Vogue USA - 10.2019

193

Photographed by Steven K lein

Wesleyan. After they bonded over a

mutual passion for Biggie Smalls and

Big Pun, Kail gave Miranda some

thoughts about his nascent musical. “I

had all this ambition, some talent, and

not much of a clue how to get there,”

Miranda recalls. “He saw the path.”

During the early days of working on

In the Heights, Miranda and Veneziale

would blow off steam by freestyling

together, and Veneziale finally suggest­

ed that they try it in front of an audi­

ence. An improv veteran, Veneziale was

comfortable being onstage without a

net from the beginning. (“After a

while, you start dreaming in improv

and rhymes—it’s like speaking anoth­

er language,” he says.) Miranda, on

the other hand, was “petrified,” but,

he explains, “you learn to just trust

your gut, and you jump out of the

plane, and you build the parachute

on the way down.”

Soon Miranda and Veneziale filled

out their ranks with other freestylers

and asked Kail to take a look at what

they were doing to help them pull it

together. “Tommy understood how to

weave our short­form improv games
into a long­form experience,” Veneziale
says. “He turned it into a show.”
After years of performing together
at various theaters and festivals, the
Freestyle Love Supreme crew has the
tight­knit precision of the Guarneri
String Quartet and the loosey­goosey
virtuosity of the Harlem Globe­
trotters. The current lineup consists
of Veneziale, Utkarsh Ambudkar,
Andrew Bancroft, the beatbox wiz
Chris Sullivan (who goes by Shock­
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