? I felt a responsibility to the music. As a kid having been born and raised in Miami — to me, Cuba was a place where music came from. That was my first real relationship to the island and that culture. And so I have felt like a protector to some degree of the music throughout this process. ... I've felt a little bit like Indiana Jones running through a temple where tons of things are being thrown at you and you're just trying to save the one beautiful thing because you're like, 'This belongs in a museum.' That's me. And I feel that way about this music really passionately. Can you take us through the early days? How did you feel when you first heard about [the project]? It was an immediate yes. It was like I was on 'Family Feud' and they asked the question and I was like, WHAM, on the buzzer. A commercial producer named Orin Wolf approached me, and he had done a show called 'The Band's Visit' on Broadway, which was a very successful, very beautiful and very moving musical. He said, 'I love this music. I don't speak Spanish, but I think there's a theater project here. Can we start talking about it?' And my response was 'YES' in all caps. And from that point on, we were in lockstep and walking together on this journey. We went to Cuba several times. We met with a lot of the musicians. We went to Mexico to meet with some of the musicians' families who lived there. We've been kind of globetrotting and we really feel protective over this music. And we've been doing it together. One of the lines that jumped out at me is when Young Haydee tells her sister Omara [Portuondo], basically, 'We have this potential deal with Capitol Records, and we need to leave the island. There's this whole future ahead of us if we just leap and say yes to this.' When you — (Laughs) That's actually better than the line. Ha, thanks. When you were in undergrad, before you had booked a single professional job as a writer, what did you see as your future? What did you hope would unfold? Broadway was not anywhere in the picture, but I thought, 'I want to write plays. I want to get them produced or produce them myself,' which we did. And for some weird, arbitrary reason, I told myself, 'And when I'm 40, I can write TV.' It was like a weird rule. Like, '[writing for television] is something 40-year-old people do.' But at the age of 18, 19, 20, all I was trying to do was get a couple productions of my plays done anywhere that would do them. … I got to write for TV before I was 30, which was nice. What do you have left to do? I guess that means it's all over for you. I'm really hoping that next year I'll get traded to the Miami Heat. Early on in the play, when Juan de Marcos is trying to get [legendary Cuban singer] Omara [Portuondo] to record the album, he delivers this pretty stunning monologue: 'This record, the one you did after it, and the one after that ... they changed my life. They're the reason I went to conservatory. They're the reason I got two PhDs.' Who was your Omara Portuondo? In a way, that's me talking to the ['Buena Vista Social Club'] record, to the legacy of this record. This record for me was the high watermark of what music could do … and proof that Cuban compositions belonged right next to Beethoven. In some ways, that became kind of the rallying cry of the whole piece: We just want to fight for some space and some respect …. Like, when did the Mount Rushmore just suddenly become Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Rachmaninoff — all the other names that we know? Who's to say that there aren't other people from other places, from other continents who deserve to be considered canonically among the best music ever made? … I really do genuinely feel that way about some of these compositions. They are all-timers. The melodies are all up there with the most beautiful melodies ever made. Toward the end of the play, as Compay [Segundo], you write: 'These songs you like so much. They're all about heartbreak, about longing … But they're not beautiful because we wrote them that way … They're beautiful … because we lived them.' As a Cuban American from Miami myself, as you are, there is a distance, both geographic and chronological, between the life that you lived, born and raised in Miami, and the life that they lived, born in and dying in Cuba. How did you close that distance? I think the first step was acknowledging my privilege, but also that my lived experience was never going to be the experience of somebody who was born and raised and lived in Cuba. I identify as Cuban American, I identify as Cuban culturally, but I do not have the same lived experience as people who have lived both the joys and the sorrows of it. Part of that is what made visiting [Cuba] so, so insightful. Just being there and interacting with a lot of people who had never left the island. But really just trying to inhabit the point of view of these artists who were born and raised and died there and what that must have felt like for them, for the outside world to keep looking at their music and saying, 'Oh my God, it's so lovely. It's so beautiful. Everything is so filled with exotic flavor and it's just so romantic.' But for them to not fully comprehend the level of suffering that went into the songwriting, the level of suffering that went into the performance, even just the agony of practice to be able to play like Leo [Reyna], our pianist, or Renesito [Avich], our tres player — the hours spent alone in a room with an instrument to be able to solo in a huge way and like be the Jimi Hendrix of the tres. That's a lot of work and heartache and sacrifice. There were a lot of parties those guys didn't go to so that today they could be the party. On that note, heartbreak and hardship is now unfortunately so part and parcel to the Cuban condition, but the show is also really funny. So many laughs come out of some of the most heartbreaking moments of the show. Was that intentional? I don't think it was an active choice. I just don't think I would have been capable of doing it without comedy. I think my experience of Cuban culture has largely been an experience of Cuban comedy. Whether or not that's the storytelling tradition of my uncle telling a joke at the table or my aunt or my mother, or my grandmother telling a joke. And especially, I think, when the songs are so heavy and so about heartbreak. Not all of them, but many of them are so heavy and about heartbreak. It's like they're either about heartbreak or they're about sex. It was about the counterbalance. What drives you to write? Oh, God. I'm not good at anything else, Nick. I'm not even sure I'm good at this … What was the question? 'What drives you to write?' I don't know … I do fundamentally believe in the power of storytelling and stories, whether or not that's theater or movies or books. It is a way that we make sense of the world, and I believe in that as an art form. Like one believes in Santa Claus. What's it like to finally get to this point where you can't touch it anymore? It's out of your hands and this is the script that's going to go in black and white forever? A lot of therapy and a lot of meditation are going to help me get through the next week. ... I genuinely hope that people like it. I'm proud of it. Most importantly, it's been a lot of fun to make. Thank you for your time. My dad's coming to see it with me tonight for the second time. Thank you for bringing the old spirits back for him. Thank you for the Margon chicken thighs. They were delicious. Get notified when the biggest stories in Hollywood, culture and entertainment go live. Sign up for L.A. Times entertainment alerts. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
‘Buena Vista Social Club,' writer Marco Ramirez ushers Broadway into the golden age of Cuban music
Officially, playwright and screenwriter Marco Ramirez began working on the Broadway musical 'Buena Vista Social Club' a little more than six years ago. But if you start the clock when the Cuban supergroup's music first seeped into his soul, he's been penning it for decades. Like many Cubans and Cuban Americans, the silky crooning of band member Ibrahim Ferrer and the insatiable rhythm of 'Candela' wafted through his grandparents' living room and into his teenage ears. For him, the album represented a bond not just to Cuba, but to each other: 'My grandfather is as much of a music nerd as I was,' says Ramirez. 'We connected the same way two teenagers would, opening the liner notes and saying, 'Look at these lyrics, look at this stuff.' ' The electrifying new musical began an open-ended run at Broadway's Schoenfeld Theatre on March 19 and traces the origins of the Cuban music supergroup that rose to international fame after the success of their eponymous Grammy-winning 1997 album and the 1999 Wim Wenders documentary of the same name. The show's creative team boasts a pedigree on par with the band itself, including Tony-nominated director Saheem Ali, two-time Tony-winner Justin Peck ( ('Illinoise,' 'Carousel') and his co-choreographer Patricia Delgado and Tony-winning producer Orin Wolf ('The Band's Visit,' 'Once'). Unfolding across two timelines, the show follows the golden age Cuban musicians as they navigate Havana's segregated social scene at the onset of the Cuban Revolution, and 40 years later during their twilight years as they hurtle toward the Carnegie Hall concert depicted in the documentary. While all of the songs are performed in their original Spanish, the dialogue is completely in English. 'Right now, you and I are a thousand miles away, speaking very different tongues, on a very different island,' explains character Juan de Marcos, inspired by his real-life counterpart. 'But a sound like this? It tends to travel.' Like the 'Buena Vista' musicians, Ramirez also followed his dream thousands of miles from home, his artistic pursuits carrying the first-generation son of Cuban immigrants from his Hialeah hometown to New York, where he studied playwriting at NYU and Juilliard. Before he could even accept his master's degree from the latter, he was off again, this time to Los Angeles, where he joined the staffs of award-winning television series, including 'Sons of Anarchy' and 'Orange Is the New Black.' More recently, he served as showrunner on 'Daredevil' and 'La Máquina,' and judging by the multiple projects he's contractually-forbidden from discussing, he's cemented his status as one of Hollywood's most in-demand scribes. Right now, though, Ramirez and I are thousands of miles away from L.A. in a very different metropolis: New York City,, where we break bread at Margon, a counter serve Cuban restaurant two blocks from the show's theater on 45th Street. Our conversation lasted just 15 minutes before Ramirez was called back to the theater for a last-minute creative discussion about his Broadway debut. So, like the 'Buena Vista' band members, we too took our show on the road, through Times Square, finally concluding at a nearby bar. After all, a conversation like this, occurring just days before opening night? It tends to travel. You grew up with this music. What does this music mean to you now? I think it's entirely about honoring what came before us and also — we live in a world that is fascinated with what's new and what's young. Music is the only place where they really respect when an instrument ages. When a laptop ages, it gets thrown away. But in the world of music, it's like, 'This violin is 100 years old. This piano is 200 years old.' Age is seen as a sign of quality because it has endured. I'm Cuban. You're Cuban. We grew up with this music. As you started working on this show, did you feel any anxiety or nervousness about holding up the mantle of — I don't know — our entire Cuban identity? I felt a responsibility to the music. As a kid having been born and raised in Miami — to me, Cuba was a place where music came from. That was my first real relationship to the island and that culture. And so I have felt like a protector to some degree of the music throughout this process. ... I've felt a little bit like Indiana Jones running through a temple where tons of things are being thrown at you and you're just trying to save the one beautiful thing because you're like, 'This belongs in a museum.' That's me. And I feel that way about this music really passionately. Can you take us through the early days? How did you feel when you first heard about [the project]? It was an immediate yes. It was like I was on 'Family Feud' and they asked the question and I was like, WHAM, on the buzzer. A commercial producer named Orin Wolf approached me, and he had done a show called 'The Band's Visit' on Broadway, which was a very successful, very beautiful and very moving musical. He said, 'I love this music. I don't speak Spanish, but I think there's a theater project here. Can we start talking about it?' And my response was 'YES' in all caps. And from that point on, we were in lockstep and walking together on this journey. We went to Cuba several times. We met with a lot of the musicians. We went to Mexico to meet with some of the musicians' families who lived there. We've been kind of globetrotting and we really feel protective over this music. And we've been doing it together. One of the lines that jumped out at me is when Young Haydee tells her sister Omara [Portuondo], basically, 'We have this potential deal with Capitol Records, and we need to leave the island. There's this whole future ahead of us if we just leap and say yes to this.' When you — (Laughs) That's actually better than the line. Ha, thanks. When you were in undergrad, before you had booked a single professional job as a writer, what did you see as your future? What did you hope would unfold? Broadway was not anywhere in the picture, but I thought, 'I want to write plays. I want to get them produced or produce them myself,' which we did. And for some weird, arbitrary reason, I told myself, 'And when I'm 40, I can write TV.' It was like a weird rule. Like, '[writing for television] is something 40-year-old people do.' But at the age of 18, 19, 20, all I was trying to do was get a couple productions of my plays done anywhere that would do them. … I got to write for TV before I was 30, which was nice. What do you have left to do? I guess that means it's all over for you. I'm really hoping that next year I'll get traded to the Miami Heat. Early on in the play, when Juan de Marcos is trying to get [legendary Cuban singer] Omara [Portuondo] to record the album, he delivers this pretty stunning monologue: 'This record, the one you did after it, and the one after that ... they changed my life. They're the reason I went to conservatory. They're the reason I got two PhDs.' Who was your Omara Portuondo? In a way, that's me talking to the ['Buena Vista Social Club'] record, to the legacy of this record. This record for me was the high watermark of what music could do … and proof that Cuban compositions belonged right next to Beethoven. In some ways, that became kind of the rallying cry of the whole piece: We just want to fight for some space and some respect …. Like, when did the Mount Rushmore just suddenly become Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Rachmaninoff — all the other names that we know? Who's to say that there aren't other people from other places, from other continents who deserve to be considered canonically among the best music ever made? … I really do genuinely feel that way about some of these compositions. They are all-timers. The melodies are all up there with the most beautiful melodies ever made. Toward the end of the play, as Compay [Segundo], you write: 'These songs you like so much. They're all about heartbreak, about longing … But they're not beautiful because we wrote them that way … They're beautiful … because we lived them.' As a Cuban American from Miami myself, as you are, there is a distance, both geographic and chronological, between the life that you lived, born and raised in Miami, and the life that they lived, born in and dying in Cuba. How did you close that distance? I think the first step was acknowledging my privilege, but also that my lived experience was never going to be the experience of somebody who was born and raised and lived in Cuba. I identify as Cuban American, I identify as Cuban culturally, but I do not have the same lived experience as people who have lived both the joys and the sorrows of it. Part of that is what made visiting [Cuba] so, so insightful. Just being there and interacting with a lot of people who had never left the island. But really just trying to inhabit the point of view of these artists who were born and raised and died there and what that must have felt like for them, for the outside world to keep looking at their music and saying, 'Oh my God, it's so lovely. It's so beautiful. Everything is so filled with exotic flavor and it's just so romantic.' But for them to not fully comprehend the level of suffering that went into the songwriting, the level of suffering that went into the performance, even just the agony of practice to be able to play like Leo [Reyna], our pianist, or Renesito [Avich], our tres player — the hours spent alone in a room with an instrument to be able to solo in a huge way and like be the Jimi Hendrix of the tres. That's a lot of work and heartache and sacrifice. There were a lot of parties those guys didn't go to so that today they could be the party. On that note, heartbreak and hardship is now unfortunately so part and parcel to the Cuban condition, but the show is also really funny. So many laughs come out of some of the most heartbreaking moments of the show. Was that intentional? I don't think it was an active choice. I just don't think I would have been capable of doing it without comedy. I think my experience of Cuban culture has largely been an experience of Cuban comedy. Whether or not that's the storytelling tradition of my uncle telling a joke at the table or my aunt or my mother, or my grandmother telling a joke. And especially, I think, when the songs are so heavy and so about heartbreak. Not all of them, but many of them are so heavy and about heartbreak. It's like they're either about heartbreak or they're about sex. It was about the counterbalance. What drives you to write? Oh, God. I'm not good at anything else, Nick. I'm not even sure I'm good at this … What was the question? 'What drives you to write?' I don't know … I do fundamentally believe in the power of storytelling and stories, whether or not that's theater or movies or books. It is a way that we make sense of the world, and I believe in that as an art form. Like one believes in Santa Claus. What's it like to finally get to this point where you can't touch it anymore? It's out of your hands and this is the script that's going to go in black and white forever? A lot of therapy and a lot of meditation are going to help me get through the next week. ... I genuinely hope that people like it. I'm proud of it. Most importantly, it's been a lot of fun to make. Thank you for your time. My dad's coming to see it with me tonight for the second time. Thank you for bringing the old spirits back for him. Thank you for the Margon chicken thighs. They were delicious.
