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[0:00] Martín Acuña: Hi everyone, I am Martín Acuña and you are listening to Backstage Talk.

[0:16] Martín Acuña: Jonathan Larson asked how can you make someone take off and fly in one of his songs from Tick Tick Boom, and I, for the past two years, have learned one way to do it, through the power of community. Welcome to the Latinx in Musical Theatre Special for Season 3 of Backstage Talk, where we will be featuring artists from across all positions in musical theatre, from several Latin American countries and different Latin heritages. I am proud to showcase my Latinx family. I hope you enjoy.

[0:51] Martín Acuña: Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Backstage Talk. Today's guest is Jaime Lozano. He is a musical theatre composer that has been heralded as the next big thing on Broadway by Hamilton's Lin-Manuel Miranda. A native from Monterrey, Mexico, Jaime earned his BFA in Music Composition in Mexico and was the recipient of a full scholarship to New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he has the distinction of being the first Mexican to be accepted to and earn an MFA from the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. Jaime is one of the five artists selected from the 2020-2022 Joe's Pub Working Group Residency and one of the artists selected as part of the Civilians R&D Group 2020-2021.

A prolific composer, Jaime's works have been produced at venues such as the Minskoff Theatre on Broadway, Lincoln Center, Lucie Lortel Theatre, the Pearl Theatre, the Players Theatre, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre, all of them off Broadway, Goodspeed Opera House, the Juilliard School of Music, the Triad Theatre, Theatre for the New City, and many, many more. In addition to being a composer, Jaime is also an accomplished director and he has staged Into the Woods, Jesus Christ Superstar, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and The Fantastics in Mexico. Jaime adapted, produced, and directed the Spanish world premiere of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years and Songs for a New World.

In March of 2004, he developed, produced, and directed the concert for the Broadway Elite Gala. Jaime is also known as an arranger, music director, and orchestrator. As an arranger, he has worked with the cast of Broadway's In the Heights and he is also the arranger, orchestrator, and music director of Revolución Latina's album Dare to Go Beyond. Jaime also is one of the orchestrators for In the Heights film, directed by John M. Chu, and you can see him in the film adaptation of Tick Tick Boom, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, as part of the iconic writer's workshop scene, among some of the greatest composers and writers of Broadway, such as Stephen Schwartz, Jason Robert Brown, Mark Shaman, Janine Tesori, Dave Malloy, Tom Kitt, and many others. Jaime, it is an honor and a pleasure to have you here in Backstage Talk. Welcome to the show.

[3:43] Jaime Lozano: Hola, Martin. Muchas gracias. Thanks a lot for having me. It's my pleasure. I am super excited because you are one of the few Latin American composers that is working in New York with Broadway people and your work has been used all through Latin America. I saw an adaptation of The Last Five Years and I am absolutely sure that they used your version here in Bogota and I just loved it. So thank you for being here. I want to ask you, what made you choose the thespian path in life?

[4:17] Jaime Lozano: Well, thank you. Thank you for your kind words. To be honest, saying that I am one of the few Latinx, Latine, Latino artists doing musical theater, like a composer doing musical theater in New York City, is something that doesn't make me proud. I mean, I would like to say that there are many more, you know, but there's a part of me that says, oh yeah, yeah, I'm one of the few, but I would like to say that is something that is good, but it's not good being one of the few. I mean, I really think there should be many more people like myself doing this, like here in the big city. But I mean, we are like fighting, like trying to open doors for other people. Unfortunately, like in the years to come, we're going to be able to see more people like myself, like doing and telling stories.

And my path getting into musical theater and telling the stories, it's a very unique path because I started very late in life. The very first time that I have any contact with musical theater was actually when I was 18 years old. I don't come from a very artist family. I mean, no one in my family is an artist. I'm the only one doing this. So when I was a child, I never had the opportunity to, I mean, to know what was like musical theater or to know what was, I mean, of course, like any other kid, I used to love music. I used to love like singing, but I didn't have like any formal approach to it. Actually, when I was a kid in Mexico, they used to broadcast the Jesus Christ Superstar movie, the 70s movies.

And I remember that they used to broadcast it during Semana Santa, like around March, April in Mexico. And every time that I used to, I was like, just like passing them with a remote, the channels. And when I used to watch that movie, I remember that it was something very boring to me. I, oh, why are they all singing? I used to hate the movie. I couldn't understand at that time, why was these people singing in the middle of the desert? So when I was a kid, I didn't understand what was musical theater. I actually was supposed to study criminology in Mexico. No kidding. Yeah, I know. It's something very, very, very, very different. So I actually did the test. I was accepted to the criminology school.

And I don't know what happened. I mean, that day that I was supposed to enroll after the test, I decided to wait. I decided to not get enrolled. And I took a sabbatical, and I was working during the whole year without going to school. And one year later, I mean, to be honest, I don't know why, just from nothing, I decided to enroll in music school. The only approach that I had to music before that was like in a church choir. I used to go to a church choir when I was a teenager, let's say from 14 to 16, 17 years old. And that's what I learned to play guitar and all that. So I decided to study music, actually opera singing. And when I was doing during the first semester, I saw a post in the wall about auditions for a musical.

And what was my surprise when I went to audition for that show? It was the show that I used to hate when I was a kid. It was Jesus Christ Superstar. So I mean, when I say I used to hate it, I didn't really hate it. But at that time, I couldn't understand what was people singing. So I auditioned for the show, and I got in the show. I was part of the choir, the chorus. And that was the first, the very first time that I have a relationship with musical theater. I was already 18 years old. I was studying opera singing. And the director in that show, he was a guy who studied in music and musical theater here in the States. So immediately I became like his assistant. And I used to spend all the day like reading books in his office. And that was the way that I started learning about musical theater.

[9:57] Martín Acuña: I love it. That is a very, very cool journey from starting in Mexico and then out of the blue getting into the musical theater world. And how, or more like it, what is your approach to composing for musical theater?

[10:12] Jaime Lozano: I mean, I don't think that there are any specific rules or any specific process because every show is a different animal. It's a different monster. It's a different Frankenstein, I would say. So I think always the story is the most important thing, definitely, to have a good, cohesive, interesting story. Being here in New York City, being an immigrant, one of my missions, I consider that my mission is telling the stories of people like myself, because unfortunately we don't see those stories on stage. I mean, we see all kinds of, it's funny because we see all kinds of stories. There's musicals about,

[11:03] Jaime Lozano: Everything, like, it's ridiculous, that kind of subject that sometimes you see on stage. But there's no musicals about people like us, about immigrants, about brown people, about Latinx people. So many years ago, the first time that I came to the States, I came here because I got a full tuition scholarship from NYU to do a master's program in musical theater writing. And I remember when I came to the States, I was walking around Times Square, and I saw a flyer, like, on the street. And I picked it up because the guy, the flyer, looked like my brother. And just because of that, I said, Oh, let me see. I'm gonna go to see this musical. Let me see what it's about. At that time, actually, when I got accepted, I didn't speak any English.

I'm still learning, as you can hear, by my English. But at that time, I spoke non-English at all, non-English at all. So I went to the musical. It was an off-Broadway musical on 37th Street. And when the show started, they started to sing and to speak in Spanish and Spanglish. That show was In the Heights back in 2008. So at that, I mean, that show changed my life forever. I mean, I really, I mean, I already knew because in Mexico, I was writing musicals about subjects related to my country and with myself. But I didn't know that you could do that on Broadway. I mean, that there was an audience for that. So since that day, I decided that that was my mission in life as a storyteller, to tell my own stories.

And the process has been always, like, first to find a story. I mean, to find a story about someone like me, about my family, about immigrants. And then I would say that sometimes music comes first. Sometimes lyrics come first. Sometimes they come at the same time. But there are not really rules for a specific process. Because also every collaboration, I collaborate with many, many lyricists and book writers. And every collaboration is like a different marriage. So you have different rules. You have different processes. But I would say at the end, the most important thing is that the story has to be clear and has to make the audience think about what they're seeing on stage. But I really think that the most important thing is to find a way that all the elements tell the same story. You know, that the lyrics, the music, the book, then the direction, the choreography, the set, the costumes, everything needs to be telling the same story.

[14:20] Martín Acuña: Yeah, absolutely. You have read my mind with the next couple of questions that I have to ask you. But before we go there, I want to know what advice would you tell a younger version of yourself?

[14:28] Jaime Lozano: You know, I have always been a person that I just do things, you know, I don't like to think too much about it. I just go and do whatever I want. So I don't regret anything that I have done. So maybe it's not advice for myself, but advice in general. Because I wouldn't say that I would change anything that I have done, even I have made a lot of mistakes. But what I have learned is that you are what you do. So sometimes you spend a lot of time like thinking or saying things. But the reality is at the end, the only thing that matters is what you do. I'm going to say a very dumb example. I mean, we all get angry with people. I mean, we all sometimes, oh, I wish I could kill you, you say to someone, but you don't actually go and kill that person.

I mean, maybe you say it for yourself, but just saying it doesn't make you a killer. What is going to make you a killer is going, I mean, the act of killing someone, not thinking about it. And that happens with bad things, as this one, and with good things. I mean, you can have the biggest dreams, but if you just say it and you don't do anything about it, I mean, so nothing's going to happen. So I would say that the best thing that you could do is do things. If you want to be a composer, if you want to be a writer, go and write things. It doesn't matter that you know how to do it. Eventually, you're going to learn from other people. Eventually, you're going to go to the right school or you're going to find the right teacher, the right mentor.

But you shouldn't wait to find that people or that school to write. If you want to write, you're going to write no matter what. And all people have different journeys. I mean, there's great writers that they go to the best schools and they are great writers that they don't go to any school at all. I mean, to any formal school, they go to the school of life and they learn from other people. And that's OK. That doesn't mean because I have a master program in musical theater writing that I am better than someone that doesn't have that program, that certificate. I mean, we all have different paths. So my only advice still today to myself and to other people is do what you want to do. Go for it. Yeah. Just keep doing things.

[17:00] Martín Acuña: So earlier you mentioned that back in 2008, you saw a flyer for the Off-Broadway production of In the Heights, and you found that there could be a space for both Spanglish and speaking shows in musical theater in New York. What is visibility and representation for you?

[17:23] Jaime Lozano: Right now, I mean, definitely it's a little bit better than before. I mean, I'm very grateful for people like Lin-Manuel Miranda, like Chita Rivera, Rita Moreno, Sergio Trujillo. I mean, there's a lot of people that they have done a lot for the Latinx community on Broadway and in general in the United States. But I think that before Lin-Manuel Miranda, for example, I think we could see a little of that representation on stage. But unfortunately, if we want representation, that doesn't mean only the stage. I mean, if we want representation, we need to see it in every single area of the industry. And that should start with producers, that should start with podcasts like this one, that should start with writers, with directors, choreographers, casting directors.

And we don't see a full change and a full representation because unfortunately, there are not too many Latinx producers. There are not too many Latinx casting directors. So we are still playing the roles of a group of people that created this industry many, many years ago that they don't look like us. So we're just trying to fit in whatever was the universe that they have created before. And I think that we need to fight for that diversity coming from deep, deep, deep bottom. For example, the stories. I mean, if you want a diverse cast, you need diverse stories. I mean, you need a story that can reflect and can tell the stories of people like us. I mean, I'm okay. They are a lot like a token diversity.

In any show, like Phantom of the Opera, oh, let's put a people of this color, of that color, an actor of this color, or in Dear Evan Hansen. I mean, it's okay. But at the end, we are just being like figures put on stories told by others. Those are not really our stories. Of course, those are universal stories. And those are great. And I have a lot of respect for those stories and the people writing those stories. But we also need diversity on those stories. And we need to hear about people like ourselves, about our journeys, about getting to the States, about stories happening in Colombia, happening in Mexico. I mean, something like, for example, Phantom of the Opera is supposed to be a story that happens in France, or the same with Les Mis.

I mean, why we can't have a story that happened in Colombia, or that happened in Mexico, or happened in Argentina? I mean, we need to see those kinds of stories also on Broadway, because that was going to help to have more diversity, and to have a diverse cast, a diverse creative team, a diverse producing team. I mean, I think we need to find that diversity in every single area, and not only on stage. It's not about having people of different colors on stage. It's more about having people from everywhere as part of the team, you know, in every single area.

[21:15] Jaime Lozano: Yeah. And I love that, as you were saying, to increase that visibility, or Latin visibility and representation on Broadway, we have to go to not only putting performers in specific roles, but to tell those stories that aren't being told. And I just love that.

[21:38] Jaime Lozano: Yeah. And I'm just talking for myself. I mean, I don't represent all Mexicans. I don't represent every single Latinx creative, or every single Latinx musical theater artist. I'm just speaking for myself. Because, for example, there are a lot of performers with Hispanic or Latinx last names here in the States, that they are first, or second, or third generation.

[22:06] Jaime Lozano: That they speak perfect English. I mean, actually, English is their first language or their only language. And sometimes they are tired to be put in a box because their last name sounds Hispanic. Yeah. And they also want to play. They don't want to play only Latin characters. They want to play every kind of character in any kind of story. And that's also valid. I mean, that's also OK. I mean, there's because they have they have had other struggles. There are struggles because they are an industry with full of white people is that these white people read this name that, oh, this is a funny name in Spanish. So she or he only can play a Latin stereotype character. And they are tired of that. And they want to play every kind of character.

So they have other journey, another story that is also valid. So it's not like, oh, let's tell only Latin stories with Latinx people or everyone with a Hispanic last name who only can play a Latin character. No, I mean, there's no black and white. I mean, there's a lot of gray in the middle. And I mean, and we all have our own journey. But what I would say, I mean, a lot of people ask me, so you only want to write like Latinx stories? I mean, I can write any kind of stories. I can write other Phantom or other Dear Evan Hansen or Jesus Christ. I mean, all kinds of stories. I can do that. But I consider that my mission right now, at least for the next five, six, seven years, is to focus on telling my own stories, the stories of my people.

Maybe in 10 years, this is going to be different. And I'm going to be doing another story about gringo, whatever. I don't know. But right now, I think that my mission is to focus on these stories. And maybe there's other Latinx writer that he doesn't want to tell Latinx stories. And that's also OK. That's all. I mean, it's nothing bad with that. I mean, we have different journeys and I think what we need is just to find a way to diversify these and to learn that it's OK to tell stories. You know, it doesn't matter where or who is telling those stories or writing those stories. Yeah.

[24:28] Jaime Lozano: So what is the most important part of creating Latin characters in musical theater for you? I think the most important thing in creating any kind of character is honesty. It doesn't matter if it's Latin or non-Latin. Or I think because I think that's one of the main issues with people trying to tell other stories. I'm OK with Americans or people from other countries trying to tell or write a Latinx story. I mean, they can because they are writers. I mean, they, I mean, it's fiction. They can write about any kind of story they want. The problem is that sometimes those stories don't come from knowledge and honesty. So those stories are full of clichés and full of wrong information because they just know those characters on the surface, not really deep.

So I could say the good thing about being a Latino, writing Latino characters and Latino stories is that we know a little bit more about those struggles and those stories. Even, I mean, I never I'm a white immigrant, Latinx privileged writer. It's not like I didn't cross the border, like crossing illegal through the real world. I mean, I came here in a plane. I was able even it was very expensive. And I have been working really hard to get my visa and my green card. I have had some privilege to be where I am because of my color, because I speak a little bit of English. But there's other people that they don't have this privilege. I mean, that they don't speak English at all, that they lost some of their family crossing the river, that their families are back in Mexico, Cuba or other countries.

And I don't know the struggle. So if I want to write about that, I need to go to that people in order that I can be respectful and tell the story in the right way. It's not like I'm not going to like just create a story by myself. Of course, there is going to be a lot of fiction that you're going to add details. But I need to be as respectful as possible for all the people that they have been a struggle and that they are struggling with these journeys. So that doesn't mean that because I am a Mexican immigrant, I know all the stories. Yeah. So imagine if me being an immigrant, I don't know the story for my people. So other people that I think come and don't have these journey. I mean, I mean, they don't know.

And sometimes when they want to tell the stories, I think what that a lot of people what is not happening now is that there's people trying to tell our stories and just to feel, you know, to check boxes. Let's hire a consultant. They hired an assistant writer, assistant this, assistant that. But at the end, the big names are other people that they're not the ones who own those stories. So I think I'm not against other people telling Latin stories. I'm against other people using our stories, you know, just to find some advantage, you know, to taking advantage of our stories. Why not you bring a Latinx writer and put it at your same level? And you say, OK, me, John Smith, I'm going to tell this Latinx story with Martín Acuña. And we both are the writers at the same level.

You know, it's not like, oh, I am the writer and he's the associate, blah, blah, blah. Oh, he just doing that. He just doing the Mexican music because he knows how to write Mexican music. But, you know, no, I mean, we need to be at the same level, in the same room, in the same seat, on the same table as all the other people. I'm not against other people telling our stories, but they need to know and they need to learn that we want those seats and sit at the table at the same level because we can do the same. And we know our stories. And at the end, your question was, what was the most important thing? And I would say again, it's honesty. I mean, those stories need to come from the heart and from the knowledge. I mean, knowing you need to know what are you telling about those stories? I mean, you need to know about that struggle.

[29:24] Martín Acuña: So Jaime, before we wrap up, if people want to find you on social media, work with you, see what you are also doing, because I know that you have an upcoming concert in Lincoln Center on April 15th. If someone wants to work with you and find you, where can they go? Where can they contact you?

[29:49] Jaime Lozano: Yeah, I'm really grateful for all this, this social media and all the Internet. And now we can find each other there on the Internet. I'm on Instagram and Twitter as Jaime Lozano, J-A-I-M-E Lozano, also on Facebook and YouTube as Jaime Lozano Composer. Yes, and thank you. I'm having this upcoming concert, April 15th, that I am really excited about it because it's part of the American Songbook series, a very important series of concerts that Lincoln Center produced. Actually, a few years ago or more than a few years ago, I used to dream to be part of those series. And I can say now that I'm having my own concert there. And I just think, I mean, again, my advice, just do things. Go out there and do things, write stories, sing, dance, do whatever you want to do, reach people you want to. I mean, everything is about doing things and creating your networking. So just go out there and do whatever you want and keep doing it.

[31:02] Martín Acuña: Yes. And before we close, what are your top five favorite musical theater shows?

[31:09] Jaime Lozano: Oh, you know, it's funny because a lot of the shows that I like that I like are what they call flops. Yeah, so my favorite shows, I like a show, The Capeman, a show by Paul Simon. I like The Last Five Years. I do mention it before. I even did the Spanish premiere in Mexico some years ago. I like, of course, Sondheim. I love Sunday in the Park with George. I like another show called Gospel at Colonus that it has a very, very short run on Broadway. Why should be I think that the five show could be another Sondheim company.

[31:54] Martín Acuña: Yes. Well, Jaime, thank you so much for coming over to Backstage Talk. I am honored and happy and I cannot wait to keep seeing, listening, reading all the stuff that you are doing and all the good luck and love on your upcoming Lincoln Center concert.

[32:13] Jaime Lozano: Muchas gracias, Martín. Gracias for helping us to amplify our voices. I strongly believe that if we want to do things, we need to work as a community and we need all kinds of help. I mean, it's like people like you doing this kind of podcast. We need the press. We need actors. We need producers and we need all to work together. So thank you for doing this and for helping us to tell our stories.

[32:46] Martín Acuña: Thanks, everyone, for listening to this new episode of Backstage Talk. Remember to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Backstage Talk Podcast.