This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Teresa Attridge: Welcome back to the second half of our interview with Nico Juber, where we discuss her shows Winner and Millennials Are Killing Musicals. Plus, a game where we decide which musical theater characters we would like on social media.

[0:54] Teresa Attridge: I want to talk to you about, you just recently had your off-Broadway debut with Millennials Are Killing Musicals. I'd love to hear how that process was for you. What did you learn from it? I mean, I'm sure it was hugely powerful to see your piece up on its feet in an actual production. I'd love to know how that influenced your thinking about the piece, how that will change the piece moving forward. If you could talk a bit about that, that would be fantastic.

[1:16] Nico Juber: Absolutely. It was huge. It was needed at this point. I have a weird thing where I don't have very good visual imagination. I've come to know recently that it's, I believe, called aphantasia, where you just are a little bit, have mind blindness. And so I used to hate when people would say, okay, now visualize a room with a chair. And I'm like, I can't, I can't see that. When I write, I write characters, I write scenarios, I write to a major dramatic question. I can't really see it in my head in the way that some other people can. So vital to me is this development process of hearing it out loud, hearing actors and what they bring to it, hearing different people do the roles. It is so formative, but then at the same time, I don't quite know, like I can have some ideas about what the staging looks like, but I've really needed to see it on its feet and interact with it in that way.

So that was really powerful for me to really finally understand the sense of the show and the flow of the show and, you know, what it feels like and the pacing of it. And I think that one of the things that came up for me was, you know, we sort of knew this since our 29-hour reading last year, but the sort of emergent sitcom pacing, surprise, surprise, the way that the show feels and the way that the laughs are played. I also was really resistant to breaking the fourth wall. And this show actually is really effective when the fourth wall is broken throughout. That was new for me to sort of discover about it. Part of that was from the opening night, we did a two-week limited run. It was really just developmental.

But to see it evolve over those two weeks and see how playful the cast became within the roles, with each other and with the audience. I was like, oh, this is, I think, is important to the experience of it. I always joke, it's like Chicago. But I think that Chicago is one of my favorite shows because the audience is implicated in the show. Like, you are in it. You're like, yeah, they totally deserve, all of them deserve to die for popping gum and doing all these things. You're sucked into this world and you are an observer to it. You're implicated in sort of what it's trying to say about the legal system and being a voyeur of that as entertainment. And so I thought, wow, there's something interesting to having the audience be kind of part of this social media observing world of this.

And I want to play with that a little bit more going forward, which again, that was really new for me. And I think just functional stuff too, like transitional music between scenes. And how do people come in and out? Even really functional stuff like, is there enough time for a costume change here? Especially for the character who is doubling as two characters. That was all very, very, very informative. And getting audience feedback and watching the audience. I watched every show and I watched the audience and I saw, how are jokes landing? They land differently with different people at different times. If it's a matinee versus the night show where they've had a couple drinks before. So yeah, there's really nothing like putting it up on its feet.

You can't know some of this stuff until you do that, which is a big risk as an artist. Because it's a big risk for a lot of people involved. I'm excited though, because I think it paid off. And really excited that we got to memorialize the production with the album that we recorded right afterwards. While it was so fresh in everyone's head, we recorded it kind of like a pop record. Cut a lot of the dialogue out just to make it, I think, a little bit more playable. But then also that gives me a lot of freedom if there's stuff that needs to change next round. So I think it was functional for a lot of reasons to do that. But that is going to be kind of the first real piece of content that I get to put into the world about the show. After almost five years. That's a really long time.

[5:05] Teresa Attridge: Well, congratulations again. It sounds like it was fantastic. You learned so much. And also the cast recording is so exciting that can be shared across the world.

[5:14] Teresa Attridge: I had a couple of things about Winner, actually. In the recording that you so graciously provided for us, I watched it this morning and truly lived. Truly lived. Two things, actually. First thing, you're from California originally.

[5:26] Nico Juber: Yeah, I'm from L.A. I grew up in L.A. I'm in L.A. right now.

[5:30] Teresa Attridge: So I'm from San Francisco. So I was like, oh, you know, Joe is from Northern California. We got in big fights about the use of the word hella.

[5:40] Nico Juber: I mean, I'm clearly going to be on Joe's side about that.

[5:43] Teresa Attridge: You are. Yes. Yes. It's a hella good word.

[5:47] Nico Juber: Who was on what side? I need to make sure this is, you know.

[5:49] Teresa Attridge: So hella is a Northern California thing. And that is not it's not a Southern California thing. We didn't say that.

[5:55] Nico Juber: Yeah. So the right side is me and Joe. I'm just kidding. But yeah, it's like it's a Northern California slang word. It's like when people say mad out here.

[6:05] Teresa Attridge: Oh, I'm familiar with the term.

[6:07] Nico Juber: Or wicked.

[6:09] Teresa Attridge: Yeah. I'm familiar with the term. We use that term in Washington state when I was in high school. But there was like a debate about how it should be used. Like I would use it as a punctuation. I would be like that theater rehearsal sucked hella. But more people use it as an adjective. They'd be like that taco was hella delicious.

[6:28] Nico Juber: Language is so fascinating.

[6:30] Teresa Attridge: It is fascinating. I love it.

[6:33] Nico Juber: This is a West Coast discussion here.

[6:36] Teresa Attridge: Here we are, the West Coasters really killing it. But also you were talking about both being from California, but also about queerness in high school. And you had mentioned in the recording that you really wanted to write a believable good bisexual protagonist, which really, really struck me. So I wanted to hear sort of more about representation of queer voices that you did or did not have growing up, especially in the musical theater scene or the music scene, and what it means to you to be able to write a character that you would have been able to relate to at that time if you did not have something. I don't know about you. I also am a bisexual woman from California. So we are right here, baby.

But I remember growing up, I felt like there wasn't, in musicals specifically, there wasn't really anything for queer women. There was Rent. I felt like Rent, like Maureen, was my bisexual icon, like a little musical theater girly. And then I don't really remember feeling a sense of, like, oh, there I am again until way later during Fun Home.

[7:40] Nico Juber: Mm-hmm.

[7:42] Teresa Attridge: So I'm curious what your experience was like in looking for other queer women in the canon and what it means to be able to write one.

[7:49] Nico Juber: Yeah, it's a great question. And thank you for sharing your identity and background with me too and relating. I mean, I don't know that I had ever really seen sort of a bisexual character that wasn't sort of negative or, you know, used against them. And so, I mean, I guess in Winner, people have different reactions to it, but I didn't want it to be sort of, I don't know, like, there's this whole trope of like, oh, you're bisexual, you're greedy. Recently had somebody ask me before an interview, because they're like, oh, well, you're bisexual, but you're married to a man. Does that mean that you still have girlfriends? I'm like, me? No. That's not what, I'm in a monogamous relationship and I just happen to be married to a man.

That doesn't change anything about who I've ever been. Or I was like, if you are straight and married to somebody, are you not attracted to like other people ever in your life ever again? Like, maybe, I don't know. Everyone's experience is really different with, you know, their own identities. So I don't think I can remember ever seeing a bisexual character that I felt like was done justice, I guess, and was just really excited about. Joe and I were kind of coming up with ideas for this story. I said it was really important to me for this to be a bi-woman protagonist and it can be sort of central to her journey, but I don't want it to be in a bad way. Yeah, I was like, we need a musical theater bi-con, you know, like, we need one that people feel seen by and excited about.

I've had a couple of people who came to that reading that you saw the video of who said the same thing. They're like, I've never seen this before. And again, as a writer, that is exactly what I want to be doing. I want to tell stories where people go, I've never seen that. I've never seen myself represented. You know, I was saying this before, very exciting to me that it is wide open to tell these kinds of stories. It's been a cool, really fun, really organic show to write. Joe and I have been like lightning speed, but we were just so on the same page with what we wanted to do and the kind of story that we wanted to tell and really thinking about this idea of like shades of gray and that not everything is black or white or win or lose.

The core of the story is what does it mean to win? That's kind of the big question in it. But, you know, having characters who are morally ambiguous, that maybe they did some good thing and then they did another bad thing and that doesn't make them all good or all bad. I think in this, especially internet times, like we have this tendency of like, oh, this person's all bad now. We're going to forget all the good things that they've ever done. I mean, depending what they did, but no one's perfect. Everyone is the hero in their own story and justified in the things that they're doing. It feels very different to your point before about diversity and right. It feels like a totally different set of things to be exploring and so natural for us, Joe and I, to do it in a period of time for us, which was our senior year of high school.

I think that's really, really powerful. It's a period piece. And yet since 1999, our ideas or our understanding of gender have continued to evolve or sexual orientation have continued to evolve. And so it's really interesting to hear what you're saying about like, oh, yeah, we still haven't had a bisexual lead character. We haven't had a bicon. And yet going back and thinking about like how revolutionary it was in the year 1999 for there to be someone who is openly bisexual running for student president. Right. It's amazing to me that years later we're still looking for that person. We're still trying to find that bicon. I think that, you know, it's a similar struggle with anything that doesn't fit in a binary representation.

Right. Because people want to understand things and it's like, well, no, you're gay or you're straight. I think we're really coming into a consciousness of understanding all of the different spectrum, all the new terms that we have. I certainly don't know myself as far as like demisexual but at that point in time, I remember I would tell people and they'd go, no, you're not. You don't know. This is one stop on the gay train or you're confused or this is for attention. And I went to I went to college. I went to the Gay Straight Alliance and they would just make fun of bi people. And so I think what a lot of people did and probably a typical millennial experience was like, OK, I'm just going to kind of be quiet about this and retreat back into this is not for me and this is not somewhere that I want to be.

And it's been very important to me to take ownership of that identity now at a point in my life where these are identities that are respected and understood and be able to tell these stories of what that was like at that time and how it's still so relevant right now. I'm so stoked for when we can finally have enough representation for everybody that we don't have to be like, what is the one thing or the one character you remember? There's a spectrum of queer voices and we're only just starting to scratch the surface of representation. I think as a bisexual person right now too, is that it's like because stories are either like women loving women or women loving men or men loving men, it's hard to find it's hard to find that like in between because then it's like I did Fun Home a year ago and I was so excited to finally get to like play this character who like unabashedly like changing my major to Joan. I was just like, oh my gosh, I have.

[13:11] Nico Juber: I remember my Ring of Keys moment and then talking to other queer actors and being like, yeah, but you still like men. So it's not really for you, you know, that is true in the sense that like this was for specifically, like women loving women, but I still felt bad about being like, oh, this thing that I like really identified with, I guess it's like not for me the fact that it's queer love is something that I can celebrate and relate to, but all of a sudden, I was like right, because I'm this other thing, you know, I am still seeking representation for that, you know, and I think, again, when we get into those topics of intersectionality, that's like one of the big things is how many of the broad strokes versus like the minute details are going into the way that we're identifying with things.

I'm not a mother, but I really identified a lot with Brenda and her journey with like being a mother, I have a sister with a disability that I took care of a lot when I was young, or like I was a nanny. So like caretaking is something I understand. But it's not like anyone's gonna come up to me and be like, Oh, like, you can't understand the show because you're not a mother.

[14:09] Pauls Macs: Right?

[14:10] Nico Juber: Yeah, it's funny. I was just talking with somebody about this the other day, you know, is it important for Brenda to be played by a mother? And I was like, I actually don't think so. I think that there are lots of experiences with caretaking. I think that also core to the millennial story is this idea of the caretaker and the taker with the Brenda and Katrina relationship. And I think that's a very universal understanding that can be between a mother and a child that can be between siblings that can be with a friendship. And so you know, telling these specific stories is really important to make people feel seen. And you can find yourself within pieces of it. But I think having the story be rooted in that, but then be around other things too, that are important, it kind of opens the playing field a little bit.

So I think that people may find themselves in Winner or see pieces of themselves in Winner in a way that they don't have to be a bisexual woman. You know, I think that is part of our job as storytellers is to tell it in a way you don't have to be a woman you don't have to be. It's like Wicked, right? Like you don't have to be a green-skinned woman to understand Elphaba's journey. I think that’s a really great example. You know, we all have felt at times like we are an outsider or we don't fit in, I would like to chime in, but I do so with great intentionality when I when I say this thing, because what I want to make clear is that I don't have the answer to this question, nor do I feel it's my place to offer an answer to this question.

But I just wanted to offer a thought my favorite song in Millennials Are Killing Musicals is the song "Who I Am," which is towards the end of the show, the 11 o'clock number. It's the 11 o'clock, yeah, "Who I Am" is the 11 o'clock number. And I wrote down this lyric because it resonated so clearly with me as a person who I am depends on who I've needed to be who I've needed to be. And even for if in case the listeners don't know a straight male identifying person, cisgendered, like even I have not necessarily been intentional about who I am in context. So often, I've just been the person who needed to be that person. You know, I just filled the role that needed to be filled in that moment. I deeply related and resonated to that.

There's so many moments of self-discovery for Brenda. And then at the end that she resolves, I am capable of anything. She goes through all these moments of self-discovery. And then the end, she's like, Yes, all these things are part of me. And yet I am capable of anything. So my future will be bright. Also say that, at least from my perspective, your piece resonates on so many levels, even for people who aren't mothers, you know, I know it will be so powerful for them to see that representation. But like, I even for me, like, I was like, Wow, I'm thinking about my life differently based on the piece that you wrote.

[16:40] Nico Juber: I'm so grateful.

[16:41] Pauls Macs: That is amazing. Thank you. It's like we were saying earlier, right? Like women's stories are American stories are human stories.

[16:47] Nico Juber: Yeah, right. Like we're all able to relate to one another in some capacity, even if it's not our story, the universal themes that we all go through isolation, or not feeling good enough, or wishing that we were doing something else, it all resonates. It's so nice that it's being told from a perspective that we rarely get to see.

[17:09] Nico Juber: Thank you. It's so great for me to hear kind of both of your feedback on that. And yeah, it's funny. Even Joe loves that song. He will text me all the time I'm capable of anything. And he said that he listens to it sometimes to rev himself up very exciting for me to have people who are not really I don't want to say like, you know, marketing lingo, like, Oh, target audience, or but like who I thought would resonate with the song, right? For people to have it be very meaningful to them, you know, and creating empathy. I mean, that's what we want to do as writers is create empathy of, you know, experience and allow people a pathway into it. And if it's so specific that you're going to alienate people that are well, I don't want to say it is good for it to be specific.

But if it's very maybe one note where it was like, sort of this is the mom show, and I'm only going to talk about mom stuff, right, which is important to and has a place what I wanted to do against this point of like, tell a really millennial American story where the lead characters happen to be women and moms and dealing with this stuff and create this sense of understanding of this experience right now. So I do think that that can be a delicate line to walk, right? If you're telling an experience of a community, whether it's a marginalized gender, whatever it is, you want people to find their access points, I guess.

[18:30] Pauls Macs: And I think your piece does that, at least for me reading from my perspective, I was so excited to understand a new perspective and simultaneously understand how I connect with that perspective. And I think your music and your lyrics allow us to do that. So very, very grateful to you for writing it.

[18:48] Nico Juber: Wow, thank you.

[18:50] Pauls Macs: Is it game time?

[18:51] Nico Juber: Sure, let's do it.

[18:55] Pauls Macs: I couldn't think of like a fun witty name because I was too busy being engaged in our conversation. But I think just this idea of social media stars, and I wanted to sort of play this game where we talk about what musical theater characters would kill it on which social media apps. Now, the only condition for the game is that they have to be characters who would not have had access to these apps like Elle Woods would obviously be killing Instagram, but that's too easy. So we're not doing we're talking characters who did not have access to any of these apps. For example, when we were like sort of discussing the idea for this app earlier, I was like, Oh, Jennifer Waitress might have been great on Pinterest, like pie recipes and like posting cute little vids.

But then there's so many other characters who would probably like Cinderella would have a great little cottagecore thing there. Obviously, in my opinion, all of the characters from How to Succeed in Business would all be killing LinkedIn right now. And just slaying LinkedIn. Beyond LinkedIn and would be like climbing that ladder.

[19:54] Nico Juber: Just incredible. So I was wondering what and we can do this together of like, we can think of a character and then an app or an app and then a character. But what are y'all thinking?

[20:02] Pauls Macs: So the first thing that came to mind for me, Roxy Hart, I feel like would be on TikTok with her defense, you know, oh my gosh, just propaganda. I don't know. Just intermittently like doing TikTok dances. She's just doing the latest rag.

[20:17] Nico Juber: Absolutely. Yes. TikTok dances. I mean, rag, put it on TikTok. Everyone in Chicago would be on like doing their TikTok dances.

[20:26] Pauls Macs: Oh, yeah. I think that maybe Glinda probably would be on Instagram.

[20:32] Nico Juber: I would follow Glinda on Instagram, like in a heartbeat.

[20:35] Pauls Macs: 1000%. But she'd be doing product reviews. I'm sure.

[20:41] Nico Juber: Absolutely sure.

[20:44] Pauls Macs: Oh my gosh. Oh, she could do the makeup review.

[20:48] Nico Juber: Yes, the makeup. Yeah, she would like to get ready with me.

[20:52] Pauls Macs: She would do great get ready with me.

[20:54] Nico Juber: She would. She could also have that on YouTube going.

[20:57] Pauls Macs: She's monetizing that.

[20:58] Nico Juber: Oh, yeah. I mean, she's on all the apps. Let's be honest. She's doing everything. I feel like Gaston has Snapchat. I don't think I need to explain that.

[21:05] Pauls Macs: You got it.

[21:06] Nico Juber: That feels right. Absolutely.

[21:07] Pauls Macs: That's just sending just pics to all these women with like the like flex emoji and like on the grind.

[21:12] Nico Juber: The flex emoji and like the heart eyes emoji like the flirty emoji.

[21:17] Pauls Macs: Oh, no. I was extending that all the time.

[21:20] Nico Juber: What have we done? You know who else would be on TikTok? Cogsworth because he didn't get that it wasn't about clocks. He'd be like, I heard this was the clock app.

[21:32] Pauls Macs: Where are they?

[21:34] Nico Juber: It could be could start this new trend of TikTok TikTok, right? Like, oh my god, it's like theater talk.

[21:39] Pauls Macs: I guess it would be TikTok talk the TikTok TikTok talk.

[21:44] Nico Juber: Yeah, TikTok. It's like tick tick boom, but it's tick tick tock. And it's Cogsworth for clocks.

[21:52] Pauls Macs: Wow, this is a crossover. I don't think anyone expected.

[21:55] Nico Juber: No, nor did they ask for?

[21:58] Pauls Macs: No, gosh, no.

[21:59] Nico Juber: I kind of went a weird direction, which is TikTok or even YouTube stars. But I thought of Conrad Birdie from Bye Bye Birdie.

[22:05] Pauls Macs: Oh, yeah. It's like he's like a pop star. Like, of course, he'd be on TikTok and have like a million Instagram followers kind of like any major pop star or anybody like that.

[22:14] Nico Juber: That's fair. Oh my god. Kim would probably also have like a really good Instagram. I feel like all the ingenues are on Instagram.

[22:21] Pauls Macs: I was trying to think who would be on Be Real. Like who would be the most real?

[22:27] Nico Juber: Oh my god. I just all I can think now are like ones that are really bad. Like Sweeney Todd on.

[22:33] Pauls Macs: Oh, yeah, I was thinking Sweeney as well.

[22:34] Nico Juber: He's like murdering someone. He's like, Oh, no, it's time to be real.

[22:36] Pauls Macs: It's time to be real.

[22:38] Nico Juber: Yeah, but he has to like hide that he's gonna do it.

[22:44] Pauls Macs: Mrs. Lovett is probably on the apps.

[22:46] Nico Juber: Be Real is a good one. Who would be on Be Real?

[22:49] Pauls Macs: Is there a character who's obsessed with like their own authenticity?

[22:53] Nico Juber: I was gonna say Jo March, but I feel like she also wouldn't like it on apps. But at the same time, if she was going to be on any of them, she'd be on Be Real.

[23:01] Pauls Macs: I was thinking the March sisters would be either on Be Real or like Pinterest. They're like crafting.

[23:05] Nico Juber: That's fair. So Meg is on Pinterest.

[23:10] Pauls Macs: Oh my gosh, this is fun. Little Women. Let's do Little Women.

[23:12] Nico Juber: Little Women specifically.

[23:14] Pauls Macs: Meg is on Pinterest. Jo is on Be Real. Amy's on TikTok. Don't you think like Amy?

[23:19] Nico Juber: Amy's on TikTok.

[23:20] Pauls Macs: And she's like curating. Oh, I made this picture. Look, everyone.

[23:24] Nico Juber: Beth is on Musical.ly.

[23:25] Pauls Macs: I'm still stuck on which app Mrs. Lovett would be on.

[23:29] Nico Juber: Mrs. Lovett is on every single app.

[23:33] Pauls Macs: That's a business woman.

[23:35] Nico Juber: She's on Match or something. I don't know.

[23:38] Pauls Macs: Yeah. Mrs. Lovett's meat pies are just on like every app.

[23:42] Nico Juber: Oh, she would have a store. I guess she could have a TikTok store.

[23:45] Pauls Macs: She would have a store. The Newsies would probably be huge on Twitter.

[23:48] Nico Juber: Well, Threads. No, they'd be on Threads now. That's the news.

[23:51] Pauls Macs: Oh, they'd be on. Yeah, they're young. They'd be on the new stuff.

[23:54] Nico Juber: Wait, what is Threads?

[23:55] Pauls Macs: Oh my God.

[23:56] Nico Juber: Oh my gosh.

[23:58] Pauls Macs: Threads came out like, what? I don't even know what day it is.

[24:02] Nico Juber: I just got Be Real, okay? I am behind.

[24:05] Pauls Macs: Let me tell you a story of two billionaires, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

[24:10] Nico Juber: They are in a fight with each other and basically...

[24:16] Pauls Macs: This is a musical, by the way. This is definitely a musical that needs to be written.

[24:20] Nico Juber: This is a musical. Billionaire fight, the musical.

[24:23] Pauls Macs: But so no, Threads has been launched by Meta, Mark Zuckerberg's company, as a shot fired against Elon Musk and Twitter to try to capture all of the users.

[24:34] Nico Juber: But this is also on the heels of Twitter changing all of these rules about, like, you have to pay money now to see more than 300 tweets. I don't know. It's ridiculous.

[24:44] Pauls Macs: This is our lives. This is collectively where we are as a culture.

[24:49] Nico Juber: We're living lives dictated by billionaires in a fight, but in so many areas of our lives.

[24:57] Pauls Macs: For sure. I mean, honestly, millennials are probably going to kill that too.

[25:01] Nico Juber: Yeah. We'll find a way.

[25:03] Pauls Macs: I think then we could get AI to write it, honestly.

[25:05] Nico Juber: I just have to say for myself, this was like an amazing conversation to be part of. And I feel so privileged to have been in this room. Thank you to both of you for, like, allowing me to participate in this discussion.

[25:14] Pauls Macs: I'm very, very grateful to both of you for today.

[25:16] Teresa Attridge: Should we go ahead and do our sign off, Teresa?

[25:18] Pauls Macs: I think so. Thank you. Thank you. All of my... What were... We had, like, a name for the theater barn, like podcast.

[25:24] Teresa Attridge: Barnacles.

[25:26] Pauls Macs: We're going with Barnacles. Thank you to all of our lovely little Barnacles who have stuck with us as Barnacles do for this podcast. Thank you again, Nico, for your perspective, for the conversation, for adulting with us today. Incredible. I'm Teresa Attridge.

[25:43] Pauls Macs: I'm Pauls Macs.

[25:44] Nico Juber: I'm Nico Juber.

[25:45] Pauls Macs: And thank you all so much. This was Backstage Pass. We'll see you next time.

[25:49] Teresa Attridge: Thanks for joining us on New York Theatre Barn's Backstage Pass, hosted by Teresa Attridge and Pauls Macs. If you like what you hear, you can like, subscribe, and share. See you next time.

[26:19] Pauls Macs: Bye.