The Alliance Youth Theatre is producing “In the Heights” this weekend. To a person, the cast was familiar with Lin-Manuel Miranda before being cast in the show because of “Hamilton.” But they had no idea just how good he is until they began rehearsing “In the Heights.” Now, they’re lifelong admirers.
D’Adrean St. Louis, who plays Usnavi, is a case in point.
“Lin-Manuel is one of the greatest musical theater writers of all time and he’s going to be up there with Sondheim.”
Lia Jaquez plays Usnavi’s love interest, Vanessa.
“I think he’s brilliant,” said Jaquez. “This is my favorite show that he’s written."
Hannah Cruz plays Nina. She goes one better.
“He’s a genius,” Cruz said emphatically. “Honestly he is. Like, I don’t think people give him enough credit about how smart he is.”
Tyler Scott’s character, Benny, is in love with Nina. What Scott loves is Miranda’s musical score and lyrics.
“When I got into this show and started really listening to the soundtrack, the passion and the emotion that he can convey through music is just astronomical,” Scott said. “’In the Heights’ has become one of my favorite musicals because of that and it’s made me appreciate Lin-Manuel Miranda so much more.”
Delilah Mendez plays the lovably ditzy Carla. She offers this perceptive opinion.
“I’m listening to the music, and it’s artwork. It’s completely complex and you don’t really know that until you’re there doing it. I’ve gained way more respect for him than I already had.”
And here’s Gabriel Cruz, who plays Usnavi’s cousin, Sonny.
“Like I really got to see the genius of his composing, seeing all the little different details in his score and the script,” said Cruz. “It’s just amazing. Seriously. So many details. So many small things that you could pick out. It’s great.”
To a person, the cast of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” says it's must-see musical theater. But lock up your tickets quickly. There are only four performances.
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With music and lyrics written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the groundbreaking Tony Award-winning musical tells the story of a vibrant community in New York’s Washington Heights where the coffee from the corner bodega is light and sweet, the windows are always open and the breeze carries the rhythm of three generations of music. It’s a community on the brink of change, full of hopes, dreams and pressures, and where the biggest struggles involve deciding which traditions you take with you and which ones you leave behind. When a winning lottery ticket, a power outage, and romantic tension all hit the neighborhood, the long-time friends and neighbors make discoveries about each other, themselves, and the place they all call home.
“In the Heights” actually predates “Hamilton.” It started as an 80-minute one-act play at Wesleyan University, then evolved into an Off Broadway production, and eventually became a Broadway hit that earned 13 nominations and four Tony Awards, including Best Musical.
Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes adapted the play into a full-length feature film directed by Jon M. Chu. After a year’s COVID-related delay, the film made its world premiere at the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival on June 4, 2021.
But whether it’s presented onscreen or onstage, everyone agrees that the true stars of “In the Heights” are Miranda’s high-energy Latin rhythms, which combine hip-hop, salsa, merengue and soul music to weave a spellbinding story that poses the central question – when community is everything, will love of the barrio keep Usnavi, Nina and their friends and neighbors grounded or will it hold them back by dissuading them from pursuing greater opportunity elsewhere?
Directed by Miguel Cintron and choreographed by Kiana Raine-Cintron (no relation to Miguel), the cast consists of 20 teens ages 15 to 19. They represent 10 ethnicities and hail from a number of area high schools and colleges.
D’Adrean St. Louis
D’Adrean St. Louis plays Usnavi, who is the main character and narrator of the story. He’s related to several of the other characters, including his honorary grandmother, Abuela Claudia, and younger cousin, Sonny. Usnavi’s overarching goal throughout the show is to leave the barrio and open a bar in the Dominican Republic, which was once home to his late parents.
St. Louis excels at Lin-Manuel Miranda’s fast-paced Latin-flavored rap lyrics.
“Lin-Manuel has a flow that is just so natural to him but hard for anyone else to replicate,” St. Louis observed. “It’s hard to pick up on some of his fast flow and lyric changes. But if you listen to it enough and you drill it and you listen to your music, it’ll come to you eventually.”
St. Louis recently played Hermes in “Hadestown Teen Edition” for both Arts Bonita and Lehigh Senior High School (the latter performance garnering a Best Supporting Actor in a Male-Identifying Role at the 2025 High School Musical Theatre Awards). That character was also a narrator who was called upon to deliver long spoken lines to music. That experience taught St. Louis the necessity of drilling lines with the music and knowing what comes next in the story.
St. Louis is a recent graduate of Lehigh Senior High School. He will attend Florida Southern College in August, where he will pursue a BFA in musical theater. Among his classmates will be Tyler Scott, Hannah Cruz and North Fort Myers High graduate Rilyn Dick.
“There’s seven of us from the same area going to Florida Southern College,” St. Louis reported.
St. Louis found the college application process arduous.
“I applied to 17 schools,” he said. “Seven of them were just for academics and 10 of them were for musical theater and academics. I had to prepare tons of different prescreens. Dramatic monologues, comedic monologues, Shakespeare monologues, Golden Age songs, dramatic songs, and every school was different so sometimes you had to make up to five videos and send them out to each different school to accommodate to their requirements of what they wanted to see.”
His long-range plan is to become an equity actor, “whether that involves Broadway, local theaters or maybe even a cruise line somewhere. Performing is something I see myself doing for a very long time as a career.”
St. Louis acknowledged being a Lin-Manuel Miranda fan before being cast as Usnavi.
“I wasn’t really into the big mainstream musicals. I tried to find shows not everybody was talking about, but ‘Hamilton’ is a very musical theater staple and Lin-Manuel also has great works such as ‘Moana’ and ‘Viva.’ So I can say I’ve been a big fan of Lin-Manuel for a very long time.”
Now that he’s intimately familiar with the story, characters, music and lyrics he created for “In the Heights,” he’s even more impressed by Miranda than before.
Lia Jaquez
Lia Jaquez plays Vanessa. She works at the salon next door to Usnavi’s bodega. Usnavi is clearly enamored, but Vanessa seems oblivious to his growing infatuation. In her defense, she has a lot on her plate.
“Vanessa is struggling from all angles,” noted Jaquez. “She doesn’t want anybody to see that, so she kind of just covers it up by focusing on her job.”
To complicate matters, Vanessa has been thrust into the role of her mother’s caretaker.
“Her mom takes the money Vanessa works for and spends it all on alcohol,” Jaquez pointed out. “It’s kind of overlooked in the show, but I think it has a lot to do with why Vanessa’s the way she is. She has a little thing for Usnavi, but she’s just scared all around to let somebody in and believe that somebody actually cares for her because her mom doesn’t.”
He boss at the salon, Daniela, doesn’t appear very supportive either. She has a hard and fast rule. She’ll help Vanessa but she won’t support her mother’s alcoholism.
“She has this tough love kind of bossy act with her, so Vanessa’s under the impression that she doesn’t really care about her at all until the end of the show when she pays the down payment on an apartment that Vanessa wants to lease."
Jaquez finds similarities between the role of Vanessa and the last part she played.
“I was Catherine Parr in ‘Six’ [at Melody Lane Theatre]. She had this perseverance about her, to the degree that, like, no, I’m going to stand up for what I believe in no matter what. Vanessa has that too, especially like being where she’s from in the Heights. It’s not an easy-going neighborhood. You have to have thick skin to live where she does.”
Jaquez is a recent Ida S. Baker High School graduate. She appeared in the role of Campbell in Ida S. Baker’s spring show, “Bring It On,” for which Lin-Manuel Miranda also wrote the music and lyrics. For her role, Jaquez received the Outstanding Performer Award at the 2025 High School Musical Theatre Awards.
Other credits include Timoune in “Once on this Island” (Florida Repertory Theatre), Danielle in “Bring It On” (The Ile Theatre ), Moana in “Moana” (Fort Myers Theatre), Sour Kangaroo in “Seussical” (Fort Myers Theatre) and Gabriela in “High School Musical Junior” (The Belle Theatre).
She expects to enroll for classes at Florida SouthWestern State College in the fall.
“Just because I want to stay close to home,” Jaquez said. “I really don’t have any interest in going to a big university right now and going away, and it will also enable me to save money and give time for what I want to do. But long range, I definitely want to major in musical theater and get my BFA because that’s just what I’m passionate about. It’s what I’m drawn most to.”
At FSW, Jaquez will study and perform under the tutelage of Stuart Brown, who has a reputation for turning out exceptional theater talent.
Jaquez predicts that audiences will love the Alliance’s production of “In the Heights."
“Our cast is so beautifully diverse,” Jaquez said. “I know how that’s how it should be, but our cast is also diverse in the aspect of personalities. I feel like everyone’s personality … just the way that everyone delivers their character … is just so like spot on. You can see how everyone’s equally passionate about this show.”
Jaquez next appears in the role of Esmeralda for Melony Lane Theatre in “Hunchback of Notre Dame.”
Tyler Scott
Tyler Scott plays Benny, “who’s supposed to be this cool character, kind of comic relief,” Scott explained. “But as the story progresses, he starts putting down his walls and barriers and reveals how vulnerable he can be, how emotional he is and how much he cares about Nina. On the inside, he’s very soft and kind.”
Benny is quite a departure from some of Scott’s previous roles.
“Pippin [for which Scott received the North Fort Myers High School Outstanding Performer Award at the 2025 High School Musical Theatre Awards) was very kidlike, very happy-go-lucky, all the time,” Scott noted. “With Hades, I got to play a villain, a dark character with a lot of turmoil inside. Benny is a mixture of different aspects of both roles. Benny is not kidlike, but very light-hearted, joyful kind of exterior, but on the inside, he can also be very serious when he has to be. So very different for me and very cool to experience a new role.”
The character of Benny also challenged Scott to play a character who is on the outside looking in, who continually fights for acceptance by his Latino friends and co-workers.
“Nina’s father, Kevin, is kind of like his father figure,” said Scott.
But he tells Benny to stay away from his daughter and that he’ll never be accepted into their family.
"I can’t help but get emotional when Kevin says that because Benny was literally raised by Kevin throughout the entire time they were in the barrio. Now, all of a sudden, just because he found love within Nina, this one part that Kevin can’t accept of him he can’t accept all of him now. He throws all of that relationship out the window. It’s really sad to see, but it’s realistic and it happens.”
Scott will join D’Adrean St. Louis, Hannah Cruz and fellow North Fort Myers High alum Rilyn Dick at Florida Southern College in August.
“We didn’t even talk about it,” said Scott. “It just so happened to be. I’m really looking forward to it knowing that I’m going to have people that I know who are also passionate about theater.”
Long before he was cast as Benny, Scott had a special connection to Lin-Manuel Miranda and his masterwork, “Hamilton.”
“We used to live in California, near L.A. and Hollywood in a town named Burbank. There’s this big theater in Hollywood named the Pantages Theater and the national tour of ‘Hamilton’ was coming there. My mom and I had listened to all of the soundtrack from ‘Hamilton,’ and we were like, ‘Oh my God this is the best thing ever.’ And we literally were calling on three phones at the same time trying to get tickets and were just ecstatic when we were actually able to get them. Being able to see that, it was really an enlightening experience, because I was younger and I didn’t really know realistic endings. Like oh wow, Phillip dies. Alexander Hamilton dies. What? I’m used to happy, cheery endings. But that really opened the doors for me to know that most musicals need to make you feel something, and to do that it has to be in a realistic way.”
“Hamilton” was such a huge success that it eclipsed “In the Heights.” So Scott was not prepared for the trove of music and lyrics that he discovered even before rehearsals began.
Even more than Miranda’s musical score and lyrics, Scott thinks audiences who come for a performance of “In the Heights” will be swept away by Carmen Crussard and Miguel Cintron’s multicultural cast.
“This entire cast is so talented. They know what it feels like to be an actor. They know how to feel things that you can’t just fake. When they’re telling the story, they’re truly telling the story from their heart and I feel like that’s going to make the story so much more believable and make the audience feel so much more in tune with what the show is really talking about. It’s an amazing score, amazing cast and I think everyone will love to see it.”
Hannah Cruz
Hannah Cruz plays Nina, the daughter of cab company owners and operators Camilia (Mia Pimentel) and Kevin (Cayden Pacheco) Rosario. Nina is back from Stanford with bad news. Working two jobs to pay for books, board and part of her tuition, her grades suffered so much that she lost her partial scholarship and had to temporarily drop out of school. That was four months ago and she hasn’t had the courage to tell her folks or everyone in the barrio who expect great things from her.
“Well, Nina was one of my biggest dream roles, so getting to play her, it’s like honestly a dream come true,” said Cruz. “I’m really excited and I love our cast and everything is going just like I imagined. It’s great.”
Cruz values the opportunity that the show gives her and the rest of the cast to show off Hispanic culture in all of its nuance and variations.
Among Cruz’s credits are Catherine of Aragon in “Six the Musical” for Melody Lane Theatre (which marked the milestone of being her 57th stage show), the titular role in “Mary Poppins,” Amy in “Little Women,” Miss Jones in “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,” Carmen Diaz in “Fame” at Fort Myers Theatre, Crystal in “Little Shop of Horrors” and Katherine in “Newsies Jr.” with Florida Repertory Theatre, Little Gloria in “On Your Feet” (Broadway Palm), Anna and Middle Anna (two productions) in “Frozen Jr.,” Ms. Andrew in “Mary Poppins Jr.,” Duffy in “Annie Jr.,” Young Nala in “The Lion King Jr.,” Young Fiona in “Shrek,” Beatrice in “Miracle Worker” and Simon and Tart in “Big River.” She also participated in the Junior Theater Festival in Atlanta twice.
Gabriel Cruz
Gabriel Cruz plays Sonny, Usnavi’s little cousin.
“He’s 16. He works at the bodega in the summertime, and I’ll describe him as idealistic and optimistic,” said Cruz of his character. “He’s very on all the time. He’s like the class clown. Would Bert abandon Ernie? Where would Knight Rider be without Kit, riding the bus? He has very good one-liners in the show. Every single line is just a hit.”
Cruz’s stage credits include “Heathers,” “Mary Poppins” at Bishop Verot and Brett in “13 the Musical.”
He’ll be entering his junior year at Cypress Lake High School.
“Theater just gives me an opportunity to express myself, really step out of my comfort zone and be someone who I’m not. I like creating art. It’s fun to make choices. Meet different people. I love it.”
Jay Encalada
Jay Encalada plays Daniela, a sassy middle-aged woman who just wants to run her salon business and be with her family in her city.
“I like how she’s just a very cultural woman,” Encalada said. “She knows where she is and her past, and she doesn’t let anyone define her. She knows exactly who she is.”
Among her stage credits are Austyn in “In Pieces” at The Belle Theatre, Catherine of Aragon in “Six the Musical” at North Fort Myers High School, Alice in “Alice by Heart” and Chiffon in “Little Shop of Horrors.”
Encalada just graduated from North Fort Myers High and will attend FGCU in the fall, where she will study forensic science.
“I’ll also be doing choir there, but I may hop around and do community theater while I’m in school. It depends on how much free time I have.”
Encalada was also a Lin-Manuel Miranda fan prior to joining the cast of “In the Heights.”
“I love all his shows,” Encalada said. “I actually did ‘Bring It On’ by him like two years ago, and I love ‘Hamilton.’ I’ve always been so inspired by him as a composer and a person and just being in the show and seeing his writing come to work, it’s inspiring and I really appreciate him and everything he does for theater.
“I think audiences are really going to appreciate seeing this amazing, well-written show performed by all these young people,” said Encalada. “It’s just inspiring to see all these different age ranges come together to put on such a wonderful production full of talent and diversity. I think everyone will really like it.”
Delilah Mendez
Delilah Mendez plays Carla.
“She lives in the barrio,” notes Mendez. “She’s a salon girl, and she likes to please Daniela. And she is a little bit of a ditz, but she’s also to herself and she knows, like, who she is.”
Mendez just graduated from Cypress Lake High. Among her credits while at Cypress is Holly in “Wedding Singer.”
“I will be going to go FSW so I can save up money to transfer to UCF.
While at FSW, she plans to study theater with Professor Stuart Brown.
She was a Lin-Manuel Miranda fan prior to “In the Heights.”
“I was previously very familiar with ‘Hamilton,’” Mendez said. “I’m pretty sure everybody was. So I was really looking forward to the auditions for this show because I’m Hispanic. When you have a bunch of young actors that are all around the same ethnicity and different ages, it’s really inspiring to see such a complex show come together especially for a Latin show.”
Victor Galarza
Victor Galarza is the Piragua Guy.
“He’s like a favorite uncle,” said Galarza of his character. “Everyone knows him. He sells piragua. It’s like a snow cone kind of thing and everyone on the block knows him, knows of his piragua cart. He’s very encouraging, and he’s very carefree.”
Galarza views “In the Heights” from a musical perspective.
“Lin-Manuel Miranda created an entire musical that expresses Latino culture,” Galarza said. “He put so many different types of Hispanic cultures into the storyline - Dominican Republic, Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican. And the depiction of it is so well written, like the different types of things that they do, it’s really cool. And like even the music portrays a lot of like how you would hear music done by those specific people. It’s great to see and hear.”
Galarza is entering his senior year at Lehigh Senior High School. After that, he plans to go to Full Sail to study studio work.
Isabela Oren
Isabela Oren plays Abuela Claudia.
She’s never really named as anyone’s grandma, but she’s been in the Washington Heights neighborhood for her whole life, since she was ten, so she kind of runs it. A line from the show is ‘She’s not really my abuela, but she practically raised me.’ That kind of applies to all of the characters. She’s kind of like everybody’s safe place. Everybody’s always welcome at her house. She just keeps things running.”
Oren has been a “Hamilton” fan since she was in fifth grade. She credits her mother with introducing her to “Hamilton” and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
“I got into musical theater because of Hamilton,” said Oren. “It came out in 2015. I was still in elementary school so, yeah, that’s kind of where I got my start, with ‘Hamilton,’ and then I started listening to his other work and I was like wow, I love this.”
But now that she is more intimately familiar with his work, she admires Miranda even more.
“I love him. I think he’s a genius. I don’t know how he does it by himself. Like I know he has people helping him but like the majority of it is just his brain. I don’t know how it works like that. It’s so amazing.”
Oren also predicts that audiences will love the show.
“It’s somewhat of a relatable story even if you’re not living in New York City or if you’re not Hispanic,” Oren said. “There are still aspects of the story that you can relate to, whether it’s pressure from your family, pressure from the people around you, hard work. I think everybody has a little bit of something that they can relate to within the show and I think that’s what makes it really great.”
The rest of the cast is comprised of Mia Pimentel as Camila Rosario; Cayden Pacheco as Kevin; Kerwin Cyriaque as Graffiti Pete; and Olivia Anderson, Ilanize Carry, Constantine Belis, Zoe Belis, Jamie Woolam, Christian Varela, Jayla Lawyer Pairis and Hannah Shraiar in the ensemble.
Carmen Crussard produces, Miguel Cintron directs and Kiana Raine-Cintron choreographs.
Support for WGCU’s arts & culture reporting comes from the Estate of Myra Janco Daniels, the Charles M. and Joan R. Taylor Foundation, and Naomi Bloom in loving memory of her husband, Ron Wallace.