Eisa Davis and Lin-Manuel Miranda have created a musical primarily based on the cult basic The Warriors.
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Jimmy Fontaine/Atlantic Information
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 a substitute, it is a idea album, meant to be listened to in a single sitting. That concept happened as a result of Miranda needed to write down one thing about The Warriors, the 1979 cult-classic film about members of a Coney Island road gang who’re making an attempt to get again residence to Brooklyn after they’re accused of assassinating a frontrunner advocating for peace.
It is one in all his favourite films. And he could not cease occupied with how he might do his personal love letter to it. Then he introduced Davis on board — they usually began occupied with the Seventies.
“We had been impressed by the idea albums from the ’70s that we love,” Miranda mentioned, “the place you’d sit in your front room flooring and browse the liner notes to your vinyl. And we needed to create that feeling.”
The album tells the Warriors’ story through the use of 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 workforce” of musical artists, Miranda mentioned. “So it was very releasing, at all times filled with pleasure.”
Mixing it up
The ladies of the Warriors
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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 make it possible for we left that in ’79,” Davis mentioned. “We’re in 2024 right here.”
Miranda and Davis say they don’t have any plans for Warriors to come back to Broadway, however that “We might like to see a stage adaptation of this down the street.”
There possible 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.