John LEGUIZAMO

John Leguizamo’s one-man show Spic-o-Rama electrified a generation of Latinos in 1992 and brought Hollywood to his door. As the actor-writer-producer returns to his downtown, Off Broadway roots, with Latin History for Morons at the Public Theater, LIN-MANUEL MIRANDA recalls the door that Leguizamo opened for him

I don’t remember which family member taped it off HBO for me: we didn’t have cable at the time. But I remember the scrawl on the side of the VHS tape in my handwriting: Spic-o-Rama. I remember popping in the cassette and seeing John Leguizamo leap across the stage in orange baggy jeans and braces, playing the dorky, nine-year-old Miggy. Then he was Crazy Willie, a Persian Gulf War vet with serious relationship issues. Then Raffi, a flamboyant would-be Elizabethan actor in Jackson Heights. It slowly dawned on me that Leguizamo was playing every member of his hilarious, dysfunctional family, on his own electric terms.