'In the Heights' actress Karen Olivo

If you only see one Broadway show this year, then that show ought to be In The Heights. Set in New York City's own Washington Heights, the show takes you on an emotional journey from the highest high to the lowest low... and the music is incredible, too. The musical revolves around a week-or-so in the life of one stoop corner and the community around it. The show's primary focus, however, is on Usnavi (Lin-Manuel Miranda), who runs the bodega on the corner and is struggling to reconcile his nostalgia for his family's native Dominican Republic with his love for the Manhattan that has always been his home.

Actress Karen Olivo (on the left in the picture) plays Usnavi's love interest Vanessa, a girl longing to get out of the barrio and on to a greater life; I got the opportunity last month to speak with her about In The Heights, about beloved off-Broadway darling [title of show], and about her personal painterly prowess.

So how are you?
I'm good, I'm good. It's not been bad! Things could be worse.

Of course! So, could you talk a little bit about your role in Broadway's In The Heights?
I play Vanessa, a girl who works in the salon and who is dreaming of bigger and better things. She comes from a little sordid past—she's got some issues at home that make her want to get out of the Heights even more. She kinda falls in love a little bit!

Just a little bit?
Just like a little bit! I don't know, I feel like her friendship with Usnavi always sort of toes the line between friendship and something else—and then of course at the end of the show she works it out. She's like, "Oh, I really liked you the entire time!" Other than that, I wear lots of heels… and I run around and sing a lot… [laughs]

And dancing, of course!
There's some dancing!

[laughs]
Luckily only one number for me. I got out pretty easy. It's pretty much the role of a lifetime.

Yeah, you've been with the show—well, you were with it off-Broadway—were you in early workshops?
I did the one workshop that they did right before the Broadway run, which… I think that would put me at three years with the production altogether. But yeah, the moment I heard the music I was like, "I don't know what I have to do to get into it, but I have to be in it." And then that was it. It was never an issue of whether or not—it's funny; once it bites you, you get like a sickness and then you're like—I've been affected since!

That's one way to put it!
Yeah! Yeah, it's weird. As actors, you take jobs all the time and you're like, "Whatever pays the bills"—but it didn't matter. It didn't matter if they didn't pay me anything, I was still going to do it. I guess that's telling of the show.

And it's essentially Lin-Manuel Miranda's show. He conceived of it and he wrote all the music—and he plays Usnavi, so he's your costar as well.
I think it's the biggest gift. Because so many times you do shows and once you're in the rehearsal room you have the tone; you understand exactly what you're supposed to be bringing every night, and you always have constant direction or something like that… but once you open and you begin to make the show your own a lot of those things fall by the wayside. And you start to pick apart the show as it only pertains to your character. And having Lin onstage all the time, he's like the touchstone. You always know where it's supposed to go because he starts the show off and he interacts with everyone. So if you come into the show and you're having, like, an off day—I mean, it's so hard to always end up having the same show anyway—but if you're under the weather or you come in and you're frazzled, you haven't done all the proper warm-ups and you're like "Ahh!", you just look at him and he sort of puts you on the right track. So you can't ever be lost. And you don't get that with a lot of shows, you know? The writers are sitting behind a desk somewhere. Or, you know, once it's open they're gone. And it's like, you know, I have the real deal right in front of me. It's amazing. I think that's why it's going so well! [laughs] Does that make sense? I mean, that's why people like it.

No, that makes sense. And it's definitely different from everything else on Broadway right now… most musicals don't have modern music, and because of this the two other musicals that come immediately to mind would be Spring Awakening and Rent. It's like there's a mini-genre on Broadway right now.
Right. You're completely right. And on top of it, this show being such an amalgamation of different cultures and music, you know? I think everyone's always—as soon as rap became like a big thing, like in the late eighties and the nineties, I think everyone wanted to sort of incorporate that because it's the closest thing to storytelling. You know what I mean? And no one could really do it. I felt like no one in this medium could really bridge the gap, and it took a kid who was spoon-fed it and musicals to just sort of make them work together. I think that's why it's kind of ground-breaking.

Right. And with regards to the mini-genre I mentioned, only two of those three shows are even set in present-day, or relatively, and both of those are set in New York City. So in that way In The Heights bears a lot of similarity to Rent.
Well, to steal a line from Rent: "New York City, center of the universe!" Everyone comes here. People travel all over the world to come to this place. So, I mean, I don't find it strange that someone would want to set a musical in New York, because it's the most exciting place you could possibly be. I don't know if it has anything to do with sort of appealing to a large group of people; maybe this is the only place that it would read properly… and it's funny because I was in Rent and now I'm in this, but being on the inside of these two experiences, they're very different to me. They're very… I don't know. I've always felt like Rent was more like performance art. Because the way that it's staged is very bare-bones, and we make no bones about us being actors, at all times, that put on different hats to sort of create what you see in front of you. And even down to the lighting, everything is just so sparse. And that's such an artsy way of telling a story. And this show seems more like, we give you guys a video camera and you get to literally see what happens inside our little enclave, our little world. And that seems much… I don't know… less like storytelling and more like voyeurism? Does that make sense? Because you're not seeing anything that's false, really. We're all really that close, and we're all really laughing when we're laughing, and we're all—you know what I mean? It's like the most realistic I think I've ever had to be onstage.

And this show is bringing a lot of younger people to theatre, just like Rent did in the nineties—as well as Spring Awakening now.
Right. I think it has to do with the music, though. I guess in both cases, both with Rent and with this, what draws the younger crowd is the fact that it's, well, for Rent it's rock and roll with people screaming and not being prim and proper about telling a story. And with this it's modern music; like, the rap element is a huge draw for a lot of kids. And what's strange is that in that same respect—we've been doing fundraising where we go out and we collect money, so afterwards we go out into the audience, and there are so many elderly people who comes up to me and who shake my hand and are like, "Thank you so much, it was such a beautiful story!" And with Rent we didn't get that. With Rent we turned away— [laughing] a lot of our grandparents, and our grandparents' friends… you know what I mean? Because they didn't really get why we were so angry. They didn't get why it had to be so loud.

And Rent was also much racier.
Yeah. Oh, much racier. And this is—I think we really do toe the line on both of those issues. Which is great. But it's great that the kids still love it too, you know?

Right. Also, really, it's musicals like this that'll help to get younger people into theatre in general.
Absolutely. And hopefully it's going to help younger people who are budding writers realize, "It's okay, there's a medium for me! I don't write like all these other musicals, my sound isn't like this, but now maybe it will be accepted." That would be great.

Speaking of writers, too, it seems like it's recently been harder for younger writers to get their work seen than it used to be, and this show is an exception to that rule, which I think is part of the reason why it's so great: it's showcasing a young composer's work in a way that you don't see often anymore.
Well, I think that has a lot to do with the fact that musicals, even more than theatre in general, are a fiscal gamble. [laughs] It costs so much more to put them up; it costs so much more to put them up right… so I think this probably would not have happened if it weren't for the fact that Lin came in immediate contact with people who were fans—Tommy Kail, our director, being one of them. And once Tommy saw the potential he made it his own personal mission; I mean, he didn't make anything at the beginning, obviously, but he spearheaded this "let's make this happen"—you know, it became a very grassroots sort of "let's make theatre out of nothing". And then, you know, he put the wheels into motion as far as getting Lin involved with producers who take gambles. And our producers do. They're pretty well-known for thinking out of the box and really going for story and not necessarily thinking about how much money they can make off of something, not appealing to demographics, per se, and really just working on the art of it. And that's the only reason it's happened, I really do think. I know a lot of musical theatre writers and budding songwriters who are great but can't get their stuff seen. You've just got to find the right people.

And it's partly that something has to be good but also that it has to be marketable as well. And to quote from this musical [title of show]—
[grins and nods]

—"Is there a market for four chairs and a keyboard?" Whether people will pay to see something is what it comes down to a lot of the time.
Well, I think that they've done a really good job about being true to the story, and then finding all the little treats that you would want to find in the theatre. Within reason. I mean, I guess we could have gone to a very high-tech place. We could have gone to big-budget and, you know, tracks and big set pieces. But that wouldn't have been telling the story properly.

Right. I don't think this show really needs high-tech stuff, either.
It's more about community. And relationships. Which we luck out on, I guess.

I saw you nodding enthusiastically when I mentioned [title of show] earlier. Have you seen it?
I haven't... but I'm really good friends with Hunter.

I interviewed Hunter and Jeff—well, over a year ago now.
I love him. He's really just funny and great and sweet and so talented. Exactly what you need to be to be in this business!

The show is great too!
Oh, I'm sure it is. I had no doubt!

They're working on bringing it to Broadway now. I hope it happens. [NOTE: some time after this interview it was revealed that the show would open in July at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre!]
I watch their webisodes. I'm addicted to their webisodes.

They had one for In The Heights!
I saw that one. It was pretty great. [laughs] I appreciated that.

Did Lin see it?
Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. I think Lin and I were supposed to go on—Lin did a cameo on one of the webisodes and I was supposed to go on at one point and do a cameo but it never worked out.

Aw.
I know. I would like to be a part of that elite group that gets to do a cameo on The [title of show] Show.

What's so great about the theatre community is that it seems like everyone in theatre in the whole city is really close-knit, which makes it feel like a small world. In a good way.
Absolutely. Yeah. I think you put it really well! [laughs] Yeah, we're all very small and tight-knit and we've all worked with each other in some capacity. Whether it be in the city or out of the city, or on a tour somewhere…

I also wanted to talk about the benefit concert of Hair that you were in during this past summer. When my friend and I saw In The Heights, when you entered, she turned to me and whispered really loudly, "She was Sheila!"
[laughs]

Her eyes were huge and she was like, "Oh my god!"
[laughs] Ah, yeah. I have a lot of friends who—I have one friend in particular who's done Hair like six times, and he said, "It will change your life." And I thought, "Yeah. Right. It's gonna change my life. Come on. Seriously?" And you hear that all the time about that. But then it did. It did change my life. [laughs] And we only had ten days to put that up.

Ten days!?
At the Delacorte. Yeah.

I knew it only ran a couple of nights but I didn't know you only had ten days to…
Initially it was only supposed to be a reading. So then they realized you couldn't do Hair with just a chair and some music stands. You know what I mean? So then they were like, "No, we have to actually do it." So then they just sort of put us all on the fast track of learning everything and just doing it. It was very fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants—which made it a great experience, too.

And like Rent and In The Heights, Hair was very much a product of its time.
Right.

You seem to be drawn to those sorts of projects!
Well, I'm not the typical—I'll never be a chorus girl because I don't dance well enough and I look the way that I do, you know? And I'm not the ingénue… I'm getting old enough to be like a character actress at some point, but there's not a place that really fits me so I have to go for avant-garde theatre. I did Miracle Brothers at the Vineyard Theatre where I played a dolphin—that's the kind of stuff that I have to do because I can't really fit anywhere else! [laughs] Until they just really start to believe in non-traditional casting I'm going to be stuck doing all these things. Which is not bad!

Let's go back to Hair again—what exactly was the production? Remind me.
I think it was the 40th anniversary of it being done at the Public when it had never been done before, and so they decided to do a reading of it, which turned into a production of it, and it was… it was pretty great.

[laughs]
Just because almost every night—well, actually every single night—they had people from the original company come. Just because it was only three performances—and then at the end when we sang "Let The Sunshine In" we would literally stick out our hands and pull them up onstage and they would finish the song with us. But it was great because, I mean, it was an important piece to do during this time. You know, when war is such a huge issue for a lot of us. And I found that more in my ten days of getting to know the production, which I had never done before, I realized that all of those themes were current. And because of it, it made it really easy to jump into Sheila and be Sheila for a couple nights. And it's strange, too. Like, I never thought that—my friends were saying, "If you do the show it's going to change your life because you've never really had to sing about those kinds of things onstage in that way," and I realized you cannot protect yourself and sing about the war. You know? Vocally, emotionally… there's something about singing about those things that are happening right now that sort of tears away everything and makes you as naked as possible, which is funny. And for that reason and for that reason alone that's why it was so life-changing for me, because I'd never been—you know, when we go onstage we know exactly what we're giving you. But I've never been forced to give more than—well, more than I wanted to, and that show sort of does that to you.

Your mentioning the parallels between that time and now brings into focus one of the differences, in that when Hair was created, it was produced and staged at the Public. Whereas these days, as I have heard others say, you're unlikely to find a political show that would be made as public, dare I say, as Hair was then.
Well, I think it was such a different time, and that was a time of artistic revolution for a lot of people, and I think that for that time it worked, but not necessarily for now. I mean, I think if we were saying things that—I mean, we have to really be careful. People aren't gonna pay to see people rant and rave, you know? You have to be smart about your battles and you have to be really smart about what you put out there because sometimes it reflects poorly on you. So I think that, yeah, in this day and age it's not as easy to come out with something that shakes people up, but I don't think that means that people aren't touching on important issues. I think that there's a way to entertain and still educate and reflect society and promote change all in one thing, but you just have to really construct it in a palatable way, you know? And sometimes when you do that you end up really changing people's minds by not hitting them over the head. But yeah, I think that Hair was probably a little… a little out of the box! But at the time it worked, that's what everyone was doing.

Are you from New York yourself, by the way?
Yeah, I was born in Manhattan and I lived in the South Bronx until I was about seven. And then I moved to Florida, and I grew up most of my life there in central Florida, and I went to college, and—I always knew that I was going to come back to New York. So then when I got out of college I came here. Started working.

Were you into theatre when you were growing up, too?
Yeah. My whole life I always knew I was going to be an actor. My dad was a children's theatre director and my mother was a costume designer and also dabbled in stage managing, so I was born into the theatre. I did my first show when I was like five or six. I didn't know that I was going to be professional until probably about my last year of high school. I realized, "Oh, this is all I'm gonna do. I've studied other things, and this is the one thing that I'm good at, and that's what I should probably end up doing."

What area do you live in now?
Now I live in New Jersey! My husband and I just bought a house out there. Because we've lived in the city for years, in Brooklyn, but we just wanted more space and we wanted—he's a singer songwriter, so he makes lots of noise! [laughs] He's constantly playing guitars at three A.M., four in the morning. And I like to paint. So we really couldn't find a place where I could paint with enough space, and there was no wildlife in Brooklyn that we could see unless we went to Prospect Park, and we just wanted more space and we wanted an area that could really be like our haven, so we moved out to New Jersey. About an hour away.

And the spaces in New York are really small, and it just gets more expensive.
Oh, absolutely. Luckily, we're both working right now so we could probably afford a place like that, but it's more about quality of life, you know? And really being able to center ourselves and do the work that we want to do.

You mentioned that you paint…
Well, my dad was also an artist—he went to school for art at Fordham. He always sort of gave us art lessons as we were growing up. And we never did like after-school activities, we always came home and we'd make papier-mâché masks and—that was the sort of thing that my dad always taught us. So I've always sort of been able to draw a little bit, and then over the years it's become sort of my own little hobby. And now I like paint canvas bags for people and do custom designs and stuff like that. But yes, the one thing that I do outside of acting.

But acting first?
Of course.

Karen Olivo can of course be seen as the lovely Vanessa in In The Heights, about which you can learn more by going to its website. The show is fantastic and so is she! (The aforementioned [title of show] webisodes can be found on that show's YouTube channel.)