Hip-hop comes to Cabrillo Stage: Local musical theater makes a generational pivot

In most things in the realm of arts and culture, there comes an inevitable moment when one dominant generation and its style and preoccupations suddenly gives way to another emerging generation with a much different style and set of preoccupations.

That moment has arrived at Cabrillo Stage.

The popular summer musical theater company has become a Santa Cruz County tradition, dating back more than 40 years now at Cabrillo College. 

Cabrillo Stage’s artistic appetites have been large over the years, with big, sumptuous productions of big, brand-name musicals — “Fiddler on the Roof,” “The Music Man,” “The Sound of Music,” just to name a few — as well as a few not so mainstream, like “Lunch, the Musical” and “Honk!”

But, now, for the first time — here comes hip-hop.

Cabrillo Stage opens its 2024 season July 12 (after a preview performance July 11) with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” at the Crocker Theater on the Cabrillo College campus. “In the Heights” is a Tony Award-winning musical that broke on Broadway back in 2008, seven years before Miranda became the biggest star in theater with his landmark musical “Hamilton.”

Locally, “In the Heights” marks a transition at Cabrillo Stage, perhaps even the beginning of a significant new era. The company’s artistic director, Andrea Hart, was hired after the 2022 season and her first show, 2023’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dam/e,” fit into what audiences have come to expect at Cabrillo. But, in her second season, Hart wants to midwife a new stylistic era at Cabrillo Stage that might hopefully bring in a new generation and even a new cultural vibe.

“A priority with me in theater,” she said, “is making it relevant to new audiences, which a lot of times, means younger audiences. But I also love things that are going to bring in people who don’t think of themselves as a theater-going audience, and show them something that relates to them and then makes them into a theater-going audience.”

In a wider general perspective, hip-hop is no longer a strand of cultural expression. It’s become, in many ways, the dominant cultural expression, particularly with young and/or non-white audiences. And it has for years now made its presence felt on the stage. 

“In the Heights,” a profile of life in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan of predominantly Dominican, Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants, is one of the most popular and potent expressions of hip-hop in contemporary theater. 

“It really gets that feeling when you’re in New York that you’re never alone,” said Hart of the play. “There’s always life happening around you. There’s always bustle and people moving by. I think the directing team has recreated that in a really beautiful way, and the dance is a huge part of that.”

Hart has some experience with the setting of the play, having lived with a Puerto Rican roommate in The Bronx, in the 1990s, while a college student in her early 20s. “She moved to Washington Heights after graduation,” said Hart of that roommate. “And I would come down a lot and visit her. And the rhythms and the language around me, and the way people talked to each other and interacted on the streets, I really have strong memories of what that feels like.”

The Cabrillo Stage production is directed by Estrella Esparza-Johnson, who grew up in the bosom of San Juan Bautista’s celebrated theater company El Teatro Campesino. Her parents were both central figures at ETC. And though Esparza-Johnson comes from a decidedly Chicano/California theatrical environment — and “In the Heights” is steeped in a significantly different Puerto Rican/Cuban/New York style — she has a New York story of her own. As a young child, she saw the Broadway run of “Zoot Suit,” the landmark play written by El Teatro Campesino founder and leader Luis Valdez.

“I was about preschool age,” said Esparza-Johnson, “and, this was the late ’70s, and hip-hop was just becoming a force. I remember hearing the music coming from those boom boxes and seeing those break dancers. It had a huge impression on me as a kid.”

Much like “Hamilton,” which, in the decade since its debut, has become a musical-theater classic, “In the Heights” tells its story through a prism of hip-hop and related musical styles. 

“I think it’s better than ‘Hamilton’ in a lot of ways,” said Hart. “I guess that’s also a matter of taste, but ‘Hamilton’ is a kind of historical story, but this is very oriented as a neighborhood story. It’s multi-generational. It has all these wonderful characters, of all genders. It’s just universal in a way that I don’t think ‘Hamilton’ was.”

As for the cast of two dozen performers, they are almost all Latino, said Hart. The production also features a 13-piece band (which brings the cast up to 35), playing on stage. In the mix as well is DJ and performer RJ Wayne, who serves as the production’s hip-hop specialist. He’s also the husband of director Esparza-Johnson. Hart said she met with many actors and performers who resonated on a personal level with the broader Latino/immigrant themes of the play. Some of them came up through the young people’s theater organizations of Santa Cruz County, such as CYT (Christian Youth Theater) and All About Theatre.

Esparza-Johnson said her approach was to empower her young performers to bring their own artistic voice and vision to the production, to make Miranda’s songs and raps their own. 

“It’s much like a particular pianist might have their own version of [Debussy’s] ‘Clair de Lune’ that is their own unique expression,” she said. “My husband and I really wanted to provide that for this group of actors.”

As is the case for many arts organizations, audiences at Cabrillo Stage have been getting grayer over the years. But the pandemic accelerated a process at the company that might have taken years without it. Cabrillo Stage could not use its beautiful home stage at the Crocker for two years. The company returned to the Crocker in 2022 for a two-play season, but the audiences were small, and the season was doomed by a Covid outbreak among the cast of “Candide,” causing cancellation of several performances. Longtime artistic director Jon Nordgren resigned shortly after.

The 2023 staging of “Hunchback of Notre Dame” still didn’t earn back what it cost, but “we weren’t far off,” said Hart. “We’ve been able to diversify our funding a bit this year.”

The rough slog through the pandemic years and a change of ownership have added an urgency and a new energy into the company to move to its next stage. The bet is that hip-hop will generate interest among younger and more diverse audiences while still drawing more traditional audiences, themselves eager to embrace something different.

“There are a lot of conversations in the theater community at large,” said Esparza-Johnson, “about needing to make sure that our stories are newer stories. The classics are great, and we learn from them. But we do want, and the theater needs, new voices, new perspectives, new creators and new audiences.”

And that new way — as proven by the success of popular musicals like “In the Heights,” “Hamilton” and “Holler if Ya Hear Me” — is to embrace hip-hop, which is more than a musical genre. It’s an artistic orientation to the world.

“Hip-hop,” said Esparza-Johnson, “is a culture, and it has had a profound impact on all aspects of human endeavor. Honestly, even if you have an idea about ‘Well, I don’t like rap, and I don’t listen to it, and I don’t have anything to do with it,’ even if that’s your stance, I can show you elements of hip-hop that are in your life every day. It’s about self- expression, and our whole society has opened up to more to that as a result of hip-hop. It’s taking its place as the next step [in the legacy] of civil rights. There’s a through line, all through history, straight to this point where we are now. And hip-hop is it.”

Cabrillo Stage’s “In the Heights” officially opens July 12 at the Crocker Theater at Cabrillo College. It runs through Aug. 4.