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[0:43] Pauls Macs: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another exciting episode of Backstage Pass. We have a very special episode for you today.

[0:50] Teresa Attridge: It's Pauls.

[0:51] Teresa Attridge: And Teresa.

[0:52] Teresa Attridge: Hi, Barnacles.

[0:54] Pauls Macs: We're with the team from the new musical Ghost in the Machine. We're actually promoting the new single Here With You that was just recently released on Theater Barn Records.

[1:03] Teresa Attridge: Yes, applause. Applause on the pod.

[1:06] Pauls Macs: Do you want to all say hi?

[1:07] Eddie Noel Rodríguez: Hi.

[1:08] Janine Robledo: Hello, hello. Thank you for having us.

[1:10] Héctor Flores: Hey, everybody. It's Hector.

[1:11] Pauls Macs: Yeah. So let me introduce who's in the room joining us today. We have Janine Robledo.

[1:16] Pauls Macs: Also, we have Eddie Noel Rodríguez and a colleague that I really, really value. I have worked with for many, many years.

[1:22] Pauls Macs: We've got the amazing Hector Flores Jr. here joining us.

[1:25] Pauls Macs: Incredible. Friend of the pod. Family of the pod.

[1:28] Héctor Flores: Family of the pod. This pod would not exist without Hector.

[1:32] Pauls Macs: You know, we usually do a bio segment here.

[1:35] Pauls Macs: But y'all, we have such incredible artists here with us today.

[1:38] Pauls Macs: And we kind of just want to start talking about the single.

[1:40] Pauls Macs: But I want to make sure everybody knows. So Janine did the book, music and lyrics for this new musical Ghost in the Machine, which is fantastic.

[1:47] Pauls Macs: Eddie is an incredible actor. And you'll hear his voice later on the single, has been in the national tour of Hadestown and On Your Feet and many other fantastic shows all around.

[1:56] Pauls Macs: And Hector is the president of Theater Barn Records, an incredible director and collaborator.

[2:01] Pauls Macs: I'm really excited to talk about the show. I think it's a lot of fun.

[2:04] Pauls Macs: And what I love about it is I get to work with my friends.

[2:06] Pauls Macs: You know what I mean? And everybody's just it's a beautiful thing when your friends can make beautiful things together.

[2:11] Teresa Attridge: I love. Actually, speaking of y'all being friends. I think one of the main things that people like to hear is how did you all meet each other?

[2:19] Teresa Attridge: And then how did you all start working on this project? Because did you know each other before? Did you meet specifically for this? Like, what's the tea?

[2:26] Teresa Attridge: This show is so fascinating. Artificial intelligence stories are one of my favorites of all time, actually.

[2:32] Teresa Attridge: Like this might get nerdy on the pod today. I might start talking about Star Trek The Next Generation and Data is one of my favorite fictional characters.

[2:39] Pauls Macs: Honestly, pals, I dare you.

[2:42] Pauls Macs: I'll do it before we get started. I do want to read a synopsis just so everybody knows what's going on in the show we're talking about.

[2:48] Pauls Macs: And it's a secluded lab nestled in the Argentinian mountains. An inventor named Victor creates Cynthia, an android to save his son's life.

[2:55] Pauls Macs: When Cynthia meets Victor's son, Carlos, an everlasting bond is formed on a quest to keep Carlos alive and to free herself from the psychological imprisonment of her creator.

[3:04] Pauls Macs: Cynthia ponders the creation of her own invention. Janine Robledo's original musical, Ghost in the Machine, is part rom-com, part sci-fi thriller, in the vein of Frankenstein meets Edward Scissorhands.

[3:14] Pauls Macs: So, Janine, where did this show come from? Tell us about it.

[3:17] Janine Robledo: This show began as a short 20-minute musical that I wrote while I was a student at NYU about nine years ago. Because it was a 20-minute piece, it eventually turned into three 20-minute pieces, which then morphed into one musical. I think I wrote it originally because I had moved away from my family in South Florida, and I was feeling kind of the stress of a big change. And my grandparents passed away during that time, so I was just really grappling with a lot of grief and a lot of change. And I think writing this piece kind of helped me to process a lot of those big feelings that I was having at the time. Even over the more recent years, as I continued to work on the piece, some of my experiences as a new parent and the anxieties that come with that also kind of made its way in.

As me and Hector have discussed previously, we are both huge old Star Trek fans. We've caught Twilight Zone episodes we used to watch with our parents. I think I've always really wanted to bring those super deep psychological stories into musical theater. And that was also a big reason why I wrote this show. It's been a long eight years of just me writing by myself, so when Ghost in the Machine finally made it out of my brain and out into the world, I was super grateful to connect with Hector and Eddie and Theater Barn and be able to kind of take the piece to the next level and workshop it and record this wonderful single. So yeah, I guess with that, I'll pass the baton over to Hector or Eddie.

[4:43] Héctor Flores: Well, Janine and I met when I was on the selection committee for a writing cohort called the Julia de Bulgos Cohort. And it was a cohort of all Latina composers and writers. So they were getting mentorship. And then one of the things that my team was bringing to the table, that Theater Barn was bringing to the table as a partner in this cohort, was all of them would pitch 15-minute pitches to myself and my team. And Maria Torres was also on the selection committee for this as well. Spoiler alert, Ghost in the Machine did not get the EP. It went to another show, but I thought Ghost in the Machine was such a quirky show. And it was just kind of so up my alley. And I love pop music. And so like a lot of the music lent itself to living in a pop sonic space, but also had Argentine influence and had a lot of Latin vibes.

And it was really creepy and eerie music. And it was a lot of the sounds were things that I didn't necessarily I don't think I've ever heard before in musical theater. It's cool that the sonic space of the world is very dynamic. So the writing cohort was over and I said, Hey, Janine, like, I think the show is really cool. Would you want to explore maybe incubating the show in New York Theater Barn and hear a couple of avenues that we can talk about? So when we got together, we were just talking about a whole bunch of science fiction things and why the show came together. And we decided that we were going to record a single and then put it in New York Theater Barn's mixtape. That's when I called Eddie and said, Hey, Eddie, I got this really cool song. Hey, do you want to sing it? And Eddie and I met years ago before the pandemic on a production of On Your Feet where he was playing Emilio and I was in the ensemble.

[6:07] Pauls Macs: Oh, amazing. I didn't know that you met during On Your Feet.

[6:09] Héctor Flores: Yeah, at the Gateway.

[6:11] Pauls Macs: And I can see why you remembered his voice.

[6:13] Héctor Flores: I can see why you remembered. I was like, yep.

[6:16] Pauls Macs: Y'all, it's so good. I know that we're going to play this song later, but just kudos to the vocals, Eddie.

[6:22] Eddie Noel Rodríguez: Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. It was a beautiful challenge getting to meet Janine and Emiliano. It was the orchestrator, right?

[6:31] Eddie Noel Rodríguez: Yes. The orchestrator of this song. It was a beautiful challenge last year in the recording studio. That's when I actually met Janine. She blew me away with the lyrics and the whole process. And then Hector, of course, because I met him in the first regional of On Your Feet at the Gateway. I mean, both Puerto Ricans, you know, as soon as he called me, too, he was like, Hey, I got this. You want to do it? And I was like, hell yes. I will never say no to you. Thank you for the opportunity. And I'm really excited about this. And what was really cool is recently the show was in Barn on Fire. So, I mean, I'm sure people on this podcast know what Barn on Fire is, but it is a summer residency. And we usually take three shows. The writing teams basically get a week to work on the show, writing and picking it apart as a team. Janine and I were a team as director and writer, and we explored a lot of things. The show has the pill and the peanut butter effect.

[7:14] Pauls Macs: I do not know. I'm sorry, but I'm the avatar sometimes for the listeners or the voice of the listeners. What is the pill and the peanut butter effect? Can you explain that?

[7:22] Héctor Flores: So, the pill and the peanut butter effect. So, essentially, it's kind of like when you trick a dog into eating the pill, you put in some peanut butter, and it tastes really good, but it's good for them, right? And those that are like a pill and a peanut butter kind of like Hairspray. Hairspray is a show about breaking down segregation in the 1960s, but it's wrapped up in this big cotton candy musical. And I think Ghost in the Machine speaks to a lot of women's rights and how they're expected to be in society and what does it mean for women and how they're represented in media. I think one of the things that really came from us discussing the show and all of those things were how does that work in the grand scope of the world?

You know, I mean, how we view each other as humans based on gender or gender identity. One of my favorite things about the script, actually, one, the fact that when we talk about sort of artificial intelligence stories, that there is a very huge difference between, say, having Frankenstein's monster be a man and having the AI in this character be a woman in the different way that we treat and subjugate humanoids that we believe are not equal to us. There was this narrative of having the three main characters for the listeners are we have the genius professor who creates the AI in order to save his son who has a heart defect and is trying to build an artificial heart within this AI character and in doing so is basically creating a life to take it away, right? To give life to someone else. I think it's very interesting that you talk a lot about sort of the ways that women's subjugation is a huge allegory throughout this piece.

[8:54] Janine Robledo: Absolutely. And the idea that you are sort of made to be like someone who is able to cater to men's wants and needs. So Janine, I'm actually really curious in creating the character of Cynthia. Was that something that was intentional from the beginning or did that part of the story reveal itself as you were writing the character?

[9:12] Janine Robledo: I think it probably subconsciously was in there but actually when I was pregnant with my daughter I was really, really sick. I felt like nobody cared about me. It was all about the baby which of course I wanted my child to be okay but I really felt like I was just kind of like this vehicle and nobody really gave me the medical care that I needed. That kind of made its way into Cynthia's character as well. Just kind of with what you were saying how as women we're expected to be like this vehicle for something else. It's confusing because we're also told that we have all this potential and we can do so many things and yet at the same time we're also like, no, we can't because we have to serve this other purpose. It's so many things for who, right? That's a very, very complex relationship. Experiencing the complexities of motherhood and fatherhood recently it's something that I don't think anybody can ever truly prepare you for.

[10:00] Héctor Flores: No.

[10:01] Janine Robledo: But I would offer, yeah, like no one told me what was going to happen. I was like, what? Mom and dad, why didn't you say anything to me about what this was actually like? And I mean this is from the father's perspective as opposed to being a mom. You have to like literally keep a child alive with your body, right? But what I love so much in the piece is how you've kind of flipped the traditional Frankenstein narratives on its head without spoiling the ending in the first like 15 minutes of the podcast. The way that the Cynthia character claims agency and then kind of flips those traditional norms on their head is really, really fantastic. I love that you did that, that you were able to take that traditional structure and flip it around.

[10:40] Janine Robledo: Yeah, you know, I've seen a lot of sci-fi with female robots but kind of wanted to do something different in this show as opposed to like have them just kill everybody at the end.

[10:48] Héctor Flores: Yeah, or having like the sexy baby trope. I was very excited that we were able to avoid that in this show.

[10:54] Janine Robledo: I have like a huge issue with like sexy baby woman AI.

[10:57] Héctor Flores: Yes, exactly.

[11:00] Pauls Macs: Wait, I'm going to do this again. I'm going to be the voice and the listener and be like, can you explain that statement a little bit more?

[11:04] Janine Robledo: Yes. It's this idea that like a fully mature woman has the mind of like a child and it's like I'm so like sexy effortlessly and I'm so hot but literally I can't learn anything without you, random man. Like it's everywhere, right? And I think one of the things I really appreciated about Cynthia was that she was like I'm literally a robot. I'm just going to figure it out. One of my favorite lines in the show is about overriding your own programming and I think that that is such a relevant thing today. Just because we've been doing something one way does not mean that it's the right way to do it anymore. So like how do you override your own programming for like the betterment of not only yourself but for all?

Or if you believe you're capable of doing a certain amount of things or have a certain amount of abilities, what if you tell yourself actually no, I'm more than that. I can overcome my own limits. That's really exciting. That was a conversation Janine and I had on Born on Fire. We were talking about oh you have so much potential but…

[12:01] Héctor Flores: But you're also incapable.

[12:02] Janine Robledo: When I was younger as a woman I often felt that. Family or other people were like wow you're so talented but at the end of the day you're still going to just get married and like do the whole thing because you're not capable of being an independent person and you're not supposed to. Like I think that message was always kind of in there from an early age. You know my father was Cuban so my upbringing was rather traditional in that sense. But there's this mixed message of wow you can do so many things. You're this AI who's capable of doing so much and yet as a society we're still going to kind of keep you in the status quo. I think right now that robot like Cynthia, all of us, with the amount of information that we're getting from social media and everything, we're just adapting so fast.

Like even for something that we can feel maybe a little bit ignorant with just a click, we just get it. That's what Cynthia does in this show and that's why she gets the power that she gets without spoilers. It's because of that. So not only of course this is woman empowerment but like even myself. I see myself in Cynthia, you know, in so many ways. Learning every day I think is something that everybody will connect with the show no matter what. I think that's also the beauty of writing a show about science, right? When we talk about like the arts and humanities and the sciences and the way that they marry together. It is my personal belief that the poets and the scientists are the same person because they both believe they're looking in a mirror at everything that they look at, right?

The way that you've been able to incorporate the questions about like the humanities, philosophy and literature and history and anthropology even in this piece alongside the actual like scientific implications of what does it mean to have an artificial intelligence.

[13:32] Eddie Noel Rodríguez: Welcome to the show, everyone! We're excited to have you here today.

[14:02] Janine Robledo: Yes, thank you for joining us. We're thrilled to talk about our new single.

[14:06] Héctor Flores: Absolutely! It's been a journey creating this music, and we can't wait to share it with you.

[14:10] Eddie Noel Rodríguez: The single is called "Here With You," and it really captures the essence of our musical, Ghost in the Machine.

[14:14] Janine Robledo: The story revolves around an inventor named Victor who creates an android named Cynthia to save his son, Carlos.

[14:18] Héctor Flores: It’s a unique blend of romance and sci-fi, reminiscent of classics like Frankenstein and Edward Scissorhands.

[14:22] Eddie Noel Rodríguez: And the bond that forms between Cynthia and Carlos is truly special. It raises questions about love and freedom.

[14:56] ♪ Musical number: "Here With You" — performed by Eddie Noel Rodríguez ♪

[26:41] Eddie Noel Rodríguez: Join us next time for Part Two of our discussion with Janine, Eddie, and Hector about the new musical, Ghost in the Machine.