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[0:00] Joe Roscoe: Hey, what's going on? Welcome to Built For The Stage Podcast. This is Joe Roscoe, founder and host of Built For The Stage, Broadway's number one fitness platform. Clients in over 20 Broadway shows, clients in the West End in London, Disney productions in Tokyo, Australia, we're everywhere. We'd love to have you. Jump on BuiltForTheStage.com. You can try a free trial working with me on an interactive fitness app. All right, let's get on to our special guest. They've been a bit busy, you know, just opened their second original Broadway show with Lempicka. Can't wait to chat with them about it. They also have dabbled in fitness with us here at BFTS, recording 690 sessions of training. They've done plenty of training on their own, but BFTS specifically, just had to shout that out because it's hella impressive, as the Californians like to say.

They also, before opening Lempicka, were just at Paper Mill a bit ago, doing a production of The Great Gatsby that's also on Broadway now. So they've just been here, there, and everywhere. They're swinging Lempicka. They're near and dear to our hearts here at BFTS. Please welcome to the podcast Julio Rey. What's going on, my friend? How are we?

[1:34] Julio Rey: Recovering from opening night. Still recovering, but living the life.

[1:40] Joe Roscoe: In what way? A headache kind of way? What kind of way?

[1:44] Julio Rey: Oh, I'm just so tired. It was finally our one night to go party. But damn, it was a fun time.

[1:50] Joe Roscoe: I'm telling you, what time did you get in that night? What time did you rest your head on the pillow?

[1:59] Julio Rey: I think I got home at like 4 a.m.

[2:02] Joe Roscoe: Okay, not bad. Not bad.

[2:04] Julio Rey: It's not bad. It's not bad. I've done worse.

[2:07] Joe Roscoe: No. But I just knew, my body doesn't do what it used to do in college.

[2:12] Julio Rey: Yeah.

[2:13] Joe Roscoe: For me, 4 a.m., that's late. That's late.

[2:15] Julio Rey: That was good enough, right?

[2:17] Joe Roscoe: Oh, absolutely. We lived it up.

[2:19] Joe Roscoe: You didn't get to see the sunrise, but it was close enough. Well, first off, before we jump into all things Lempicka and your experience of just opening that show, let's get into important things about yourself. So important question, dogs or cats?

[2:37] Julio Rey: Oh, dogs, without a question.

[2:38] Joe Roscoe: Dogs? Okay.

[2:40] Julio Rey: I love cats because many of my friends are cat lovers. So I know how to appreciate a cat, but I would rather have a dog.

[2:48] Joe Roscoe: Okay. We have the menu in front of you and there's only two items, pizza or burgers. Which one are you going to pick?

[2:58] Julio Rey: Classic pizza, classic burger?

[3:01] Joe Roscoe: You can let us know what you're going to put on it, what it's going to be.

[3:06] Julio Rey: You just gave me a really difficult question.

[3:08] Joe Roscoe: Mm-hmm.

[3:10] Julio Rey: I think pizza, sure. Let's go with pizza.

[3:14] Joe Roscoe: Okay. Once you can kick your feet up and take some time off, whenever that's going to be, what's like a vacation? What do we have in sight of where you want to go sometime?

[3:25] Julio Rey: I need to go somewhere with sun. I need to be on a beach. I need to have a margarita in my hand. I want to be in a Speedo and I want to come back looking tan.

[3:33] Joe Roscoe: Okay. Any beach or country or city or anything in mind?

[3:39] Julio Rey: I'm originally from Puerto Rico and it's been a very long time since I've been back, so I need to go to San Juan again.

[3:45] Joe Roscoe: Okay. There we go. We're going to go back to dinner because I love eating. You have a reservation and it's for two. So for you and a guest. The guest can be anyone you want, living, deceased, a real person, a cartoon character, anyone you want. Who's going to be at dinner with you?

[4:07] Julio Rey: I need to go to dinner with Chita Rivera.

[4:10] Joe Roscoe: Okay. Let's make it happen.

[4:14] Julio Rey: Yeah. No, she's one of my idols. She's been one of my inspirations and someone I've looked up to my entire life.

[4:20] Joe Roscoe: Okay. Amazing. All right. I just wanted to shake us loose a bit. That was fun. Let's rewind. Okay. So you said you're from Puerto Rico originally, yeah?

[4:30] Julio Rey: Yes.

[4:31] Joe Roscoe: And then when did you come over here to New York or when did you come over to the ground central, if you will, of the US?

[4:40] Julio Rey: Sure. So I was born in Puerto Rico and then when my dad wanted to get his master's, that's when we moved to the States. So I was about two years old and then we were in Minneapolis, Minnesota, right? Wherever Purdue is. And we had every intention of moving back to Puerto Rico, but my dad just kept getting more and more work and then we just kept moving all over the country, grew up moving everywhere. Went to Tennessee University for college and then I graduated in 2019, moved to the city and then a few months later the pandemic hit.

[5:17] Joe Roscoe: Amazing. Well, yeah, you had quite the slew of events when you moved to New York, pandemic hit, but then just years later you shook the dust off and opened your first Broadway show in Bad Cinderella.

[5:30] Julio Rey: Yes, I did.

[5:32] Joe Roscoe: Rewinding to Penn State, was that when you were like, oh, I'm going to go to college?

[5:36] Julio Rey: A dancer when she was growing up and she had me young and always knew that she wanted to put me in dance class. And my dad has always loved playing the guitar. So music and like performance art to a certain degree had always been in my circle, but never did we think that I'd be obsessed with musical theater. And so then I did my first musical in like third grade and I just got bit by the bug, never thought I could make a career out of it. And then I had a drama teacher my freshman year of high school who I told him I was going to be moving away after one year with him. And he was like, let's have a meeting because I need to talk to you. And he sits me down like a couple weeks before I was going to head out and leave Virginia.

And he goes, you have something and you need to hone it because if you do it the right way, you're going to be unstoppable. And he just like instilled this like confidence in me. And he was like, I don't do this to just anyone. And what this career path is difficult and relentless. But if you want this, you can be successful at it.

[6:44] Joe Roscoe: Oh, we all need these people on our lives. God bless them.

[6:47] Julio Rey: I fully agree. I fully agree. I still talk to that teacher to this day. They are the only, I think the only high school drama teacher that like taught me true fundamentals of acting. I still look back at like what I learned in that time. And I don't think I'd be where I am if I didn't have him sitting me down being like, let's talk about what it means to be equity versus non-equity. Let's talk about what it looks like when you're looking at regional theaters and their audition breakdowns. Like he basically had like a solo session with me for about an hour and a half, just like, this is what you look for in a BFA program. Here's what it looks like when you move to New York. So I'm indebted to him.

[7:03] Joe Roscoe: Oh, sweet, sweet. Yeah. Okay, so you go to Penn State, you study there for four years, and then you move to New York and all the drama happens with the pandemic. And then we go to the, like I said, your first Broadway show with Bad Cinderella and now Lempicka. Besides being talented, you're obviously talented because you wouldn't be on the stage if you weren't. What are some attributes of yourself that you think have also included, or yeah, included the efforts to your success besides being talented? Maybe an experience you've had that kind of, again, like maybe with your teacher, just something in life that happened that instilled other types of mantras or habits of yours that have led to success?

[8:10] Julio Rey: Sure. I mean, my mom was very strict with me growing up as most Latina moms are. And she was like, you're not, I'm not gonna let you go to dance class, take your voice lessons, do the show unless you come home with straight A's. You will not get to do all these things unless your chores are checked off. If you're really passionate about it, show me that you're passionate about it and get all these other things done. Okay, great. So if I want to do this, I will have to do X, Y and Z things. And the pandemic for me, it, I mean, it forced all of us to stop and just like think about what it is that we wanted in life and check in with ourselves mentally. And physically, that's when I first signed up with Build for the Stage.

I was like, I got to make sure I keep up in shape. And during the pandemic, I really set up a routine for myself to be like, okay, if theater comes back, I want to be ready. I love what I do so much. And I don't want it to seem like when I come back, I've regressed in any way. Although there is totally space for that because of the circumstances we were put in. I just knew that I wanted to be at the peak of my performance level. So I like got into the routine of like journaling just to be able to process anything that I was dealing with mentally. I had a vocal routine I went through every single day. I made sure to set aside time to work out. So physically, I was feeling good. I would be reading plays, I'd be studying new music, like I always gave myself something to do.

And then on top of like focusing on my passion, I would try and find something new, a new craft, a new industry to look at and study up on just to like keep myself informed and to open my horizons to like how I could apply my skills in other places. So I like to keep busy, I like to learn.

[9:56] Joe Roscoe: Okay, let's zoom in on that. I want to go back to some other things you said, but let's zoom in on that. What are some interests of yours that you took up outside of theater?

[10:06] Julio Rey: Sure. For a good chunk of the pandemic, I was living with some chosen family and they were out in El Paso, Texas. And there was a random modeling agency that was out there that was still up and running during the pandemic. So then while I was there, I took modeling classes because why not? Like I was taking runway walking classes, I was taking classes about posing and like how to style yourself. And they even set up like a photo shoot for me where we sat down and we planned out find some inspiration photos, let's put together some outfits based on a vibe so we can send you to New York with a portfolio. And that was my first time ever truly being comfortable in front of a camera and also so far away from like, you get stuck in New York and there's a lot of people chatting, there's a lot of eyes on you and sometimes it can be really intimidating when you're around so much talent, so many beautiful people.

So it was cool to be completely different state, different scenario altogether and just be like, yeah, let me just try this. Why not? I also was studying to be a personal trainer during the pandemic. So I was training people as well. I really love fitness. I love the science behind it. Yeah, those are like, yeah, like the big things that I worked on during the pandemic outside of theater.

[11:21] Joe Roscoe: The fashion part of the modeling that you were dabbling in had to have paid off for your two opening nights. Did you enjoy getting to choose your outfits? Or did you style yourself? Or how did that go these past opening nights?

[11:28] Julio Rey: It's funny you say that because for Bad Cinderella, I had actually ordered an outfit online like two months before opening and it never arrived. And then four days before opening, I was like, I need to do something. I need to like go get something. I don't have time to order it. But I also don't want to show up in something that is like from an H&M or off the rack like that. So I was able to go to a store and like what I came up with, with the help of some very close people in my life, really came together beautifully. And I could not be happier with that look from opening night. And then honestly, Lempicka, the process for the show has been so long and exhausting. I just didn't have time to really go into what I wanted to do. But we were told it was going to be a black tie event. And I was like, you know what, nothing will ever, no one will be let down by something simple and classy. So I just went with the suit. And I was also very satisfied with that.

[12:37] Joe Roscoe: Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's, let's get into Lempicka and your experience. You just said it was, it was very busy, you're swinging in the show. Have you ever been a swing in a show previously?

[12:49] Julio Rey: Never.

[12:49] Joe Roscoe: Okay, so this, yeah, so this is where the full, the full plate is, is coming in.

[12:57] Julio Rey: Oh, yeah.

[12:58] Joe Roscoe: Tell us about, you get cast as a swing. Are you petrified? Are you like, I can do it? Well, what was that? What was that like when you got the offer?

[13:06] Julio Rey: I was nervous at first because I've had some experiences in school and in other places where I sort of felt like it was not going to be something I would be capable of. But I will say I had an experience with Bad Cinderella because I was the Prince Sebastian cover and I got thrown on and made my principal debut with no rehearsal and very little preparation. And that night, I sort of blacked out, but I did everything I needed to do. And I left that night so satisfied with my work, because it was like one of the first times I didn't think and I just made sure I was on top of the work outside of the rehearsal studio, even if no one was telling me what to do. So that experience definitely was like, okay, I know I'm capable of doing one track with no assistance at all. If all I'm doing is focusing on other people, maybe I can do this. I just won't know until I'm in it. Yeah, you know, yeah.

[14:04] Jamie Tworkowski: Okay, so with this experience, you came in with a little bit of a past from the previous show of maybe how you would approach it, but now you have multiple tracks to cover. How many tracks are you covering in the show?

[14:20] Julio Rey: Five. It's five women and five men.

[14:26] Jamie Tworkowski: Okay. And did you lean on anyone to give you advice on how to organize all this, approach all of this? Or did you just wing it on your own?

[14:36] Julio Rey: The whole swing team, everyone, they're all so, so amazing. And they all have experience with swinging. My swing brother, Michael Milkanen, also did Bad Cinderella with me and Michael is also our dance captain. So I've leaned on them a lot. The biggest thing that I've learned, though, is like, at the end of the day, there's not one right way of doing it. And you just sort of have to find what works for you. And you don't know what works for you until you're in the moment, trying to figure it out. I would find myself at times looking over at my fellow swings and seeing how they're doing stuff. And oh my gosh, one of our swings, Veronica, she is so good at just has her iPad out, is taking all the notes, typing it out as it's happening in real time, charting.

Then we have Mary Page, who's doing all these like, maps and whatnot with the arrows. And then Michael with his iPad dance captain, and I would find myself just so overwhelmed, thinking that I was not doing enough. Because I was sitting there, I'm like, I don't know what to write down. They're changing so much, like, what? And I would get overwhelmed just watching them. And I, today, my current process is sort of just like, learning base choreography for everyone. And then just internalizing what everyone's doing. I tried to do the laptop thing. I tried to write everything out. I tried to do all the notes. But it got to a point where, like, as you know, new musicals and in the preview process, so many things are changing.

It didn't service me to write down all these things so many times if we didn't know what was going to stick. And more often than not, I'm pretty sure everything, all the things that I do have written down, all of it's now incorrect. So ultimately, it didn't serve me. We actually had our first onstage swing rehearsal this past week, that personally went much better than I expected for me. And I was like, Oh, wow, look at all this information that I just have absorbed just from watching and trying to do stuff on my feet. Yeah, it's been interesting trying to figure out what works and what's the right way for me.

[16:41] Jamie Tworkowski: Yeah, I love what you said. To start off your answer, because it's so applicable to everyone and all circumstances is just that it's not one size fits all, it's going to be specific and detailed to you. And you can never know until you actually put yourself in the position and do it. So everyone listening out there, whatever you might be shuffling your feet on or hesitating to do, you just got to jump in and you're going to figure it out. That's what life's all about, right? So many of us look around thinking everyone's got to figure it out when no one's got to figure it out. But it's just about the bravery of jumping in.

[17:16] Julio Rey: 1000%. And also like when you're part of a company, especially one like Lempicka, everybody is so wonderful. And if we all just lean on each other, like everything will be great. In the end, my swing brother went on during previews, and it was a very last minute thing. And it was such a beautiful thing to watch, because they told him, you're going on. I sat there, I was like, All right, let's go top of show. Let's talk about it. Where do you start? We went through it all. And watching the show, you could see how like people in the ensemble were helping him out making sure that he got to where he needed to be. And like, it's not just like, you're not just on your own, you have a community of people that's going to help you get through it.

[18:00] Jamie Tworkowski: Yeah, okay. I love that. Alright, so we're talking Lempicka, Lempicka, Lempicka. This isn't like, I don't know, a movie musical about the Titanic or something that everyone knows. Give us for the listeners that might be listening, being like, I don't know what the hell they're talking about. Give us the one minute cliff note on what this musical is about.

[18:18] Julio Rey: Sure. So Lempicka is about the famous artist, Tamara de Lempicka, and basically a brief and fast snapshot of some of the biggest points of her life. The show starts off with her about to get married in Poland, and then the Russian Revolution begins. And then you see her and her husband and daughter basically create a new life for themselves in Paris. She goes back to her passion of painting, which was always looked down upon for women at that time. There's a line in the show, painting is a fun pastime for a girl before she lands the right husband. And so then she basically creates her own revolution and paints what she believes a woman could be, which then influences the fashion of the time, which then influences women finding their power and how they speak up in the world.

But then you are also seeing her navigating her life in Paris as Hitler then gets elected and how then that starts to influence the politics of things in Paris, and how everything happening in Germany is starting to trickle down. And then seeing her then also escape Paris to then go to the United States. It's a fascinating story. It's unlike anything I think anyone's ever seen.

[19:40] Jamie Tworkowski: I love it. I can't wait to see it. I plan to probably hop over in July. So can't wait. What's it been like seeing Eden Espinosa do her thing and be in the room with her and see her on the stage and just be I'm gonna I'm gonna date myself a bit but like I'm in high school just like rocking out to Brooklyn and that epic what's the once upon a time. Yes. That epic belt at the end.

[20:13] Julio Rey: Yes. Like come on just I was listening to that on repeat here in the Midwest as a young little theater boy. So yeah, tell us about what that's been like being in the room with her.

[20:24] Julio Rey: She is just the consummate professional. She just like knows how to vocalize what she's feeling. She knows how to get what she wants. And she also knows how to stand up and speak up for her cast, which is like so amazing to witness, especially because when you come to see the show, this is a hard show for Eden. It is exhausting. She hardly ever leaves the stage vocally. It is vocal gymnastics. It is the Olympics of vocals in the show. And it is just so refreshing to watch someone in her position, just like handle it all, which with such grace. She's Yeah, she's a beautiful human being. I'm honored that I get to share the space with her and learn from her.

[21:06] Jamie Tworkowski: Amazing. Before we hop off the call, everyone that's listening, we're, we've been touching on like, the good, the good, the good. I love to dive into like a couple of the valleys before this wave of momentum hit with Bad Cinderella with Great Gatsby at Paper Mill. Now with Lempicka, what was the time when you're like, or maybe even in that momentous wave, you still were feeling like, Oh, I just don't have it in me or nothing's going my way. Like, give us a moment in your career. As you've been starting out here where you've had some bumps in the road and how you got through that, just so that our listeners have some insight, again, from another guest who can tell them like, Hey, we're not all just having the carpet rolled out for us and everything's butterflies and rainbows.

[22:02] Julio Rey: Absolutely. I mean, I think it's valid to say that even those of us that are lucky enough to be on Broadway. And like for me, I'm, I feel very lucky. And I'm extremely grateful that in one year, I've gotten to do two Broadway shows. That's that doesn't happen a lot. And I'm very grateful for that. And even with those things, the in between and the before, many low lows, many high highs. Because I mean, even looking back at Cinderella, we closed very early. And that is hard when all of a sudden, you're getting that consistent pain out of the blue that's done. And then you're back to side jobs that clearly don't pay as much. Before Bad Cinderella, I it's something that all of my friends know about me is that I grind and I grind hard, because I need to make sure that I'm feeding myself that I'm paying my rent, that I have a place to live, I always make sure that I have something lined up work wise, whether it even if it's not theater related, even for Bad Cinderella, we closed on a Sunday.

And the next day, I had a 9am start time for my temp job for four weeks. This is thanks to mom still right that instill that hard work ethic in you. Yeah. And also, life, life just keeps going. So then you sort of have to find like what you need to keep your spirits up. Because New York people are going to keep going, they're going to keep hustling doing their thing. And if if you're not moving, you're going to fall behind. Personally, that's personally how I think. So like, I just had to keep going. Even when I was in Bad Cinderella, Lempicka, Gatsby, I was always looking at the next thing. I'm always trying to solidify what's gonna be the next project that's going to bring my next income in I want to meet as many people as possible.

Even if I'm not going in for Broadway shows, I'm going in for like entertainment companies that do dance events. I'm going in for whatever, like little modeling things that I can submit for UGC ads, ambassadors for different companies. I try to do it all. And I find that even the weird odd jobs, I end up meeting someone that I end up like working with forever. Or I take a skill from that that heavily benefits me in one of my theater positions. A lot of the admin work that I've done in all my side jobs has really helped me organize a lot of my notes and thoughts when it comes to trying to learn Lempicka.

[24:48] Jamie Tworkowski: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I love that. Julio, thanks so much for being on the podcast. I know I got to let you go. I'm inspired. You bring the juice. Your energy is contagious. I entered this call after monotonous laptop work for four to five hours and I'm like dragging. And the second you popped on the screen, I was like, smiling, like, let's go. I love this. So have a great rest of your week. Congrats on opening the show. Can't wait to see it. Everyone, make sure you hop on to Instagram, follow Julio. And that's going to be in the description of this episode. Go see Lempicka. Go away to the stage door and wave at Julio or give him a fist bump or a high five, whatever. And just tell him how awesome he is because he is. Julio, thanks so much.

[25:39] Julio Rey: Hey, thank you for creating such a cool community with Built for the Stage. I appreciate all the work that you're doing. Thank you for including me in this. Appreciate it.

[25:43] Jamie Tworkowski: All right. See you later. Have a good one. Lovely.

[25:49] Jamie Tworkowski: All right. Julio Rey from Lempicka. Built for the Stage fam. I'm just, my cheeks hurt from smiling. Like, if you, you know, we all have to pick our circle of people. Get you someone like Julio. Brings the juice. I'm Joe Rosko with Built for the Stage. Actors or athletes, train like one. Later.