Hi, I'm Stage in Stages, Lynn Manuel Miranda, and you're listening to The Hamelcast.

Boots and cuts and boots and cuts.

Hey, friends, I'm Jillian, and welcome back to the Hamelcast.

This is the second half of my conversation with Eddie Ortega, who plays Hercules Mulligan and James Madison on the Philip tour.

Last week, Eddie talked about growing up in Florida and realizing his passion for theater

when he was a teenager.

The thing that struck me about Eddie is that not only was he always so determined, but it

doesn't sound like he let the petty stuff distract him. Like that story from when

he was auditioning for In the Heights in high school. Taking a page from the Lin-Manuel Miranda

playbook, Eddie wrote an original rap for his audition. The other kids clocked it and they were like,

just so you know, you actually can't rap for this audition. Like you have to do a 16 bar cut of a pop

rock, whatever, musical theater song, something. But point is, they were like, you can't rap, you have to sing.

And Eddie wasn't prepared for that, so he just sang something on the fly from Tarzan,

and he didn't feel great about it.

And turns out, the whole thing was a setup.

Everyone who told him that ended up rapping themselves.

But instead of getting stressed out about it or furious or totally turned off from

auditioning and theater altogether, Eddie essentially

tracks down the director in the parking lot, wraps the opening number of In the Heights,

and books who snobby anyway. And yet, there's more to it, and hopefully you listen to last week's

episode so you know the full story. But I'm just saying, that was just the beginning. Because

Eddie was dead set on going to Florida State, which he did. But it was because he wasn't going to let a rejection letter stop him. He didn't get in. Cool. He worked hard. He stayed focused. He did what he had to do. And never once did it not feel

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