Entertainment
Lin-Manuel Miranda and playwright Eisa Davis talk to Lauryn Hill about their concept music album, Warriors
NEW YORK (AP) — Most New Yorkers, Lin Manuel Miranda argues, answer the next query: When was the primary time you watched “Warriors”?
“I saw it when I was 4, an unsupervised teenager. My friend’s older brother had a VHS tape. There were no adults around,” he told the Associated Press. “Everything you’re afraid of as a New Yorker, growing up in the city, is in that movie.”
The 1979 cult classic follows a street gang that moves from the Bronx to their Coney Island turf on an all-out assault. The group is wrongly accused of murdering one other gang leader, Cyrus of the Gramercy Riffs, who’s in search of peace.
October 18 Miranda — in her first full musical after “Hamilton” — and award-winning actor and playwright Eisa Davis will release “Warriors”, a musical concept album inspired by the film, with some significant changes.
Lauryn Hill is their Cyrus, and their Warriors gang is made up entirely of ladies, played by Kenita Miller, Sasha Hutchings, Phillipa Soo, Aneesa Folds, Amber Gray, Gizel Jiménez, Jasmine Cephas Jones, and Julia Harriman.
It’s not a one-to-one story, and it’s definitely not an easy gender swap. “My sense of New York, which I think really comes out in this album and was sparked in the movie Warriors, is a real dream of unity and peace,” Davis says. “And that was something I really felt we could relate to.”
The interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
AP: How did this project come about?
MIRANDA: It was a movie that lived in my brain before I even began forming memories. And then a friend from college sent me an email in 2009 after “On the Heights” got here out. He was working as an assistant to one in every of the producers of the movie, Larry Gordon, and he said, “‘Warriors’ the musical, what do you think about that?” And I wrote him an in depth email about how that may never work. But he got me in, just by asking the query. And so, , years had passed and I had just finished my first show on “Hamilton,” and I believed, “What do I want to do next?” And “Warriors” was already there, like he raised his hand and said, “You’ve been thinking lowly of me since 2009.”
I noticed in a short time that I wanted to write this with someone, and someone smarter and cooler than me. I believed of Eisa. Eisa and I actually have been friends for “Passing Strangely” and “In the Heights” were on Broadway the identical season in 2009, but we had never really worked on anything together before. And so in early 2022, I took her to the basement Drama Book Store and he said, “Warriors? A musical?”
She had never seen the movie, and I had seen it too over and over. So we form of met one another halfway and began writing seriously.
AP: Why an album?
MIRANDA: The proven fact that it is so intensely visual for you, once you listen to it, it’s like, “Why an album?” Most of us cannot afford to watch that much theater growing up. … And even the forged albums that I loved growing up, I never saw those shows. … But I listened to those forged albums and connected the dots and created the show in my head. … There’s an important tradition of musicals that started off as concept albums. I believe of “Jesus Christ Superstar” what I consider to be the gold standard. “Evita” even recently “Hadestown” which is one in every of my favorite recent shows, began its life as a song series.
And I used to be really curious should you could even tell that story. Because I believe the toughest thing for me about adapting an motion movie right into a musical is that the motion sequences and the songs are fighting for a similar space. So what do you do? Doing it as an album, you’ll be able to musicalize those things in loads of ways. There are times once we’re stretching out time and isolating a moment, and there are occasions once you hear the music and, like, you are hitting the sound effects.
The second thing that was really exciting was the chance to delve into the secrets of writing music by being within the studio with talented musicians and working with a producer. Musical theatre writers work in a extremely specific way, where we sit in a room by ourselves and then we try it on actors and we get it back and we try it again. And I wanted to improvise with musicians.
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DAVIS: I also think it has to do with our aesthetic being more pop—a hybrid of pop and musical theater. … For something as iconic as that movie, it is a shorter path to making an album.
It’s also a extremely exciting narrative challenge to see how we are able to actually tell a complete story on this sung way, with these small scenes.
AP: What did the gender swap of a number of the principal characters make possible?
MIRANDA: It was a coin flip that made me think, “I think I understand why this might be interesting to write about.”
I just got out of “Hamilton”, Gamergate took place online. … The anonymous web trolls were just saying, “I don’t think women should be in video games. Here’s her f—— home address.” And that form of act, the chaos of deciding to destabilize someone’s life and then going back to the pc, the very first thing that went through my mind was Luther shooting Cyrus and pointing on the Warriors and saying, “They did this.” And now the Warriors have the remainder of the night where every gang thinks they broke the truce and are fighting for their lives due to actions of 1 person with a gun. I made that connection and I believed, “Well, if the Warriors are women, how does that change the narrative?” It complicates it in a extremely compelling way at every point.
DAVIS: I believe it is so necessary to think about this – this can be a group of ladies that nobody believes. Everyone is accusing you falsely, as Lin says, and what are you doing? What are you trying to do?
And after all, the best way we divide it’s that there’s each this drive home, but there’s also still the likelihood (of peace). And so getting back to that dream of peace is so crucial.
But I also think it was really necessary to proceed down that path and make certain that ladies didn’t just step in and do the male stuff.
AP: How did you get there? Lauryn Hill on board? She’s a really fitting Cyrus.
DAVIS: She symbolizes that, right? If she wanted to, she could exit and tell everybody to stop fighting, and people would listen, because that is what Ms. Lauryn Hill has done along with her artistry and authority for all these years. And it was her way. We had to have her, what I mean? There was no plan B, no plan B in any respect.
MIRANDA: I contacted her manager a little bit over a 12 months ago and said, “I’m working on it.” She said, “Lauren is a huge fan of Hamilton, so send us what you have in mind.” Eisa and I rigorously wrote our letter and just stayed in contact along with her manager for a complete 12 months, never having a plan B, texting one another, until in the future we had a Dropbox file with all these harmonies.
AP: Are there any ambitions for theatrical adaptation? Or a movie?
MIRANDA: We haven’t any cinematic ambitions on this regard. … We created our musical love letter to a movie that already exists. We hope that once you listen to this album, you imagine the story and the way it happens.
If there’s a world for stage life, like a stage adaptation of this album, that may be very exciting to explore. And should you imagine something really unbelievable, we now have created a really difficult problem for ourselves.
___
The Cast of “Warriors”
CYRUS: Lauryn Hill
COCHISE: Kenita Miller
COWGIRL: Sasha Hutchings
FOX: Phillipa Soo
CLEON: Aneesa is folding
AJAZ: Amber Grey
REMBRANDT: Gizel Jiménez
SWAN: Jasmine Cephas Jones
MERCY: Julia Harriman
Entertainment
“Big Ol” Women in San Antonio makes a laugh when Charles Barkley boomed for doubles on many years of beef
The general legend of the NBA, Charles Barkley, moved the pot again together with his ten -year -old feud from San Antonio, refusing to withdraw from his well -known comments concerning the city of town during his appearance on the March Madness Festival.
The 62-year-old Hall of Famer went out on the stage on Sunday, April 6, just a day after his Alma Mater, Auburn, lost his final 4 duel with Florida-who won the national championship with the victory of 65-63 over Houston on Monday evening-I didn’t waste time, which didn’t win his relationship with Texas.
Despite the mixed reception of Boos and laughter from the gang, Barkley remained unmoved when he continued a joke, which at the identical time entertained and offended the inhabitants of San Antonio for almost 20 years.
The basketball legend softened the initial negative response, praising San Antonio as a “great city” and expressing admiration for coach Spurs Gregg Popovich and the band, then immediately began his controversial remarks.
“Yes, you got some B – Ches,” said Barkle, adding one other chapter to what became one of essentially the most durable losers in the sports media.
Reaction to Tiktok was divided as a live audience.
Charles Barkley on the stage in San Antonioband
“San Antonio … .. yes, you have some big ole itching” pic.twitter.com/nsjebbcfx
– Charlie Reynolds (@crecynolds1563) April 7, 2025
Many residents appeared to be joking with Stride, and one commentator Tiktok writes: “You can call him all except a liar.”
Another compatriot from San Antonio agreed, commenting: “He is not wrong and I am a native. There are several huge b -ches here.”
Others admired his sticking, and one person noticed: “double?
However, not everyone found humor in Barkley’s multiple stabs.
Some commentators pushed themselves against sexist tons, and one person wrote: “They are such a stupid misogytic word” before they criticized those that laughed, adding: “half of their mothers look like those girls they talk about.”
Feud reaches almost 20 years, when Barkley first commented on “Big Ol” Women in San Antonio “, discussing Spurs in” Inside the NBA “.
Since then, he still refers back to the joke, comparing the “Lean Houston Women” with “Women-Ass women in San Antonio” in 2019, and in 2021 noting that ladies from San Antonio couldn’t fit in the door, According to to BROBBible.com.
His jokes went beyond personal performances when he once claimed that he would open a truck with food suggesting Women from San Antonio would buy all their food.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0GSBQNX0Ag
In March 2023, he even called the favored river in town “dirty, small stream.” Reported.
The response has been significant over the years.
Tim Duncan’s girlfriend famously answered the wearing of the shirt “Barkley don’t know”, a trend that attracted many local women.
Waste intensified in 2015, when Abby Lentz published A 4 -page article through a coalition of obesity condemning Barkley’s discriminatory comments.
In an article entitled “Basketball, Barkley and Fat Bashing” she said: “I felt like I came back to Junior High again.”
Until 2021, the pressure presses to such an extent that Warner Bros. Apparently, he asked Barkley to stop making these jokes in “Inside the Nba”. Barkley blamed “Cancel Culture” for the ban, telling journalists: “Nowadays you can’t even play without these Jackass, trying to cancel you and the like.”
He defended himself, saying: “I did not call anyone personally fat in San Antonio, I just joked.”
When the middle of Auburn Dylan Cardwell got here to San Antonio for the last 4, he jokingly commented that “he did not see any of the women he was talking about Charles Barkley.”
After arriving in San Antonio, coach Auburn Bruce Pearl told the players to depart the river and experience San Antonio and “enjoy what they made”
Auburn Center Dylan Cardwell quickly accepted Alamo City
pic.twitter.com/V9pegwnxxa
– Zack Hedrick (@zhedricktv) April 3, 2025
Despite the criticism, he known as for cancellation and formal requests to stop, Barkley’s return to San Antonio concerning the last 4 shows his reluctance to desert what has turn out to be his signature.
April 8 NBA on TNT common The Barkley clip participating in the “Pop The Balloon” viral dating game, in which singles attempt to catch a date with one completely happy competitor. However, in the event that they don’t like what they see or hear, they may sleep a balloon to justify the sport. Because Barkley participated in the sport in San Antonio, there isn’t a doubt that he is not going to be lucky with women.
Women had many explanation why they rejected the prospect to fall in love with Barkley, including the indisputable fact that he likes the “wolf” Churros and that he lacks muscles. “You don’t even have any rings,” one of the participants joked.
As one of the commentators aptly noted, at this point it seems that you would be able to’t stop Barkley.
The more the redemption he receives from women from San Antonio, the more determined it seems to consolidate his controversial joke – the testimony of his unanimous approach to the comedy, which still divides recipients in the style of humor and sensitivity in the era of an increasing number of defined by the standards of acceptable public discourse.
(Tagstotransate) Charles Barkley
Entertainment
Reebok continues to return to basketball with the signing of Dijonai Carrington – and Scape
Dijonai Carrington is the latest WNBA player who joined the Reebok basketball list.
The Dallas Wings guard has signed a protracted -term contract with the company based in Boston, which is able to establish it as a brand ambassador in the field of performance and lifestyle clothing, starting with the basketball sneakers engine.
The signing of Carrington is an element of a protracted -term effort for Reebok to restore to the basketball brand. The A engine, which Carrington wore during the inaugural inaugural season, is their first recent basketball sneakers from ZPump Rise.
“I am excited about continuing the family heritage and joining the Reebok basketball list,” said Carrington. Her father, former safety of NFL, Darren Carrington, also supported Reebok during his profession. “Reebok basketball has officially returned and I can’t wait to introduce energy outside in the new A. engine”
Carrington was appointed the most improved WNBA player in 2024, and also won the first ALL Defense Honors team. A profession from San Diego, on average, almost 13 points, 5 rebounds and a shadow below 2 thefts per match. Recently, it was exchanged with the Connecticut Sun to Wings under a 4 -person contract.
Carrington joins REEBOK WNBA basketball, including Angel Reese and Lexie Brown.
Entertainment
When hip -hop and classical collide: us to perform “Illmatic” live with Baltimore Symphony Orchestra – Essence
In what seems to be a cult combination of hip-hop and classical music, we can be joined by forces with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra because of this of its groundbreaking debut album. A breakthrough event takes place on Wednesday, July 23, 2025, at 19:30 in Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.
The entitled concert guarantees to recuperate one of the famous albums of all time with sweeping orchestral arrangements carried out by Steven Reineke. The evening will happen iconic songs, akin to “Ny State of Mind”, “The World is Yours”, “Memory Lane (Sittin ‘in da Park)” and “It is not difficult to find”, each interpreted by wealthy textures of full symphony.
“Welcoming us with BSO will be an attraction of the year,” said Mark Hanson, president and general director of Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. “This cooperation speaks to our involvement in breaking borders and creating a space in which all recipients feel associated with the power of orchestral music. It is an honor to revive this iconic album in a new way and shed light on the amazing scope and talent of our musicians.”
Celebrating thirtieth anniversary From the primary studio effort, this performance is a cultural milestone that mixes raw lyricism with great classical instrumentation-impressing the impression once in life for fans of each species.
Since the discharge in 1994, he built a long-lasting heritage from Queensbridge, winning 16 Grammy nominations and winning one of the best rap album in 2020. Its influence includes a long time, and its recent revival keeps him on the forefront of the species.
TicketsPrice between USD 75 and USD 299They are already available by BSO website or on Meyerhoff Box Office. Do not miss this historical celebration of music, poetry and a timeless story.
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