Hi, I'm Stage and Stages, Lin-Manuel Miranda and you're listening to The Hamlet Cast.

Bootsing, cuts and buzzing.

Hello everyone, welcome back to The Hamlet Cast. I'm Jillian and this is my second episode with

the Philip Tours Blaine Alden Kraus. If you missed Episode 301, go check that out.

Blaine talks about finding his love for performance at a young age, his journey to the Cincinnati

Conservatory of Music, and the importance of therapy and mindfulness in his life and work.

But hey, if you're all caught up, and stay back in, here's Part 2 with Blaine.

Tell me about Theater Under the Stars and in the Heights and playing Benny.

Yes. With our good friend, Anthony Lee Medina.

Anthony Lee Medina. So my best best friend who I mentioned, Anthony Murphy, he is a huge

in the Heights fan and a huge Lin fan and it had done the show a couple times actually.

I think he was like the pedagogue guy once and I think he choreographed a prediction of it somewhere.

And we actually did see in the Heights on Broadway. One of my earliest Broadway shows I saw actually,

we saw it with his dad. We came to New York to do a Boys and Girls Club event in high school.

I remember being a Corbin Blue was playing Usnavi. And yes, yes, it is.

And I remember of course like the music. I couldn't, the orchestra. That's honestly what stuck

with me the most was the sound of just the orchestra and I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

It was, I think that orchestra had two or three huge percussionists, you know,

Latin music, that sounds lots of percussion. And you know, it's like nothing I'd ever seen before.

Again, another moment of like, oh wow, that sounds like stuff that I know and familiar with

that I'm seeing on a Broadway stage. But I don't think I ever clocked Benny as a character.

I would play, just didn't hit me then. And of course, everyone else in the show is,

...