This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:43] Pauls Macs: Hello, hello, everyone. Welcome to New York Theater Barn's Backstage Pass. I'm Pauls using he him pronouns.

[0:48] Teresa Attridge: I'm Teresa using she her pronouns. And today we are joined by the amazing Nico Juber.

[0:54] Nico Juber: Hi.

[0:58] Pauls Macs: How are you doing today, Nico?

[0:59] Nico Juber: I'm doing great. It's Sunday. My kids are at the beach with my husband, so I have time and it's quiet. I could not be doing better.

[1:07] Pauls Macs: Amazing. Well, I'm so excited to see you. I'm sure Teresa feels the same. The other thing that people should know is that Nico is actually in the midst of composing the New York Theater Barn's Backstage Pass theme song. So we're in the midst of that. It might not exist yet right in this moment, but you might have heard it already as we intro into this episode. So, Nico, thank you for doing that.

[1:28] Nico Juber: Yeah, of course. I can't believe I get to be a part of New York Theater Barn history in that way. So thank you.

[1:34] Pauls Macs: Honestly, like your legacy is off and running. Your legacy is growing. If I can just say like I walk around the house going backstage pass in my head all the time.

[1:44] Nico Juber: You know what? People say that about stuff that I write. I get this sort of earworm bop thing going and I feel hashtag sorry, not sorry about that.

[1:53] Pauls Macs: So work. Just deal with it, I guess.

[1:56] Teresa Attridge: I love that you just hashtagged, which I think is very appropriate for our discussion today, especially about your musical, Millennials are Killing Musicals. But before we get to that, I'm going to go ahead and just read your bio so that everyone knows who you are and how awesome you are and how thrilled we are to have you join us today. Nico was recently named the 2023 Women to Watch on Broadway list by the Broadway Women's Fund. And she's also a Drama League Songwriting Contest and NAPCH Challenge Award winning musical writer. In addition to recently making her off-Broadway debut with Millennials are Killing Musicals, her new musical Winner, co-written with New York Theater Barn's own Joe Barros, is currently being developed by our company, New York Theater Barn and New York Conservatory for Dramatic Arts.

Her sci-fi short musical Hollow won one of the top awards in the 2020 National Alliance for Musical Theater Challenge. Hollow had its premiere at the Beck Center for the Arts with Baldwin-Wallace Music Theater, directed by Sierra Nae in spring 2021, and was chosen for the 2021 Broadway on Demand Short Film Festival. She has received song commissions for 54 Below and the play Stormy by Carolyn and Brown. As a playwright, her work was featured in the Live and in Color 24-Hour Play Festival and recently included series that showcases the right to health care and privacy with a focus on abortion called The A Chronicles. Nico is a member of Dramatist Guild, ASCAP, the League of Professional Theater Women, Ring of Keys, and current co-chair of the Maestra Moms Affinity Group. She holds a BA from Tufts University and gives back through her nonprofit for other cancer survivors called Thrive Survive Los Angeles. Nico, thank you so much for being here.

[3:23] Nico Juber: That was such an incredible list of affiliated groups, I have to say. I was like, man, that woman is just supporting and being supported.

[3:34] Teresa Attridge: Yeah, and clearly giving back to communities that really need your help and also will benefit from your expertise. One of the things that I love about the theater community, especially since kind of coming in, is how many affinity groups there are to get involved with, whether it's formally, informally, being able to be a mentor in the Maestra community. So many people have given me mentorship along the way in the past few years, so it feels very nice.

[3:59] Nico Juber: You also never know who you're going to end up working with at some point, so creating those relationships with the next generation of talent is always an amazing thing.

[4:07] Teresa Attridge: Totally. Actually, speaking of generations, I was really struck by something in the very first few pages of Millennials are Killing Musicals was in your dedication, thanking your parents, or you had thanked your parents for the genetics that made you predisposed to writing musicals. Can you actually explain a little bit about that? How did you get started? How is that in your DNA? I would love to know.

[4:27] Nico Juber: We joke in my family that you have a musical writing gene that turns on some point in your 30s. Yeah, my parents have written musicals, although my sister has not written a musical yet, but we'll see. She's a pop songwriter and now an artist in her own right, Ilse Juber, two-time Grammy nominee, and just put out her first single. My dad is a guitar player, Lawrence Juber, and he is also a composer. And my mom is a writer, comedy writer, and she's a librettist as well, a book writer and lyricist. So my parents have written musicals together. They have Gilligan's Island, the musical, that has been in a lot of community theaters and went on a national tour, and they're also in development on A Very Brady Musical.

This makes a lot more sense when you know that my grandfather was Sherwood Schwartz, who created Gilligan's Island and the Brady Bunch. Oh my gosh! So there's a lot of DNA of pop, comedy, and music there. I went on this really strange sidetrack into corporate marketing, and we can talk a little bit more about that. But I feel like I've sort of come back to my roots and what I grew up around, which was storytellers.

[5:36] Teresa Attridge: Oh my god, I have to say that was such an impressive lore drop, just like right off the bat. I am shook. You're just – I literally – and I actually, I did a deep dive of your Instagram for this interview, and I saw the Gilligan's Island picture, but I didn't understand the context. And now I'm like, oh my goodness. That is so very cool. And we spoke about your parents, about your sister, about you. And then do your daughters have any sort of musical affinity as well? Because you are very much proud to be a mother, which we love. And I really love talking about motherhood and the arts specifically. So I'd love to hear more about your girls as well, if you feel so inclined.

[6:15] Nico Juber: So I have two girls. They just turned eight and ten. My older daughter is named Asher. My younger daughter is Rigby. And they both love music. They love the arts. Just this morning, my daughter Asher was working on a song on her iPad. I don't even know how they were doing this, but with a friend of hers from camp. They were writing together. I think definitely have created some monsters here with them. And my younger daughter, Rigby, wants to be a Broadway star. And I blame every single person who has been in any one of my shows for that inspiration. Because she cannot believe that this is people's jobs, that they get to be on stage and sing and dance. And can't believe that her mom's job is to make people sing and do these things on stage.

So it's very cool and really rewarding for me, especially having just done the off-Broadway production. They came out and they saw it. And to see me work on something for almost five years and then see that come to fruition. As a parent, I mean, there's nothing better than that. They see you work hard on something and then it happens, right?

[7:19] Teresa Attridge: That's amazing and so fulfilling. And I'm sure all those actors that they meet are very charming. So like, oh, I want to be part of this situation.

[7:25] Nico Juber: Totally. And they're funny, right? It's a comedy. So they get to see people being funny, having fun on stage. A good friend of Theodore Byrne and actually the person who introduced me to Theodore Byrne, Diana Huey, has been involved in the development of Millennials for over three years now. Rigby will tell you definitively that Diana is the reason that she wants to be an actress. She has so much fun and she wants to do something where she's having that much fun.

[7:55] Teresa Attridge: Oh my gosh, that's so incredible. Diana is actually from Seattle, which I always like to advertise a little bit, like that Seattle connection. Incredible.

[8:03] Nico Juber: Yeah, she was amazing as Ariel in The Little Mermaid years ago. Let's just say I don't remember exactly when. But it's been so cool when I moved to New York to see that connective tissue of, oh yeah, there's Diana. I remember seeing Millennials are Killing Musicals on the New Work series and seeing Diana do the performance. And I was like, wow, this piece must be so promising if someone like Diana is so passionate about it. That's really great that you have that connection with her. She's just an incredible talent and a really wonderful person to work with and explore new works with. I think that's why you see her as part of so many of the Theodore Byrne projects, because she is a champion of new works.

[8:42] Pauls Macs: That's amazing. Well, the other thing I wanted to say quickly is we've used the word legacy already, and we've talked about your previous generations and how they've inspired you. But it's just so cool to see that's definitely manifesting in your daughters as well. That's just amazing that that legacy is continuing. And I can tell you that my musical theater writing gene that apparently is supposed to awaken in my 30s has not awakened yet. I'm still in my musical theater directing gene, but that's OK.

[9:05] Nico Juber: You have time. You know, as long as you've got time.

[9:09] Pauls Macs: That's great. That's great. You don't know how old I am.

[9:12] Nico Juber: I don't. I was going to make an assumption about it, but I think you might have some time.

[9:18] Pauls Macs: Maybe.

[9:19] Teresa Attridge: Thank you for saying that. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, actually, that it's the three of us, I think, talking about this because we're all millennials, I believe.

[9:27] Pauls Macs: Correct. I believe we are. I was thinking about that before we started.

[9:30] Teresa Attridge: Yeah. Yeah. It's very interesting being in a room with people who are all of like a similar age. Do you know what I mean? Because I feel like, you know, when you're in rooms with like actors and producers, I feel like right now as a millennial, it's fun because all of the like Gen X and boomers and stuff are like the ones who are in like the big seats and producers and directors and running companies. But at the same time, all of these actors are all Gen Z now. You know, all of these like younger college kids are coming in or they've graduated and now they're on the scene. And I'm in that fun in between state where I'm like, cool, cool, cool. Not yet a girl, not yet a woman. Like figuring it out.

I'm having my once upon a one more time fantasy thing in my career. But I just think that's really fun to be with people your own age. Sometimes I always kind of feel like the odd one out of the millennial, weirdly enough, at least in the rooms that I'm in currently. So I don't know what that says about me.

[10:20] Nico Juber: I think that is a universal experience, probably for millennials. At least it was for me in a corporate workplace. I always felt like I was always in a weird in between state. And maybe that was also being a woman, too, where I was never far enough along to get that or old enough to get that director title. Now I feel like would I be too old for some of you know, you never feel like you're quite the right age for some of these things. And I always looked really young, too, when I started out. I just remember getting so upset if I got carded at a bar or something. I'm like, oh, they're not going to take me seriously. I think that that can be a challenge.

[10:55] Teresa Attridge: I do want to say for the record, though, that you don't have to be in your 30s to start writing musicals. You can start at any age. And some of the most incredible writers out there come to this at a point in their life where maybe they're now retired and they have so much life experience to draw on. Lots of fresh young talent coming in. But I think you get to draw on a lot of cool experiences and life experiences in depth when you have some years under your belt.

[11:19] Nico Juber: Totally. Actually, this is like a weird segue into one of my questions. I was like my big list of questions. One of the things that it says on the Maestro Moms website in terms of like mission statement is this idea of radical collegiality, which I absolutely loved. And so I wanted to ask as a musical theater writer, but specifically as like a queer woman in the musical theater industry, what does it feel like to be radically collegiate? Like, what does that actually mean in terms of, you know, sharing resources and focusing on intersectionality when you're already in groups that are famously like not heard enough or getting enough resources? Like, what does it actually mean to share the resources that are there so that everybody is elevated? Can you talk a little more about that?

[12:03] Nico Juber: That's a great question. And just to kind of back up a step. So I identify as bisexual. I'm part of Ring of Keys. I'm married to a man, but I feel like it is. Well, then why, Nico? Why tell people about your sexual identity? I think it's really relevant to the writing that I do, especially when we talk about.

[12:20] Nico Juber: Winner. That is super core to the story and based on a lot of my own experiences and Joe's experiences. And then I'm also a mom and I'm part of this subgroup of Meister Moms, and I think that we are so supportive of each other when someone has something happening. It is like all hands on deck to support. A huge group of the Meister Moms came out when Millennials was running and posting about it. And so I think that just understanding that we all have to think intersectionally in our advocacy and no one is winning until all of us have these opportunities to win, right? And share those resources. I think there's a lot of gatekeeping that happens in the industry as far as information, resources, because there's a lot of scarcity in terms of these things.

And it's like, well, if I have this, then this other person can't have that. My feeling, you know, because people have said to me, well, what about another story about motherhood? Is that threatening to you? And I'm like, why can't every show, every show on Broadway could be about motherhood? Before we started, we were talking about this idea that, you know, Asian American stories are American stories. And I think that women's stories are musical theater stories. Why is that not the default? That's where my brain is that I want to see other women succeed. I want to see other moms succeed and people of all genders and sexualities and make space for that. So I hope that answers your question.

[13:46] Teresa Attridge: It does. I love that. That might be the perfect segue into talking about your show, Millennials Are Killing Musicals. And I went ahead and pulled a synopsis. Millennials Are Killing Musicals is an entirely original, irreverently funny and heartfelt musical about reclaiming authentic happiness in a social media filtered world. Meet Brenda, a single millennial mom who wants to do better adulting like the seemingly perfect Jake's mom at her daughter's school. Brenda is finally ready for love and creativity in her life when her younger hashtag influencer sister Katrina shows up at her house, eight months pregnant, totally unprepared for motherhood. The three women must shed the Greek chorus of social media filters on their lives to achieve their dreams. Do you want to just talk to us a little bit about what inspired you to write the show?

[14:22] Nico Juber: Yeah, I've heard from a lot of people that your first musical is sort of a brain dump inside of your head. And I think that would accurately represent what this show is. It's been a process of discovery. It's very public therapy, just in terms of reconciling identity and motherhood, the loss of identity and motherhood and reclaiming of that our relationship to social media, especially as women in this in the way that we use filters to kind of either overshare, undershare or smooth over everything in our lives. All of this was swirling in my head. I had mentioned before I worked in marketing for a long time before I had my millennial existential crisis, got back to my roots and then started, you know, I'd already always done these things.

I always wrote, I always played music and wrote music, but I really put it all on hold. I'm a 21 year cancer survivor and was like, I need benefits and I need stability and all the things that the arts, at least at that point, there was no Obamacare can't provide for me. When I had this explosion, I really felt like a download. I just sat and I started writing and I didn't know what I was writing or why it became really clear that it was a musical pretty quickly. So I was writing songs and I'm like, well, what if this happened? What if there was a mom that you thought was perfect? And then you followed her to figure it out. I think any playwright will tell you, it just starts with asking lots of questions.

So I started doing that and started writing the show. It was a really weird thing to do after not doing anything like that for a long time. But I think that it was just me wrestling with and reconciling all of those kind of pieces. And then also pieces in me of creative voice versus capitalism. And, you know, that kind of struggle at that time between, well, I think it's always going on, right? Especially for artists. We got to make money, but we want to do our thing. And then how do we reconcile that? And then I think big picture, generationally, like what does it mean to be a millennial and be told that we're sort of less than and that we're killing everything all the time? And how does that make a generation feel about being an adult in a world that's really kind of not been set up for us to succeed in terms of a lot of the student debt and access to health care, all of these things that we know about.

And I think in this story in particular, Brenda being a single mom, who's the lead character, I'm not a single mom. A lot of my friends have gotten divorced and have become single moms as millennials. So kind of seeing them go through that and just with the challenges of motherhood, to me, that feels like the highest stakes position to be in. It's all on you, right? Most of the time you don't have the societal support. You don't have necessarily family support. There's this idea that moms and women have to do it all. You have to have the career. You have to have the dating life or whatever it is. So I think for me, that's been really important in the development of this piece to kind of maintain those stakes and make them really clear.

Because we're not talking about somebody whose house burned down and then somebody died. But when you are a single mom and you cannot spend a second of time on yourself or any mom, I mean, it's just having to have any time for yourself is like me being here right now with no kids screaming in the background is pretty miraculous. Just telling that story was really important and kind of kept me going through this wild process.

[17:43] Teresa Attridge: Totally. I love what you're saying about the stakes of motherhood. I think that that's something that for such a long time before social media, truly, everyone felt like they were kind of taking on alone. It was very isolating, this idea of like, oh, am I the only person who's bad at being a mom? Am I the only one having a hard time? And through people being honest on social media and dishonest, and like, that's a big theme in the show, Love That Too, too, is that you're seeing like these glorified versions, but you're also having people who are like, hey, I need to throw out into the universe that I am having a hard time and that, you know, I'm having a hard time at the thing that is the most important thing, which is another human being. Right. You know, and it kind of makes you wonder why aren't there more moms as protagonists in things if the stakes are already so baked in?

[18:29] Nico Juber: And I think a lot of it has to do with the way that we devalue motherhood in general. I think you're absolutely right. I think there's two factors at play that we are, especially in the U.S., in a country that devalues motherhood. We know that because we don't have paid parental leave baked in legally. We don't have child care options. I mean, this is a really hard time in the history of places and times to raise kids for so many reasons. And we could probably do a whole podcast about that as well. But I think the other thing is that the barrier is really high, especially in musical theater. Right. I mean, I've written plays and I don't want to say it takes less time, but it's just a different development process.

You can do a play in your backyard. You don't need to get the band together and like all of these things. So the barrier to entry on musical theater is just higher. Right. There are a huge number of privileges that have gone into me being able to tell this story. And I'm aware of them. I mean, the fact that I could go to New York and do these things because I have a partner who is able to help with the kids and my parents live down the street and they can help. And we have a great public school that they can go to. They're old enough now. When I first started this, I don't know that I could have done those things. The barrier is just so high. And that's also for me, part of the personal stakes of it.

We're also in an industry where women's stories aren't necessarily valued. It seems like as much as other stories, mostly men's stories. And I think that we know some shows are coming to Broadway, musicals are coming to Broadway that have been in development for a long time. But if we look at what has been announced and this may change by the time the podcast comes out, for the 23-24 season, the only show that I could find that had a woman writer at all was the Britney musical. It was under conservatorship when that happened. Is that the only way to be a woman and a mom and have a show on Broadway?

[20:26] Teresa Attridge: Yeah. As I was reading your piece, I was feeling that I've seen a lot of theater in my life and I've never seen this perspective represented on stage. I have not seen every single musical and every single play that I was just thinking, gosh, this is just so, so important that people have this perspective so they can see themselves represented on stage as a single mom. I would think that would be a hugely powerful moment for people when they actually are able to experience that.

[20:49] Nico Juber: I hope so. And I think that that's been one of the things that's kept me going, especially during this off-Broadway run that we just had. I think people find their way into the story in different ways, whether it's about social media, whether it's about the millennial experience, whether it's about finding your voice as a creative, there's lots of sort of ways in. But I think when women and then also moms see the show, there is like a, I've never seen anything like this before, response that I get from people. And that is very gratifying to me because I know as a theater goer what it feels like to feel seen in a piece of theater. I do think that that's really important. And it is really scary to me that it feels like we're even sliding backwards in terms of the representation.

I mean, we have seen stories of motherhood. I mean, certainly Waitress is a great example of someone who's about to become a mom and that's a really important story to tell. And actually I saw that because I think when she has the baby, I don't want to spoil Waitress for anyone, but I think it's sort of like everything's changed now and it's great and I'm a mom. And I think that was one of the things where I'm like, well, that's not quite how it goes when you have a baby. It's much more of a mess than that. And she had a whole new business to run. That was very busy.

[22:01] Teresa Attridge: Yeah, she was real, real busy with that. And, you know, we've seen other stories that have been written not by women. And I think the authenticity and storytelling is so important in this industry right now. Who is telling stories? What are they about? We're also at a time where we're not seeing a lot of original work sort of making its way to the big stage. This is a strange moment in history where we all know it's expensive and the risks, the stakes are high for producers to put things out there that people are going to come to. But I think if we lose our way in terms of authenticity and the things that people are going to see themselves in, then we're kind of shooting ourselves in the foot a little bit, I think, on creating stories that people will connect with.

[22:43] Nico Juber: Something else that I really appreciated about both of your shows, Winner and Millennials Are Killing Musicals, is that it's not just having a woman at the center of the story as the hero, but that they're original women. Right? Because I feel like a lot of the best female roles on Broadway in the past, like 10 years, were all adaptations of movie characters.

[23:05] Teresa Attridge: Yeah. Right. You know, and like, I am a legally blonde defender till the day I die. I love that musical.

[23:09] Nico Juber: Right. I'm not.

[23:11] Teresa Attridge: I also love, and Mean Girls, like I, listen, like the more pop culture bubblegum it is, I love all of them. On the last podcast, I had to explain, I, not had to, it was my privilege to explain the plot of Legally Blonde, the musical to Greg Kotis, because he's unfamiliar. It was incredible. I can't wait to watch that.

[23:32] Nico Juber: So funny. I love an adaptation musical, like this is not me knocking them, but it is so refreshing to have new characters to observe and to identify with, you know, and especially one of the things I really appreciate, like the diversity within your work is great. You're able to write this show about a single mom trying to figure out how to have her identity be something that relates to both her passions and like the pragmatism of having a sustainable life. But then you're also writing about a queer teenager in 1999 and a rigged election and the Matrix and all of these other fun themes. And so it's really nice to see like, oh, yeah, like there's original work being put out there and these stories and pop culture references that are still really fun and really relevant, but they are still somehow so unique in perspective. That's very, very cool.

[24:23] Nico Juber: Thank you. I appreciate that. And it's nice as a writer to feel seen. I appreciate that, too, on that level. You know, they say, write what you know, and that's where the authenticity comes in. And not to say that you can't write from other characters' perspectives, but I, as a woman coming into this,

[25:11] Nico Juber: As far as all of the themes, at one point somebody asked, which of these characters are you? And I was like, I think all of them are actually me. Like every single one is me. And Mike on the mic is all of us. All of us, absolutely. We're literally on microphones right now. Well, I think we didn't talk about what Winner is. So Winner is a story set in 1999. The Millennium class. When you graduated in the year 2000, Joe and I both graduated in the same year. They made us sing We Are the World and all these things because we were seen as this is the class. We are the future class. So there's a lot of themes in that show of there's this day at school called Future Day where they have the election.

They have people come in and speak at Future Day. And I don't want to ruin the plot of it, but it's definitely got this weird sci-fi twist to it. You have at the center of it these two girls who have this relationship who end up having to run against each other in the school election and a big conspiracy is uncovered. I think the common thread through my writing, because I sometimes look and I'm like, what am I? Because I have some short plays that I've written that are super like weird future dystopian. I mean, the one that I did for the NAMP Challenge, Holo is this weird future dystopian thing with some comedy in it. But there's usually some aspect of how we relate to technology in some way.

Right. And that is something in Winner where they've got this new online voting system and can it be manipulated? And in my future one in Holo where there's this hologram that's on repeat every day that this museum curator in the future has a relationship with this hologram and it's the last day before the museum's torn down. I think that's where my brain goes and gets really excited about when there's some weird aspect of technology in some capacity.

[26:55] Teresa Attridge: Well, actually, I'd love to ask you about that, because one of the most striking elements of Millennials Are Killing Musicals for me is the social media filters, which are kind of like a Greek chorus that are commenting on the action, and I think is just such a brilliant addition to the show, because as a millennial who has existed in a time before social media and now exists in a time when social media has not only occurred, but it's now transforming at a rate that I can't keep track of. Like, I don't have a TikTok yet or I just got one. I haven't done anything yet. I'd be curious to know where that idea came from. And I think I know how I personally connect to that being in the show. But I'd love to hear how it connects for you to be in the show and why it's so important that that's part of the show.

[27:34] Nico Juber: Yeah, I think going back one step further, a lot of people have asked me, why doesn't it have mom in the title? Or why isn't it like bad moms or this and that? And I think what we were saying before, this is a millennial story. These are people who just happen to be women and moms, and that is core to their identities. But that's not what the story is about at its core. It's this finding authentic happiness in a social media filtered world. And they're important because I thought it'd be really fun to have real life embodiments of what social media is doing to us and how present it is in our everyday life and manipulates the way that we interact with each other. Those characters originally started as Katrina's followers in like early drafts of it and have them kind of be sort of representative of when she's getting likes and when she's not.

The roles really started shifting when you do all these readings. We did a couple of these 29 hour readings virtually. It just kind of became apparent that you had these three archetypes with Brenda, Katrina, and Jake's mom, the three women, of Brenda being the undersharer, the consumer of social media, who doesn't put anything out there and is really protective of it. And then Katrina, her sister, who's the oversharer of everything. And then Jake's mom, where everything needs to be smoothed over. So I thought it would be taking Katrina's followers up a notch and looking at, well, what if they had a filter literally on them, right? And you see them start peeling them back and you see the way that the filters are influencing the behavior.

And those filters in this latest edition of the show are using this hashtag millennial kill list, you know, because their existential threat, like all technology that, you know, Friendster, Myspace, like all of these things, is that they're going to go out of date. And on this fake app in this world called Instacam, they need to keep people engaged in using the app. And so how do we do that? We make people feel bad about themselves. And this is a real thing. People keep you on apps by making you feel bad so that you need to consume more on the app. So you start using this hashtag millennial kill list, and it starts fun and funny. And then over the course of the show, it becomes oppressive. It is not fun anymore.

And, you know, like any good villain, they think that they are helping, right? No, we're helping them. We're filtering them. This is the best version of them. And that's not working by the end of it. I think where we get to, where I hope we get to at the end of the show, is this place of learning to reconcile these technologies. These are not going away. There have been some versions of filters in every iteration of human existence, whether it's someone painting or sculpting. And can you give me a little bit more definition there? Or whatever it is, it's not going away, but we have to learn how to live in a healthy way with it. And as a generation, sort of get outside of this box that we have been put into.

I know that's like a lot that is kind of in there. A lot of people come and they're like, oh, it's fun and it's funny. This show's great. But I don't necessarily like dig into it. But that's, you know, what I'm hoping to get across.

[30:39] Teresa Attridge: I love that. Social media is such a strange phenomenon to me. And each of them have their own quirks. Like, for example, when Be Real just did the thing where we see one Be Real a day, and then if we do it on time, it now rewards us by allowing us to curate two more Be Reels. I was like, oh, I hated it at first, and now I kind of love it. But the weirdest one for me is the way that, I know you can see who's like watching your stories, like your Instagram stories or Facebook stories. And like the people who I am connected to through those stories, people who I have not spoken to in the last 10 years, but I know that they're watching my stuff. You know, I'm watching their stuff in return, and yet we're not connecting, but we are connected.

That weirdness, I'm curating to them and showing them like my very best self. And I wouldn't post just anything up there. I think the way that your characters arrive at a place where authenticity is actually the most refreshing and revolutionary thing that you can offer, I find that very inspiring.

[31:27] Nico Juber: Awesome, good. I mean, that's really, that is where they need to arrive. And I think that that is where we need to sort of keep that as the objective, right? I mean, I'm definitely not perfect at it. And what? But it seems so realistic. It seems, yes. It all seems so realistic. I've been thinking a lot about even TikTok, because I was like, oh, I should probably start making content, right? On TikTok. Who am I on TikTok? And what do I want to talk about? And it's just such a weird thing. And like, well, then who am I on threads? And then who am I on Facebook? And who am I on Instagram? And you want that to be the same person, but maybe you have a niche thing that you're talking about on all of these things, depending on how people are consuming the content. This stuff is super fascinating to me, again, as a writer and someone who worked in tech for a really long time.

[32:18] Teresa Attridge: And then you have a Finsta. So you have your other Insta for other people. Then you have your close friends list.

[32:25] Nico Juber: Yes, it's different degrees. The thing I like about all of the different apps, right? Is that I think the freedom to be different people on different apps is cool. Because my family members, like my aunts and uncles and older relatives and stuff, follow me on Facebook, right? But I don't let them follow me on Instagram. Because I'll post general updates about my life. And I use Facebook to do a lot of networking stuff now, because I feel like a lot of artists can reach each other on Facebook. They don't need to see bikini pics of me on vacation. You know what I mean? My uncle doesn't need to be like, you're a beautiful young lady in a really nice way and have somebody else comment to be like, don't be weird.

It's just one of those things. I think it's kind of like in real life though, right? It's like we all have different friend groups for different reasons. You have your friend you go party with. You have your friend you get lunch and you have heart to hearts with. And you have your friend from high school that you do your nostalgia trips with. And social media, I feel like as a tool for that sort of form of self-expression is healthy. But it's when you're trying to hyper curate every facet of yourself that I think is...

[33:26] Teresa Attridge: Katrina makes me laugh. There's something about her, man. I'm just like, wow, like I know so many Katrinas. And that's great. And I think that especially if you're a mom, you know Jake's mom too. This perfect, you know this woman. And this is based on a real person that would be at my kid's school at 7:30 in the morning wearing heels, hair, like totally done with two kids there. I'm like, how? How is this possible? And that's another form of curation, right? To show up on the schoolyard, presenting yourself that way. I mean, good for her. Like that is, I could not understand. So that's when I started writing that character. But everyone, I'm not going to say the real person. Not Jake, wasn't the kid, but it was... No one knew her name.

Everyone I talked to was like, how does Jake's mom do this? Like, how does she look like this? And that was part of the inspiration for that character of having this nameless mom who has fully lost her identity. Does not even have a name anymore. And this is the thing if you are a parent or if you know parents, you only know people by their kids' names. Like you don't even have your own identity outside of your kids anymore.

[34:36] Teresa Attridge: I love that so much. You know, even the naming of the character, just being like Jake's mom, is brilliant. And I think, you know, what's striking me in this moment is just to, I mean, hopefully it's not a surprise, you know, as a male identifying person, but I don't know that person. I don't know a Jake's mom archetype, but I'm sure there'll be so many people who see that and be like, oh, I know exactly who that person is. I can definitely relate to the idea of a person who just seems perfect. But I think amongst mothers who watch the show, it'll be so powerful for them to see that.

[35:03] Nico Juber: Yeah. It's just amazing that you wrote this piece. Thank you.

[35:05] Pauls Macs: Hey everyone, it's Pauls. Before we leave you this week, we wanted to give you a taste of Nico's work. This is the song, Eye on the Prize, from her new musical Winner, co-written with New York Theater Barn's very own artistic director, Joe Barros. The song's performed by Jenna Pastusek with arrangements and orchestrations by Bálint Varga.

[35:31] ♪ Musical number: "Eye on the Prize" — performed by Jenna Pastusek ♪

[36:32] Thanks for joining us on New York Theater Barn's Backstage Pass. Join us next time as we continue our conversation with Nico Juber and we decide which musical theater characters would kill it on social media. Get your backstage pass.