In the Heights Returns to City Center With a Gala Night Honoring Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes

New York City Center is preparing to throw the kind of uptown celebration that feels entirely right for In the Heights: a gala opening night honoring the artists who first gave Washington Heights its Broadway spotlight.

On Wednesday, October 28, City Center’s Annual Gala Presentation of In the Heights will honor Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the music and lyrics and conceived the musical; Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes, who wrote the book; and longtime arts supporters Mark Kingdon and Anla Cheng Kingdon. After the performance, guests will continue the evening with dinner and dancing at the Ziegfeld Ballroom.

The benefit will support City Center’s mission of keeping the performing arts affordable and accessible. In that spirit, the institution will make 10,000 tickets to In the Heights available at $28 or less through several initiatives, including community partnerships with The Brotherhood Sister Sol, R.Evolución Latina, TDF, The People’s Theatre and others; a Lynne & Richard Pasculano Student Matinee; $28 Access Club tickets for audiences 40 and under; and a special in-person Heights Rush event in Washington Heights this summer.

For the Heights Rush, attendees who sign up in person will be eligible to purchase up to four non-transferable $28 digital tickets for performances during the run. Details will be announced this summer at NYCityCenter.org/HeightsRush.

The gala honorees reflect the reach of the show itself. Miranda, a Pulitzer Prize, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony Award-winning songwriter, actor, producer, and director, is the creator and original star of Hamilton and In the Heights. He and the Miranda Family have also supported work focused on arts access, representation, women’s reproductive health and resilience in Puerto Rico.

Hudes, an acclaimed playwright, screenwriter, novelist and memoirist, is celebrated for work that moves with wit, rigor and heart. In addition to In the Heights, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Water by the Spoonful. Her memoir My Broken Language and recent fiction debut The White Hot have further established her as one of the most distinctive literary voices working between stage and page.

Mark Kingdon, founder of Kingdon Capital Management, served on City Center’s Board of Directors from 2013 to 2023 and continues as Director Emeritus. Anla Cheng Kingdon is the Founder, Chair, and CEO of Serica Initiative, a nonprofit dedicated to amplifying Asian American voices across the arts, technology, and business. Together, the Kingdons have been major supporters of City Center’s efforts to introduce young New Yorkers to the performing arts.

The production itself brings In the Heights back to New York with fresh urgency. Directed by David Mendizábal, with choreography by Mayte Natalio and music direction by Alejandro Senior, the concert staging revisits the Tony Award-winning musical’s sun-drenched story of Usnavi, his neighbors and a community balancing ambition, love, loss and the complicated question of home.

Set over three summer days in Washington Heights, In the Heights remains one of the great New York musicals of the 21st century: big-hearted, deeply local and alive with the sound of a neighborhood deciding what it owes the past and what it dares to imagine next.

In the Heights runs October 28 through November 15, 2026, at New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street. 

Tickets start at $45 and are available at NYCityCenter.org, by phone at 212.581.1212, or at the City Center Box Office. 

Gala packages for the October 28 benefit begin at $2,500; information is available through SpecialEvents@NYCityCenter.org or 212.763.1205.