Mandy Gonzalez
The Richard Rodgers Theatre must be one of the happier places to work on Broadway — not only because the Washington Heights-set musical won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Musical but also because the cast is so darn nice! I've interviewed four of the show's leading ladies, and each one has impressed me with her sincerity, openness and joie de vivre. I was especially dazzled by the upbeat, good-natured charm of Mandy Gonzalez, who portrays Nina, the young college student facing life-altering decisions in the new musical penned by Tony winner Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes. In the Heights marks the multi-talented Gonzalez's fourth Broadway production: She made her Main Stem bow as a standby for the part of Amneris in Disney's Aida and created her first role in 2002 in the short-lived Dance of the Vampires. To be honest, I don't remember too much about Vampires other than the singing of Gonzalez and Max von Essen, which was thrilling, and the rest of the show, which was, well, not. Gonzalez, who boasts a beautiful, thrilling and rangy belt, was also part of the cast of the John Lennon revue, Lennon, but it is in her current role in the award-winning Heights where she gets the chance to shine, making audiences care about which path Nina will choose. I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Gonzalez about her Broadway resume; that interview follows.

Question: Since we haven't spoken before, why don't we start from the beginning. Where you were born and raised?
Mandy Gonzalez: Alright. I was born and raised in Santa Clarita Valley in California.

Question: When did you start performing?
Gonzalez: I guess I started performing when I was about seven. My grandma put me in a performing group called Rock Theatre, and we would perform at all different venues around L.A. It was a mix of rock and theatre, so it was all different kinds of music. I started performing then, and I stayed with that group until I was 14. We'd perform at malls — and at 14, when you're going into high school, I was like, "I can't perform at the mall anymore. Somebody might see me!" [Laughs.] So I stopped.

Question: Did you perform in musicals in high school?
Gonzalez: Yeah, I did a lot of musicals in high school. When I was a freshman, I was Bloody Mary in South Pacific. You know, I played the ethnic roles. [Laughs.] Anita in West Side Story. I was Maria in Sound of Music. I did all the musicals.

Question: When did you get to New York?
Gonzalez: I went to school at Cal Arts for a year after high school. After that I auditioned to be a background singer for Bette Midler, so I was on her Millennium Tour. It was really awesome. I was a singer, and I had little crosses. I wore a lot of G-strings… fantastic! [Laughs.] [The tour] came to New York. . . . We stayed at the Plaza Hotel when it was still a hotel, and we were there for two weeks. I [thought], "This is where I want to be." I had seen Rent on the Tony Awards, and I was just like, "Oh, God, this is where I want to be!" So when I came back from that tour, I moved to New York. That's where I've been ever since.

Question: What was it like working with Bette?
Gonzalez: It was fantastic! It was a total training session. If this is what you want to do, you've gotta work your ass off. She worked like nobody I had ever met. She's a woman, and she was so powerful and professional. It was terrifying, too, because I had to back up three of the Harlettes. When you do that, you have to learn all three parts. You have to learn alto, you have to learn soprano [and] the middle. You'd have to learn about 60 songs. There's only maybe 20 songs in the concert, but just in case she wanted to pull [another song] out, you had to be ready. You had to learn all the choreography. It was intense, but it really taught me that if this is what you want to do, you gotta work hard for it.

Question: Once you got to New York, what was your first professional production?
Gonzalez: When I first came to New York, I felt, "In six months, I want to be on Broadway." You know, the usual. [Laughs.] I was a coat-check girl for six months, and I hit every open call that was available, and I went on one for this show called Eli's Comin' with Diane Paulus [directing]. Cindy Tolan was casting. I went to the open call, and I sang, and they called me back, and I ended up getting the job! Eli's Comin' was my first job, at the Vineyard, in New York. That was with Anika Noni Rose, Judy Kuhn, Ronnell Bey and Wilson Jermaine Heredia. I ended up winning an Obie Award. From that, Stuart Oken — from Disney at the time — came to see the show and asked me if I wanted to be the standby for Amneris in Aida, and so that's when I went to Broadway.

	Mandy Gonzalez in In the Heights
	photo by Joan Marcus

Question: Do you remember what your first performance on Broadway was like?
Gonzalez: Definitely. It was terrifying. I was Idina [Menzel]'s understudy — at the time she was in the role. Idina was on for about four months before I got to go on . . . . I think they thought that she would never be out, so I never had a put-in [rehearsal] or anything like that. I never really worked with the three-inch heels or climbing over the pool, so my first experience was like being shot out like a bullet and really just going for it. I remember I was such a Rent fan. I got to work with Adam [Pascal], and I remember him coming down in his robe and saying, "Hi, I'm Adam," for the first time and just being totally jazzed. And after that was done, it was awesome. I loved it.

Question: Was Dance of the Vampires next?
Gonzalez: Yeah, from there I auditioned for Dance of the Vampires, and I got that. And that happened…that experience.

Question: When you look back on Dance of the Vampires, what stands out in your mind?
Gonzalez: It was a fantastic experience. For anybody that is coming into the business, it teaches you everything about the business.… Putting up a new musical, in itself, is an impossible task. Nobody goes into a musical hoping that it fails. Everybody works their ass off. It was just a great experience for me. It was my first time originating a role. I remember when the reviews came out, I was like, "Oh, God, what am I gonna do?" and was devastated. [Co-star] Rene Auberjonois came into the dressing room — we were all sitting together. When reviews come out and you have to go and perform the next day, that's not an easy feat. Rene came into our dressing room, and there was this song called "A Good Nightmare Comes So Rarely" in the show, and he just came in and [started singing], "A good nightmare comes so rarely…," and we all just started laughing because we were all in the same boat. We all had to get up there [on stage]. So we just started laughing, and he was like, "Well, if you're gonna be in a bomb, it might as well be the biggest one!" … I guess it was six or seven years ago, and that's what people [still] ask me about, and I'm like, "Wow, alright!" It's kinda cool. I have all these secrets and all this information, but it was a great experience. It taught me so much, and it humbled me, and it made me realize that it doesn't matter if you're in a hit or a bomb. The work is the work. It was a great experience for that reason.

Question: How did In the Heights come about? When did you join the process?
Gonzalez: After Dance of the Vampires, I thought, "Oh, gosh, what am I gonna do?" Stuart Oken called me and asked, "Do you want to replace on Broadway?" So I went back to Aida. After I left Aida my agents called… I think I was in L.A., and they said, "They want you for this role of Nina to do a reading of In the Heights." This was 2004. It sounded interesting. In a reading, when you sit down at the table, the composer usually sings the music or does some of the music. Lin sat down and did, "Lights up on Washington Heights…" and I thought, "This is awesome, and I want to be part of it!" At that reading, the only people that are here now on Broadway were Chris Jackson and Andrea Burns and, of course, Lin-Manuel. It was pretty fantastic. That reading was two weeks. During that reading I was already contracted to do the musical Lennon on Broadway. I think they were still in development with In the Heights. I left to do Lennon — we went to San Francisco. I came back, and after Lennon it was like, "Oh, God, what am I gonna do…" [laughs], and they called and asked, "Do you wanna do the workshop for In the Heights, for Nina?" And it's been fantastic from then. Continued...