Arts

Watch ‘Freestyle Love Supreme’ at Emerson’s Colonial Theatre

Tickets are on sale now.

Chris Sullivan, Chris Jackson, Anthony Veneziale, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and James Monroe Iglehart in "Freestyle Love Supreme.” Photo by Joan Marcus

By Natalie Gale

1 minute to read

Before Hamilton won 11 Tony Awards and In the Heights became a feature film, playwright and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda had Freestyle Love Supreme, a hip-hop musical improv show with co-creators Thomas Kail and Anthony Veneziale.

The energetic performance (now without Miranda) comes to Emerson’s Colonial Theatre for a two-week run, featuring Veneziale alongside six other performers: Aneesa Folds, AKA “Young Nees,” Andrew Bancroft AKA “Jelly Donut,” Jay C. Ellis AKA “Jellis,” Kaila Mullady AKA “Kaiser Rözé,” Morgan Reilly AKA “Hummingbird,” and Chris Sullivan AKA “Shockwave.”

Since it’s improv, no two shows are the same. Cast members take audience suggestions each night, spinning them into rhymes, riffs, and even full-length musical numbers.

“The immediacy of our show, with its content driven by audience suggestion, makes it one of the rare shows that can speak to whatever is happening in the moment,” co-creator Kail told Broadway.com.

The show’s name references A Love Supreme, the 1965 album by jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. A 2020 Hulu documentary, We Are Freestyle Love Supreme, chronicled the origins of the improv show, earning the cast a Grammy nomination.

Tickets are currently on sale at the Colonial’s website.

Editor’s note: This post has been updated to clarify the performers’ time with Freestyle Love Supreme.