‘Love is love is love’
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s emotional acceptance speech at the Tony Awards lifted Orlando in its darkest hour.
Love is love is love …
The words rose above downtown Winter Garden on a theater marquee.
… is love is love …
The words reverberated in song, raising thousands of dollars to help Central Floridians in their darkest hour.
… is love is love …
The words echoed months later at the wedding of two Orlando men.
… is love.
Rocked by news of the mass shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub in the early morning of June 12, 2016, the producers of the annual Tony Awards had a decision to make. The 70th annual celebration of the best of Broadway was scheduled to take place that night at the Beacon Theatre in New York.
The show went on, slightly subdued, with “Hamilton” taking prize after prize as expected. But for Central Floridians, the night’s biggest emotional moment came when “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda accepted the award for best score by reading a sonnet he had written.
“When senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day,” he read. “This show is proof that history remembers.”
His voice cracked on the signature line, “And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love, cannot be killed or swept aside” before concluding: “Now fill the world with music, love and pride.”
He received his applause with teary eyes. And the world cried with him.
Reaction was swift: “Lin-Manuel Miranda’s emotional sonnet was just what the Tonys needed,” read CNN’s headline.
“Perfect @Lin_Manuel LOVE, LOVE, LOVE!” tweeted Oprah Winfrey.
In Orlando, playwright-performer John Ryan found respite after a day of frantically checking on the safety of friends and loved ones.
“Hearing Lin-Manuel Miranda, on the night of his ascension to fullblown Broadway legend, honor our city and the LGBTQ+ community with his brilliant ‘Love is Love is Love’ sonnet was the balm that my exhausted soul needed that evening,” Ryan said.
He watched Miranda’s triumphant night — “Hamilton”
won 11 awards in total — surrounded by friends, a long-standing tradition.
“Since I was a child, the Tony Awards telecast has been my annual escape from the horrors of our world into the magic of Broadway,” Ryan said. “That magic was never needed more than on the evening of June 12th, 2016.”
Miranda, of course, couldn’t have known how his words would resonate in Central Florida, especially within the gay community. He wrote the sonnet to celebrate his love for his wife, Vanessa Nadal, but the uplifting and hopeful sentiment proved universal.
University of Central Florida creative-writing professor Terry Ann Thaxton, who heads the English department’s graduate-studies program, said Miranda’s poetic style was ideal for touching people’s emotions.
“The sonnet form is powerful, in part, because of its iambic lines, meaning that an unstressed syllable is followed by a stressed syllable: da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM,” she said. “This metrical pattern — the music — goes immediately to our senses.”
Repeating the word “love” so many times added to the impact.
“Repetition of the same word, phrase or lines heightens our senses even more,” Thaxton said. “In our daily lives, we repeat words for emphasis, to get someone’s attention. The first time a word, phrase or line is spoken, we hear it, but it may not linger. If we repeat it, our senses pay closer attention.”
But, as the social-media outpouring proved, you didn’t have to understand the scholarly reasons to appreciate why the heartfelt words struck a chord.
“Add to that his visible passion for the complex feelings we experienced that day, and we felt connected on a day when the world seemed to be falling apart,” Thaxton said.
That’s how Winter Garden resident Wes Catlett-Miller felt. He recalls shedding tears with his husband, Mark while listening to Miranda speak.
“When I watched the speech and the rallying of the entire New York theater community, it was very moving because of his articulation of the simple nature of embracing love and acceptance,” Catlett-Miller said. “And to have it come from somebody so influential, people sat up and took notice.”
The Garden Theatre in Winter Garden quickly quoted Miranda’s sonnet on its marquee, displaying the healing words for weeks after.
“Love Is Love” also showed up on shirts, posters and more, sold through Miranda’s website with some proceeds benefiting local support agencies. Soon, the words also inspired a song, “Love Make the World Go Round,” performed by Jennifer Lopez and Miranda.
Sales of the song raised more than $100,000 for the Hispanic Federation’s “Somos (We are) Orlando” project, said federation president Frankie Miranda. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Lopez contributed an additional $100,000 of their own money. Merchandise sales brought in an additional $50,000, and the Miranda family contributed $200,000 more.
The funds were used for bilingual translation services involving mental-health care and other needs of survivors and victims’ families, many of whom were Spanish speakers.
Frankie Miranda said the speech provided strength to a nation “paralyzed by the brutality of this heinous act.”
“There are moments in which you feel you don’t have the energy to continue,” he said. But after hearing words such as “Love in Love,” “That’s when you remember we’re going to continue to do what we need to do.”
The response to his sonnet even took Lin-Manuel Miranda by surprise.
Years later, when asked if he was aware of the impact it would make, he told an Instinct Magazine reporter, “I didn’t, honestly.”
For him: “I was responding in about as raw a way as anyone else was to the Pulse shooting earlier that day.”
Months afterward, the words still carried weight for Ryan, the Orlando playwright, when he married Eddie Cooper.
“The next year, at my wedding ceremony, when our officiant quoted Lin’s words to thunderous applause, it felt like a dark chapter finally closed and a bright new one began,” he said. “Lin’s words have the power to do that. I will forever be grateful that he included that statement, delivered in his inimitable style, on that historic night.”