Lin-Manuel Miranda is bringing the (freestyle) Love to Great White Way…
Freestyle Love Supreme, the improvisational rap musical revue co-created by the 41-year-old Puerto Rican actor, singer, songwriter, rapper, producer, and playwright, is returning to Broadway’s Booth Theatre for a strictly limited three-month engagement in October, producers announced today.
“If live theater is coming back, so is FLS,” said Miranda, who co-created the show with Thomas Kail and Anthony Veneziale. “Our most important collaborator is the audience, and we can’t wait to get back in the Booth.”
The limited engagement begins Thursday, October 7, and runs through Sunday, January 2, 2022.
“We are thrilled to be back on Broadway and part of this theatrical community we love so much,” said Kail, who directs. “The immediacy of our show, with its content driven by audience suggestion, makes it one of the rare shows that can speak to whatever is happening in the moment.”
The production’s core performers will include Andrew Bancroft AKA Jelly Donut, Tarik Davis AKA Tardis Hardaway, Aneesa Folds AKA Young Nees, Arthur Lewis AKA Arthur the Geniuses, Kaila Mullady AKA Kaiser Rözé, Chris Sullivan AKA Shockwave and Anthony Veneziale AKA Two-Touch.
As with the original 2019-2020 Broadway production, the revival will include spontaneous, unannounced special guests which “may include” Miranda, Christopher Jackson, Daveed Diggs, James Monroe Iglehart, Wayne Brady, Ashley Pérez Flanagan, Bill Sherman, Utkarsh Ambudkar and others.
Hamilton creator Miranda has been much in the spotlight lately, with the film adaptation of his In The Heights opening last week, his feature directorial debut tick, tick… Boom! arriving this Fall and his partly-owned The Drama Bookshop bookstore opening earlier this month in Manhattan’s theater district.
Prior to its purchase by Miranda, Kail and producers Jeffrey Seller and James L. Nederlander, the Book Shop, in a nearby location, had long been theater district institution and gathering place but was threatened with closure by rising rents and financial difficulties. Miranda, Kail and Veneziale began writing Freestyle Love Supreme more than 17 years ago in the basement of the old Book Shop, a history chronicled in the 2020 documentary We Are Freestyle Love Supreme.
Freestyle Love Supreme is produced on Broadway by Kail, Miranda, Jenny and Jon Steingart, and Jill Furman.