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“Freestyle Love Supreme” opens this week at the Venetian’s Summit Showroom.
Monday, Nov. 7, 2022 | 2 a.m.
The new production at Venetian’s Summit Showroom promises to be unlike anything we’ve seen before on the Las Vegas Strip. But then again, “Freestyle Love Supreme” has proven to be a truly unique piece of entertainment in every city and venue it has visited.
“We just did a national tour, and we need to adapt to the environment we find ourselves in rather than try to adapt [the audience] for the show,” says co-creator Anthony Veneziale. “We grow in the petri dish we find ourselves in, we don’t need a special petri dish where this show can only happen. We’re creating the show new every night, based on the audience, and the energy the Vegas audience will bring to this show and the ways we tap into that is going to be very exciting.”
Launching at the intimate Venetian venue on November 10 with a six shows weekly (dark Monday and Tuesday), “Freestyle Love Supreme” combines improv, musical theater and hip-hop with lots of audience interaction. It was founded in 2003 in New York City by Veneziale, Thomas Kail and Lin-Manuel Miranda while Miranda was writing and developing “In the Heights” for Broadway.
“We were in the basement of a coffee shop doing freestyle raps to blow off steam and get to know each other,” recalls Veneziale. “I had started a production company with Thomas and the first musical we worked on was Lin’s, and we’d come in between rehearsals and that’s how ‘Freestyle Love Supreme’ started.”
Tickets for the Las Vegas shows start at $79 and are available at venetianlasvegas.com. Miranda will join the cast of nine performers for two shows on November 16 and 17, performances that have already sold out.
“Lin has always seen this show as a way he can cut loose. There’s the Disney version of Lin, the musical version of Lin, and ‘Freestyle’ has always been the uncensored version of Lin,” Veneziale says. “I cannot wait to see those Vegas shows. There’s going to be megawatt energy.”
Improvisation is a big part of magic, comedy and other shows on the Strip, but traditional comedy improv hasn’t had a prominent home in Las Vegas casinos. And “Freestyle” takes a decidedly nontraditional approach, still having conversations and getting inspiration from audience members, but tweaking the performance with elements of musical theater and heavy doses of freestyle rap and maximum spontaneous creativity.
“It’s really a brain twister,” says Simone Acosta, a musician who comes from the underground hip-hop culture in New York City. She’s been part of the cast for about a year now. “I’m in constant shock and awe during rehearsals to see these [entertainers] take these stories and create an entire narrative, make it funny and foolish and just have fun. In my world, you see emcees freestyling, talking about things around them and creating narratives out of thing air, but to apply that with musical theater is a beautiful meld of these two worlds.”
The performance guides the audience into their unique musical, comedic universe, breaking down the rules early on and then diving quickly into making connections with audience members that will generate the stories and songs made up on the spot onstage. And the cast can’t wait to take advantage of the diverse audiences looking to be entertained in Las Vegas.
“That’s what makes it even cooler in Vegas, so many people who are only there for a few days, so we are getting all these worldly individuals,” Acosta says. “There are many twists and turns with what we do. For people who have seen Broadway shows and only know that scripted narrative, we’re going to break down the fundamentals and let them know everything you’re seeing is being made up right now. And hey, we’re really good at what we’re doing, so just let us take care of you for the next 90 minutes.”
