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[0:00] Music

[0:22] Teresa Attridge: Ever wonder what it takes to make a new musical sing? Our mission is to make the exclusive inclusive. We are interviewing the creatives who are changing musical theater one 11 o'clock number at a time. This is your Backstage Pass.

[0:42] Pauls Macs: Hello everyone. Hello Barnacles.

[0:45] Teresa Attridge: Hello Barnacles.

[0:47] Pauls Macs: Welcome to another episode of Backstage Pass. It's going to be a magical one here today and I think also possibly very political. We have the team from Magia here today. Do you want to say hello Letitia and Nathan?

[0:59] Letitia Bullard: Hello everyone. So happy to be here on this podcast.

[1:03] Nathan Leitão: Hi everybody. So so happy. What a pleasure.

[1:05] Teresa Attridge: Oh my gosh. Incredible. None of you can see this but Letitia is wearing these beautiful flowers in her hair right now and so it's making me feel extra festive, extra ready to celebrate with these two today. Well we're so excited to have you on the show especially because your show has such a unique musical flavor that's very very different than anything else we've had on Backstage Pass. We're excited to share the song from the show and talk with you about how it all came to be but before we do that I want to let people know who's in the room with us. So I do like a little book report on your lives or read your bios in front of you. Prepare. Some people feel very uncomfortable during this experience but I hope it's available for you.

Consider this an exercise in accepting all of the things you've accomplished. You know what I mean? Let it wash over you as the audience absorbs everything you've done. All right Letitia we're gonna do you first. Letitia Bullard is a musical storyteller who enjoys weaving words, melodies and imagery to create captivating experiences. Entering the musical theater scene from a singer-songwriter background she recognized her passion for writing songs that weave together a larger narrative. Within the span of two and a half years Letitia wrote and directed four original musicals. As a recent graduate of Berkeley NYC's master's program in writing and design for musical theater, Letitia continues to write and compose two full-length musicals collaboratively while working on solo projects.

An island girl at heart, Letitia brings her unique Bahamian flair to everything she touches including catchy Caribbean gospel, jazz and soul-influenced melodies and scripts. All right Nathan it's your turn.

[2:34] Nathan Leitão: Nathan is a Brazilian multi-hyphenate artist. The son of two musicians, Nathan discovered an early passion for telling stories through music, theater and film. With a master's degree in writing for musical theater at Berkeley NYC, Nathan has developed his creative career working as a composer, music producer, film director and actor in Brazil's thriving musical theater scene. Nathan's work as a writer includes two original musicals, the screenplay for an internationally acclaimed film and a young adult fantasy novel. In 2021 he founded Toco dos Perdidos, a creative hub that assists and produces independent artists in Brazil. He is currently writing musicals and collaborating internationally to create stories that connect and resonate with people from underrepresented communities. His passion for art is as big as his passion for the culture that raised him so in return he takes it with him wherever he goes.

[3:16] Teresa Attridge: All right well welcome we're so excited to have you here.

[3:20] Letitia Bullard: Yay!

[3:21] Pauls Macs: We'd love to learn how you met and came to collaborate. I have a guess from your bios. Does it have anything to do with Berkeley with double E's? Technically triple E.

[3:31] Nathan Leitão: It has everything to do with Berkeley with double E's and then out of NYC.

[3:36] Pauls Macs: Work, yes. So were you in the same classes or did you see each other from across the dining hall? I'm always so fascinated and curious by how musical theater writers meet.

[3:48] Nathan Leitão: Okay can I tell my perspective of it because I've actually, there's one part that I haven't like really weighed on it too much in terms of like storytelling wise of how we met. I remember it this way, do you remember it that way?

[4:01] Letitia Bullard: Yeah.

[4:01] Nathan Leitão: Different people's perspective on how they met is really beautiful. It's so cool. We saw that in class with Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty of like how they met and I just thought it was so cool how we just saw their perspective so I'm gonna tell mine. We met at Berkeley NYC. We were in the same class so it was one big class of writers for musical theater but Letitia arrived, it was like a weekend of orientation and Letitia arrived in the second day so I'm really talkative in general so like off the bat in the first day I was there just like making connections and I took to heart that like people were like Berkeley is all about collaboration so I was just like you know engaging in conversation and then all of a sudden it was so random we were like at this dinner I was like standing in a circle with a bunch of people that technically I already knew and all of a sudden there was another person in that circle that I had never seen before that was just like agreeing in the conversation like yeah I was like where did this person come from like she wasn't here before and she hadn't been in like the Zoom meetings that we did with the class so I really had no idea.

I knew there was this name there was this person Letitia who hadn't shown up in the cohort but I didn't actually give him much thought. You know you're in a conversation you're like analyzing the circle of people when you look back there's another person that just wasn't there and I was like okay you know it was magia you might be onto something Tish so the next day we had to present like songs that we did in collaboration over the summer with just like assigned writing partners that Berkeley did to kind of like get us to connect so Letitia comes in late to class that day and comes in straight to present the song tell on her it was like that random person that showed up in conversation all of a sudden literally walks in. I just have to say like personally creatively and she knows that as well but at that moment I knew that if I were to write with someone it would be with Letitia.

[5:41] Letitia Bullard: And this is no like—

[5:42] Nathan Leitão: Beautiful.

[5:42] Letitia Bullard: That's beautiful.

[5:44] Nathan Leitão: That's touching.

[5:46] Pauls Macs: If this were a musical we all could have started a song right now that was deeply moving. Letitia now I really want to know your perspective on how you met because for you you're like yeah I just walked into a group I started nodding and this guy was like staring at me or like just been like nodding at everything I was saying.

[6:01] Letitia Bullard: Yeah you were like I was just like yeah sure whatever but yeah tell us tell us more about how you met.

[6:12] Letitia Bullard: You know I don't know if I could top that. I actually forgot that was how that happened but yeah that was interesting because it was orientation week and I couldn't come until the Saturday night and I think it was some sort of like mixture mixing meat something so I was like you know since I had to miss the earlier part let me at least come find people but ironically that took a lot of courage for me because I am introverted at heart. My collaborator here is very much always energetic always the life of the party and I am very much the opposite. I was just honestly trying to find my way into like who theater was and I think I ran into one of the theater people, Kim I think or somebody and they pointed me towards like where there was a group so I was like let me just inch myself over and I was like I was a part of this conversation the entire time so that's how that happened.

[7:13] Nathan Leitão: From Nathan's perspective you just like appeared and then you from your perspective you're just slowly inching sidling your way in there.

[7:21] Letitia Bullard: I'm doing very animated motions in the studio right now. Honestly what a what a sisters not twins situation right?

[7:29] Pauls Macs: Totally good reference that relates to the show. It's always interesting to me to see how musical theater writing partners complement each other. The last writers we were talking with were Sharon Saig and Danny Jane Rooney were talking about how they complement each other so well. One's a little bit more quiet, one's a little bit more extroverted, music and lyrics you know that's just like how it goes but the way that musical theater brings together different perspectives and different talents is part of the reason that's such an exciting art form.

[7:55] Letitia Bullard: Oh for sure I definitely would agree. I do think in a lot of ways we're similar and in a lot of ways we're different and I do think the differences complement each other.

[8:05] Nathan Leitão: Yeah we actually had this uh sorry we had like this imagery once that you Letitia came up with that I thought was really funny if you want to explain it because I cracked up that day.

[8:15] Letitia Bullard: Correct me if I don't remember this correctly but I believe one day like we were just in the stairway I don't remember what the incident was but I think it was after we presented.

[8:24] Nathan Leitão: Yeah after workshop for class.

[8:25] Letitia Bullard: I was just explaining you Nathan you are a frying pan your ideas just like go like this they just pop pop pop pop pop pop I am a slow cooker I take time work.

[8:40] Pauls Macs: Oh me too Letitia. That was my nickname in grad school. I was like slow simmer Pauls. It takes me two years to come up with the production but when it comes out it's amazing but it takes a while for everything to cook in here.

[8:51] Nathan Leitão: Up in the spring when it comes out it's great but other people like this idea this idea this idea this idea.

[8:56] Letitia Bullard: Hells that explains our collaboration style because if you are like a slow cooker or a sous vide and you are a frying pan I'm just campfire.

[9:04] Nathan Leitão: We're sparking we're going it's potentially dangerous.

[9:09] Letitia Bullard: It's too much at once.

[9:14] Nathan Leitão: I was like this is great.

[9:15] Letitia Bullard: It's burnt.

[9:16] Nathan Leitão: It was too great.

[9:18] Letitia Bullard: Balance is really really interesting and balance is actually like one of the big themes of your show. One of the most fascinating things about your script actually like the amount of parallels in it is crazy. Before we get too far though, Pauls you want to do a little synopsis of the show that we're about to present with these wonderful writers today?

[9:34] Pauls Macs: With the book musical lyrics by Letitia Bullard and Nathan Leitão, Magia follows Leilani, a teen girl who attempts to save her ailing father by stealing a wish from the magical island Tekoa. That's what I found but we'll expand on the plot as we're talking today but how'd you come up with the idea for the show we'd love to know more.

[9:49] Letitia Bullard: A part of our program at Berkeley we had to pitch ideas for one of our book writing classes. Shout out to our book writing professor Dan Marshall. So we had to pitch ideas. I think after we had pitched some of our ideas like after that class sometime we had also like talked about what ideas each other had that felt really really like connected like we had something there and then two we had even just had a conversation before we officially had to find partners and we were talking about our cultures where we come from and had a lot of similarities there between the stories that we pitched the story ideas and that conversation about our cultures and the similarities and what we wanted to change in our cultures what we wanted to show the people. From there we kind of just were like there's something here that we would love to explore how can we put all of that in a story that we both would love to write.

[10:52] Nathan Leitão: Totally. It was definitely a lot of conversations like in the halls of just like it started with us like talking about how we missed home and the stuff we missed about home and like the stuff that was different and everything but I think like the big like catharsis moment at least like talking specifically about story was when we went to Seguidilla which is the Dominican.

[11:08] Nathan Leitão: It started in a Dominican restaurant when Letitia just kind of presented this celibate idea that was a lot more like within realism, you know, within like lived experiences in the Bahamas. And I really resonated with that. I think out of that was sort of just like our understatement that's been with us as collaborators where we really wanted to like tell a story. It was like living and breathing the Latin Caribbean experience. I mean, we come from like a collection of countries that are like the pinnacle of what multicultural societies with unbalanced levels of powers look like. So we just really wanted to bring that to the table. And then it expanded in a way that like, and I think it's kind of like the magic of Magia, that it expanded in a way that like people just identify with many different aspects of it in many different ways. So it started off with like our cultures and our lived experiences, and it just became like this very international celebration, I'd say.

[11:57] Teresa Attridge: I love that. Absolutely. And so in the musical, there are two islands. There's Tecoa and Deo. Talk to us a little bit about the two islands and how they interact. One is granted wishes, but then the other has one taken away and where you came up with that idea.

[12:12] Nathan Leitão: So basically in our world, our fantasy world, we have Tecoa. Tecoa means a good place to live. So it's an island that is really a good place to live. They have this source of power called magia, which is a magic to grant wishes to its citizens. So every time that a Tecoan comes of age, a Tecoan citizen comes of age, they get a wish granted and they're welcomed into their community. So it's kind of like a ritual, right? And so Tecoans are raised to understand that they'll have a wish granted once they come of age. But the cost for that is that every time a wish is granted in Tecoa, something of equal value is taken away from Deo, which is a neighboring island. The people in Deo do not know that, that things are taken away.

They just kind of like learn to get by with that. So they're an island with no magic that every time a wish is granted in Tecoa, they lose something. And yeah, so we have this establishing plot of these two islands that are symbolized by these two girls, Leilani and Deanna.

[13:06] Letitia Bullard: Yes. I'm obsessed with them to be very real. I'm obsessed with both of them. I relate to Leilani. I act like Deanna. I was like, this is like when the show goes to Broadway, this is the Buzzfeed quiz. Are you Leilani or are you Deanna? So tell us more about these girlies. I mean, we hear them as children singing about their worlds and their wants and then how they grow into those things. And I would love to just kind of know more about what they mean to you and what it was like telling the story through those perspectives.

[13:39] Nathan Leitão: I would say Deanna is the princess of the story. She comes from Tecoa, the good place to live, right? Her mom is the chief judge, so very important role. She has the best of the best and her wishing ceremony is coming up, which means that like when she reaches a certain age, she'll be able to make a wish. And we see her as a child, very, very curious, always wanting to know. She is the girl who asks all the questions that everybody has, but nobody approaches. That's her personality, very bubbly, very curious. And she has a deeper want of having a meaningful part in the island, knowing everything and having a meaningful part. When it comes to Leilani, Leilani is like tough go-getter. Being on the island of Deo, she's kind of learned to do what she's needed to survive, to help her dad.

She has this wish of hers. She wishes to find her mom, but that's something that she also, even though that's a deep desire, she has also kind of put it back in her mind for a little bit because just being a part of Deo, like dreams don't really seem to come true. And it's not until, of course, her dad falls ill that she's really pushed to, let me see if I can actually do this as a possibility and somehow save my dad. Leilani's my girl. Yeah. Leilani's just trying to get by day by day or Deo by Deo, you know what I mean?

[15:05] Letitia Bullard: Deo by Deo. Yeah. And she's very much like the, I feel like everyone who's ever felt othered in any way will relate to Leilani. And I love hearing you guys say that they came to life for you guys, because I do feel like everyone has an inner Deanna and an inner Leilani. And each day, you know, they decide to speak. I can think of many moments where I was like, my inner Leilani was just like screaming, you know?

[15:32] Teresa Attridge: Well, I think this is a great opportunity to play "Mama Tell Me" because that helps us really get to know Deanna, both these characters, actually. Please set up that song.

[15:41] Nathan Leitão: So "Mama Tell Me," it starts off with Deanna's curiosity, as Letitia pointed out. She's the girl that's asking those questions that no one dares to ask in Tecoa. And then throughout the song, we also get a glimpse of Leilani in the other island, simultaneously. So while Deanna is seeing the ritual of the wish granting, Leilani is seeing the lights on the other side of the horizon, how they shine and everything. And we get a glimpse into both their lives and the differences. And then simultaneously, when the key changes, we see them growing up 10 years have gone by. And now we have like a clear understanding of these two girls and kind of like what they want and live for. And who performs this demo?

[16:15] Letitia Bullard: On that demo? I'm singing?

[16:18] Nathan Leitão: See, I always ask this question and the writers are always like, it's me, pals. I know I actually knew it was you, but I kind of don't want to just assume.

[16:26] Nathan Leitão: So we have Letitia as Deanna. We have a very brief me as Azuri. And we have Tamiya as Leilani, who is a friend of ours from Berkeley, great singer as well.

[16:35] Letitia Bullard: Tamiya Johnson.

[16:36] Nathan Leitão: Okay, here is "Mama Tell Me" performed by Letitia Bullard, Nathan Leitão, and Tamiya Johnson.

[17:06] ♪ Musical number: "Mama Tell Me" — performed by Letitia Bullard, Nathan Leitão, and Tamiya Johnson ♪

[19:51] Teresa Attridge: Okay, vocals! It does a great job setting up the central mystery of the show in a really fun way. There's a time warp in it.

[19:57] Nathan Leitão: I love any question song. Why is this happening? Because I'm like, give me the exposition, baby. Tell me everything. Doing it through the eyes of a child. We love this device. The audience is the child.

[20:11] Letitia Bullard: Yes, there's a cool story of like how this song was made. It was the first song we wrote for the show. The very first song. And actually, it's funny because a lot of people that we've like presented our songs to they're like, so how's your writing process and everything and it varies. And in this case, specifically, it was me going up to Letitia in the Annex Forum of Berkeley, going like, so thought of this melody, kind of like song cell idea for Deanna, where it's like, it was literally the only word I had was mama.

[20:44] Nathan Leitão: And I was like, what do you think of that? It was like completely abstract. And she's like, okay, cool. So we have her asking questions. So we just like jotted down a bunch of questions and we started banging on the table. Other students were there and we were just like banging on the tables and vibing. And then we got through like the first day of the it was it was so cool. It's just like us completing each other with like questions. And then at some point, like someone threw in that there's so much that I don't know about. We were like, that's it. Oh, melody achieved. I love it.

[21:14] Letitia Bullard: It's so amazing. So good. And when you're also coming from like a singer songwriter perspective to which I always love, we've had a couple of people who are like started singer songwriter and then went into musicals just because the narrative form of it really appealed to me the way you guys are kind of describing the way this organically came about. Like it's a jam session. You know, it's like when musicians just get together and they start like dicking around. But in this case, you were like, Whoa, this is what I have. This is what we're doing. And then this entire beautiful musical came out of it. So that's just so sick.

[21:44] Nathan Leitão: Another thing I appreciate about this song, and especially the lyrics is how Deanna's questions, they start just more childlike and innocent. She asked, Can it grant me any wish? Can it turn me into a fish? Of course, a kiddo would ask those questions. By the end, she's asking the really important questions. Don't you think it's unfair that it hurts folks over there? Don't you ever wish you'd go with Mike and Deo? Those questions are like the core conflict of the show. And I mean, without getting too political already. I mean, let's just go for it. As I was listening to this song,

[22:16] Letitia Bullard: Thinking about the headlines of what's happening right now, as USAID is getting dismantled. The United States government is choosing to hold money and benefits itself, and that's going to hurt other people and other countries. I actually think this song, even though it sounds very innocent, it's hitting on a central conflict of the play, and also something that's just so incredibly relevant and also heartbreaking today.

[22:36] Nathan Leitão: Absolutely. It's interesting because the song also has gone through so many evolutions of questions since the beginning. It's good to know that it's at the place that we kind of wanted it to be, where, just as you said, she starts out with these innocent questions, but it really starts to question the crux of the show. So much of the show is based on, like you said, our lived experiences, but also the world at large. And we have questions. What better way to do it than through the lens of a child? Just dismantle these broken politics through the lens of a child.

[23:13] Letitia Bullard: Absolutely. You can see things so clearly because they have that innocence about them. You started with this idea, you're developing this musical, and now you're here talking to us about it. How did you get here? Part of the goal of this podcast, if writers are out there, or people who want to know about the writing process of a musical, and everyone's path is different, but we'd love to learn how you started to develop it once you had a script.

[23:31] Nathan Leitão: So in regards to our development, the fact that we were in the Berklee cohort has been major in our development process. That is an amazing 11-month intensive, for sure. We have incredibly talented professors. When we started writing the musical, we had to bring in 10 minutes of material every week to be then critiqued by intelligent advisors, people who are currently industry professionals. Berklee was a lot of help with that, for sure. I think it pushed us to have the first draft done, and I think something we noticed, especially after coming from the program, is that just us being able to push through in the story, we kind of tackled it. We tackled it from beginning to end. Different people in the program decided to tackle their musical differently.

For us, we decided, you know what? We're figuring out this world. We're figuring out the story. We have an idea of what we wanted to say. Let's just try to write from beginning and just push towards the very end of it. And then once we have the end, we'll go back and see. And I think that has been incredibly helpful in the development of the piece because we got to see the full picture, the whole arc of it, and that's been insightful. We really enjoyed the world that we created. So we were kind of fanboying over the universe itself because we knew there was so much to unravel as well. So we were just enjoying the universe. So I think a lot of that also came from, it wasn't intentional until it became intentional, like halfway through the process, when we realized we were writing chronologically.

At first, it was just more like this gut feeling of like, we presented in the workshop and then we'd walk out of the class and be like, so what do you think happens next? Where do we go from, you know? What happens next in the saga? And then halfway through the process, we actually started to realize that that was working for us. But it was really just about us asking, we're like, okay, you know what? Let's start with the first 10 minutes. What if next, like in the next episode, we do this, this, this. So yeah, then at some point we had a whole draft.

[25:39] Letitia Bullard: How did you get connected with New York Theatre Barn? And I especially want to talk about your director, Harmony Harris.

[25:44] Nathan Leitão: Harmony! Who is just an incredible collaborator. Berklee did this great thing where they gave us the opportunity to pitch the show to producers and people that came to Berklee. So we had this opportunity to pitch to Joe Barros in New York Theatre Barn. Shout out Joe, who bought you mangoes. We'll slay mangoes later. That was a cool thing. Because like in the pitch, we did this thing and it was funny because like some people advise people to do it, some people don't. We were just like, you know what? Let's go for it. We bought mangoes. We cut out logos that Letitia beautifully crafted for Magia, pasted them onto mangoes. Then when it came time to sing songs for the pitches, when it came time to sing the song Mango, we gave Joe a mango. The way Leilani was giving mangoes. I know he loved that. There's no way Joe did not fanboy over that mango immediately.

[26:36] Letitia Bullard: No, I'm sure he did because then he gave you mangoes back at the New York series.

[26:41] Nathan Leitão: Yes. Because Leilani was there trying to sell her mangoes and so were we. We were trying to sell our mangoes.

[26:46] Letitia Bullard: You're just trying to mango the distance.

[26:52] Nathan Leitão: Mango the distance. That's what it is. And then of course, we throughout the process met Harmony who is, she just gave us so much confidence like throughout the whole process. And Tish, if you want to talk more about it, I just really want to shout out Harmony for just like boosting our confidence in ourselves as artists and in the story and like this whole idea. And she kind of fulfilled a dream of ours also of like getting a room full of people of color telling this story, which was so, so awesome. So Harmony, shout out. She's a powerful force of encouragement for sure. So happy that we got her as our director.

[27:25] Letitia Bullard: One of the things I really appreciated about being able to work with her when we were doing the New York series with Theodore Barnes, Harmony has this intentionality in the storytelling that I really appreciated. An intentionality with the story itself, but also knowing that so much of the story, our Latin Caribbean fusion score is so embedded in our identity, even as writers. Like one of the things that I thought was really neat that she did is when we were in the process of the series and we get to like the carnival song. One, we got to bring our flags. So the actors had the flag. I love a flag. Brazilian flag. I'm a sucker for a flag. That was amazing. And then two, also when we got to that part, she let us teach the actors moves that people from the Bahamas and people from Brazil would actually do to this sort of dance. Intentionality, like excellence. I just love it. So shout out Harmony for sure.

[28:24] Nathan Leitão: You know, that's the perfect opportunity to talk about. Mango is the song. I think the audience deserves a mango too. Our listeners deserve to be part of the main gang.

[28:33] Letitia Bullard: Her punnery is exceptional. If you would please set that up, we'd love to hear it.

[28:37] Nathan Leitão: Yeah. It's a hot day in Dale and Leilani is out in the market of Dale. We have vendors all over the place selling so many different things. So we have vegetables, we have art, we have some hair braiding going on. And Leilani has a food stand selling mangoes. That's how she and her dad make it. But she specifically in our postscript, we have her and her best friend Shade just doing what they can to make it work in a place that where things are constantly taken away. Nothing really is promised. So she's out there doing her best.

[29:15] Letitia Bullard: And who is singing this song? This is really just us, right?

[29:18] Nathan Leitão: Yeah, I think so.

[29:19] Letitia Bullard: Celebrity.

[29:20] Nathan Leitão: Just us two. We do like layered voices.

[29:22] Letitia Bullard: Vocal artists. Here's Mangoes performed by Letitia Bullard.

[29:26] ♪ Musical number: "Mangoes" — performed by Letitia Bullard and Nathan Leitão ♪

[31:40] Nathan Leitão: This song just makes me want to go to the beach.

[31:44] Letitia Bullard: I want a mango. Well, Joe borrows my Giphy one. But the thing that I love about this song is it starts with this really bouncy feeling. Just as you said, that nothing is promised. There's also a feeling of longing in this song as well. Leilani is also selling things to survive. I think the way that that feeling is blended in this song. Both, yes, we're on this fun beach selling mangoes. Which to many of us, we're like, oh, that's fantastic. But also these people really need to survive. And there is that kind of feeling of desperation also at times. It's very present.

[32:16] Nathan Leitão: Yeah, I feel like the lyrics of Mangoes, and we see this throughout the show, where it's really going to set the scene for Leilani's journey. What she's singing there, and she obviously doesn't know this yet, but this idea of nothing is promised. Like, the second one is free, tomorrow might not be. So you don't really know tomorrow. And then I think the core, really the core of Leilani's journey says, seize the chance with all you've got before the mango starts to rot. So that is 100% Leilani's journey. So it's what she lives by when selling mangoes, but then it actually becomes what she literally does.

[32:45] Letitia Bullard: I'm not going to lie, I was in from the moment I saw this was a show about magic. But like, mangoes? That really got me. Mangoes and magic are all I need.

[33:05] Nathan Leitão: Join us next time as we continue our conversation with Nathan Leitão and Letitia Bullard about their new musical, Magia.