Let's Review- John Leguizamo Is Getting Ready to Teach LATIN HISTORY on Broadway!

Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World. Following a critically acclaimed, sold-out run at the Public Theater

John Leguizamo is bringing his new one-man show called Latin History for Morons to Broadway's Studio 54

with performances beginning on October 19th and we drop by the cantina rooftop to catch up with the award-winning star

How did this play come about for you? How did you come to write it? Well, the genesis was my son was being bullied at school

you know and he goes to a fancy private school we live in the gold coast no shame i'm bougie thank

you and uh he's being bullied and i wanted to give my son the words and the facts to defend himself

because you know because i think violence is the lowest form of communication i wanted my son to really deal with it with just words so i i started doing all this research and as i'm

researching this stuff i realized oh my god this this story of me and my son empowering ourselves

is a story that I want to put out there. And that's how the show came about

What did you learn the most about doing all this research for this? Because, I mean, like you said, a lot of it was left out of the history books

and it's all there. It's shocking. The fact that we Latin people are actually the sons and daughters

of the American Revolution. Cuban women in Virginia sold all their jewelry to feed the patriots

General Bernardo Galvez from New Orleans sent $70,000 worth of weapons to George Washington And 10 Latin people fought Cubans Mexicans Puerto Ricans and Venezuelans fought in the American Revolution and yet you never hear about it It not in the

History Channel, Discovery Channel, Ken Burns Dock. Where is it? It's got to be somewhere

It's got to be at Studio 54. It's got to be here, yes, that's right. Remember that first show you saw on Broadway? Was it Chorus Line? Was that your first

That was the first Broadway show I saw. It was incredible, man, because here was Priscilla Lopez

I know her name. It was my first Latin person that I saw on stage

And to see her, when she created the role, she helped create it

That was her story. Michael Bennett paid them, what, a dollar for their rights to their..

That's all they got was a buck. Which was cold-blooded, but I still love the piece

And then I got to meet Priscilla. I love her. she's one of the mentors that gave me the courage to know that I as a Latin man could be a performer

could be a writer, could be an entertainer. Isn't it great what you learned by seeing something on stage or like, I see myself doing that

Oh, dude, it was so powerful for me. Because it's different than watching a movie or television

That's a little removed, but when you're there and they're in flesh and blood, it becomes sort of like a real memory

It becomes like part of your own imagination as opposed to something that's distant

And you go, that's untouchable. but there they are and you see them and you can meet them

and I don know it just stays in you forever You talked about dancing Priscilla Lopez and a chorus line You dance in this show Oh hell yeah Yeah yeah I dance I got the injuries to prove it

and the physical therapist to prove it. Yeah, you know, I'm doing a lot of, like, native dances

and then doing a tribute to all the Latin contributions in dance. You know, doing a little cumbia, cha-cha, mambo, merengue

doing all that, you know, bring it to folks. Have you upped the dancing for Broadway

I did. My dancing is a little sharper, tighter. I was missing a few beats

I'm not going to lie. I'll admit it now. But now I'm hitting all the beats. What are you enjoying the most about doing this show

And what are you looking forward to doing it on Broadway now? Well, I mean, what I enjoyed was the journey that I was taking the audience with

You know, here we are laughing and then sometimes crying and sometimes getting really angry together

And I just find that the level of emotions that I can take the audience with is so powerful that I can't wait to do it

on Broadway and do it with bigger audiences and see where we can go. After the show, people

come up to me, some would be crying, some would be angry, some would just feel exhausted

from the experience. It was incredible because I was feeling all those things, angry, sad

happy, and just unified. There was a lot of white people, a lot of black people, Latin

people who came up and go, I didn't know this. I wanted to know what book should I read

And I felt like the professor that I'm not. But I gave him syllabuses That what I love about all of your shows I seen all of your shows on stage from all the way downtown all the way up to Broadway you learn so much from what you put out there besides entertaining everybody

and that must make you feel so great yeah you know that's I see myself more as an artist than an entertainer

I feel as an artist you have to elevate and theater brings that

you know it encourages that I mean you couldn't have Hamilton have it in a movie

or a network or TV because the studio heads would have never believed it

they would have gone wait a minute you're doing the founding fathers and they're going to be black and Latino

but they weren't and they didn't speak rap in the 17th century so that show would have been

dead but not Broadway Broadway and theater allows you to be the true artist that you are it gives you the freedom

and power to say things exactly how you see them my final question is you have this incredible fan

base from movies, TV your comedy shows, your HBO specials many people will be coming to

Broadway for the very first time to see you and you'll change it for them, what that means to you

Oh my God, that's such a beautiful thing to know that what I'm doing for Latin people

what Priscilla Lopez did to me. Seeing her in chorus line was such a monumental moment

It was the coin drop, you know, the coin drop moment where you go, uh-huh, I could do this

We can do this. We're allowed to do this. And it gave me the permission to be an artist

I'm hoping I can do the same for Latin kids and all kids who want to be artists

or performers or writers