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[0:00] Backstage Pass: Episode 8 - Magia Part 2. Letitia Bullard. Nathan Leitão

[0:23] Teresa Attridge: Ever wonder what it takes to make a new musical sing? Our mission is to give you an inclusive look behind the scenes.

[0:28] Pauls Macs: We are interviewing the creatives who are changing musical theater one 11 o'clock number at a time.

[0:33] Teresa Attridge: This is your Backstage Pass.

[0:35] Pauls Macs: Get your Backstage Pass. Get your Backstage Pass.

[0:51] ♪ Musical number: "Mama, Tell Me" — performed by Tamieyah Johnson ♪

[1:27] Teresa Attridge: You're listening to "Mama, Tell Me" from the new musical Magia. Welcome back to Part 2 of our conversation with Nathan Leitão and Letitia Bullard about their exciting new musical.

[1:36] Pauls Macs: Magia, or Magic, follows Leilani, a teen girl who attempts to save her ailing father by stealing a wish from the magical island Tekoha.

[1:44] Teresa Attridge: With a Latin-Caribbean fusion score, Magia asks the question, what is real magic and how can we access it in a society that accepts the status quo?

[1:53] Pauls Macs: Magia is a welcoming celebration of Afro-Latino-Caribbean culture and experiences in an imaginative fantasy musical with spices from the countries that represent the writers, the Bahamas and Brazil.

[2:04] Teresa Attridge: We'll delve deeper into the show's magic system and you'll hear two more songs from the show.

[2:08] Pauls Macs: Listen all the way to the end for a game where we decide which musical theater characters deserve to have a wish granted.

[2:14] Teresa Attridge: Now as a fantasy nerd, anytime magic system comes up, I'm like locked in. I'm ready to talk about it.

[2:19] Pauls Macs: What I really love is that you guys went for, it's kind of like both a hard and a soft magic system and that there are really set rules in how it works.

[2:29] Teresa Attridge: But the consequences are very sort of like ephemeral or they're not exactly what you would expect. I know that also, you know, we have a fantasy young adult author in the room.

[2:40] Pauls Macs: So magic system might be something you guys are also interested in. But was there ever a time where you two had to sit and be like, okay, how does magic in this world actually work? Or were you like, okay, so we know that we want the magic to do these things for the story? Like what kind of, what came first, the magic system or a story you had to fit the system into?

[3:01] Letitia Bullard: Wow. I'm going to say a story.

[3:04] Nathan Leitão: I know you all can't see it, but I had a very strong reaction.

[3:07] Letitia Bullard: You honestly, you both did. There was like, you leaned all the way back.

[3:12] Nathan Leitão: So I was like, oh cool. I started a fight. I started a war. Incredible.

[3:17] Teresa Attridge: I asked the best questions.

[3:19] Pauls Macs: We compliment each other so much.

[3:21] Letitia Bullard: It's true. I'm like, when have we not asked ourselves how magic works? Like that has just been, we have asked it of ourselves. Our professors have asked it. Our classmates have asked it. We're still asking it. A lot of it is still like, you know, unraveling.

[3:40] Nathan Leitão: Yeah. I mean, so much of it applies to this idea. I'm trying to remember which one it is. Sanderson's laws of writing magic.

[3:45] Letitia Bullard: Are you talking about Brandon Sanderson?

[3:51] Nathan Leitão: You know I am. So there's this, the three laws of writing. No, we're getting fully into it on the podcast today, friends. The rules of writing magic. And one of them is that like for a hard magic system, it's like the rules are unexciting, but very pragmatic and practical. Whereas like soft magic systems are a little more fantastical, but the consequences always lead to something worse happening.

[4:10] Letitia Bullard: Right. So again, the balance between those two ideas is really, really present here. But judging from your reactions, like you were saying, this is something that y'all have gone around and around and around talking about. Are you still having the conversation about how you make the world work?

[4:26] Nathan Leitão: We had ideas of what the magic could do. But I think in focusing on the story, we kind of put the magic to work where we needed it to. And then after we stepped back a bit, then we were like, OK, so how does this actually work? How do we make this line up? Make it make sense.

[4:44] Letitia Bullard: The story was tied to one specific aspect of the magic system. That that was definitely like in the core of what we thought of, which was this idea of a wish getting granted and something being taken away. So that dynamic was like the core of our story.

[4:56] Nathan Leitão: But what's cool is like once we started researching into like how our magic actually works, when we started like kind of devising the rules, some lyrics came up. So like in the opening, you have nature's laws you can't undo. So make a wish that will come true. Be grateful that magia doesn't take away from you. That's like that was us trying to understand how our magic works.

[5:17] Letitia Bullard: I love that. Mind blown. Oh, my gosh. That's art is so freaking cool. I love that. It's also what is it? It's a I think it's Sanderson's third law. Wow. We're really getting into the nerd here. The third law of writing magic is a go deeper, not broader. So y'all really said, OK, this is the crux for which this is working. Let's really go down into it. It shows the world is so deep. The magia of it all.

[5:43] Nathan Leitão: Sometimes I'm the avatar for the listener. And if I was a listener, I didn't know who Sanderson was. Theresa, would you please explain who that is?

[5:51] Pauls Macs: I think is the person who's met him three times. I want you to do it.

[5:55] Letitia Bullard: OK, but I have a very interesting relationship with Brandon Sanderson in that. I've actually never read a book written just by Brandon Sanderson. So this is the nerdiest podcast you've ever done officially. So there's a fantasy series called The Wheel of Time. That's very long. It's like 15 books long. It's so long that the author passed away before he could complete the series.

[6:15] Nathan Leitão: Emphasis on time. This was Robert Jordan. But what he did before he died was he left notes about how the story was supposed to end. Robert Jordan's wife, Harriet McDougal, was essentially tasked with finding the person who's going to come in and finish the story. And she chose Brandon Sanderson.

[6:30] Letitia Bullard: There was only supposed to be one book left to complete the series. But Brandon Sanderson got invited to come out to Robert Jordan's house and read the notes. And he decided there are going to be three more books in the series. So he did a kind of final ending trilogy.

[6:41] Nathan Leitão: These books were so well written. And what an amazing task. And Brandon Sanderson had been a fan of The Wheel of Time for his whole life. And so to be tasked with coming in and finishing your favorite fantasy series. And there's so much expectation on this ending. And I have to say that he did an incredible job.

[7:00] Letitia Bullard: Some might say a wish came true.

[7:03] Pauls Macs: A wish came true. And let's hope George R.R. Martin meets Brandon Sanderson if they're not friends yet.

[7:08] Teresa Attridge: I was going to add to that. I'm worried about that.

[7:10] Nathan Leitão: Yeah, Brandon Sanderson is going to finish that series as well.

[7:13] Pauls Macs: I'm worried. When those books were released, he did book tours for each of them. I actually asked him that question. I asked, so Brandon Sanderson, you're standing there with this ending to this fantasy novel series that you've wanted to know the ending for years and years and years. How did it feel to be one of the only people on the planet who knew the ending to The Wheel of Time?

[7:30] Nathan Leitão: And he said, I felt very satisfied.

[7:32] Letitia Bullard: Oh.

[7:33] Pauls Macs: I was so reassuring.

[7:35] Nathan Leitão: Yes. Because we all didn't want the ending to suck, right? And he's an amazing author in his own right. I just haven't had the time to read his own work.

[7:40] Letitia Bullard: Masterminds to masterminds. Because the magic system here, gorgeous.

[7:48] Pauls Macs: So we're very, very intrigued by the world that you've created, the two islands, Tekoa and Deo. And there's a really fantastic song called "Lights on the Other Side." Would you please set that up?

[7:57] Letitia Bullard: Oh, I love that song.

[8:01] Nathan Leitão: So "Lights on the Other Side." It's a good song. Yeah, it's one of those songs where I feel like we really poured a lot of our personal lived experience, especially at that moment. Coming to New York, both of us from our countries, and there was really a lot of literally seeing the lights on the other side of the horizon for both of us.

[8:21] Letitia Bullard: This song is after that hot day of Leilani selling mangoes. And literally everything went wrong that day. She did not sell one mango. What little she already had in terms of cash, her little coin box was stolen. And it kind of ties into this idea of just another day in Deo. But that day she was really fed up. And she had also received a piece of information about the island with the lights.

[8:44] Nathan Leitão: So the island with the lights is Tekoa on the other side of the horizon. Leilani dreams of finding her mom. She knows that her mom is somewhere out there. And she ties the idea of the lights that actually come from the light show of the Tekoa Wishing Ceremony. She ties that idea to this longing of her mom and also to this idea of there's something more. There's something better for us. This can't just really be it.

[9:10] Letitia Bullard: And so this day when the song starts, she's just walking home in the rain after not having sold one mango, having had her coin box stolen. And she sees this, you know, the other side, the lights on the other side. And she just prays that, you know, that someday dreaming will pay off in Deo. So that someday she could have something similar to what she's seeing on the other side of the horizon.

[9:39] Pauls Macs: And who is performing this song?

[9:40] Letitia Bullard: This one is, once again, the amazing Tamia Johnson. Here is "Lights on the Other Side" performed by Tamia Johnson.

[9:47] ♪ Musical number: "Lights on the Other Side" — performed by Tamia Johnson ♪

[10:47] ♪ Musical number: "Lights on the Other Side" — performed by Tamieyah Johnson ♪

[13:16] Letitia Bullard: I want Tamieyah Johnson to sing every song ever written.

[13:19] Nathan Leitão: Yeah.

[13:20] Letitia Bullard: I mean, this is such a completely different feeling than the other songs in the piece with the acoustic guitar intro.

[13:23] Nathan Leitão: We've used the word longing.

[13:27] Letitia Bullard: The word that came to my mind was yearning.

[13:29] Nathan Leitão: I mean, yearning, longing. I mean, they're similar.

[13:31] Letitia Bullard: Yes, but as Mark Twain once said, the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

[13:38] Nathan Leitão: That matters.

[13:39] Letitia Bullard: Absolutely. Especially Leilani's yearning for her mother is very clear.

[13:45] Nathan Leitão: I love that there's also a resolution. I just hope to keep dreaming. I hope dreaming will pay off.

[13:50] Letitia Bullard: That came across. It's also, when we get to the nitty-gritty, the difference between dreaming and wishing, right?

[13:56] Nathan Leitão: What is the real fundamental difference there? Besides one being in a place where this is not real, it doesn't come true, and the wishing is we're wishing for the thing to happen, for it to be reality, to be on this space with us.

[14:08] Letitia Bullard: And I feel like that's a huge difference between these characters as well, is that one is focusing on one realm of possibility with them, and another character is living in a world in which all of the things that they're like, oh, it's not really going to happen, but I will live in this part of myself where I can have those things.

[14:25] Nathan Leitão: And so they're really interesting foils to one another in that respect as well.

[14:29] Letitia Bullard: Wow. That was well said. But so a lot of really thrilling stuff happens in this show, and Dressed Like Them is part of the lead up to the finale. I don't want to say the finale. Talk about this song, what's going on, and set it up for us.

[14:42] Nathan Leitão: Dressed Like Them. And we could definitely tag team this one. A lot happens.

[14:46] Letitia Bullard: A lot happens in this song.

[14:47] Nathan Leitão: It's a musical sequence more than a song.

[14:49] Letitia Bullard: Yes.

[14:50] Nathan Leitão: That's valid. I'm loving the puns. That's actual facts. You can just say, like, a lot happens, you know, in the song.

[14:57] Letitia Bullard: So for minimal setup, so we are in the island of Deo. Leilani, Deanna, and Leilani's best friend Shadea are present, and they've managed to convince the Deoans in this song of what the next major move needs to be in regards to Takoa.

[15:15] Nathan Leitão: Yes. And then, once they do that, they kind of, like, spur. Is that a verb?

[15:21] Letitia Bullard: This collective chant begins.

[15:24] Nathan Leitão: They make their plan of attack, which is to ambush the Takoan soldiers and dress like them and act like them, and in that way, kind of invade Takoa. So there's, you know, that underlying idea of what Dressed Like Them means for these people, this underrepresented community.

[15:39] Letitia Bullard: So what starts as, like, this sell of an idea becomes this huge riot, and the song ends in Takoa with them invading.

[15:44] Nathan Leitão: And who is performing this demo?

[15:46] Letitia Bullard: That's me.

[15:48] Nathan Leitão: And I'm pretty sure I hear Letitia in there as well.

[15:51] Letitia Bullard: You two take us a lot of places. Here is Dressed Like Them, performed by Letitia Bullard and Nathan Leitão.

[15:56] ♪ Musical number ♪

[19:51] Letitia Bullard: This song is epic. I'm obsessed. It makes me want to go to Costco at its busiest time and run people over with my cart.

[20:00] Nathan Leitão: I feel like I could do anything with this song playing.

[20:02] Letitia Bullard: It's so specific. It kind of reminds me of the story of the Trojan horse. But as you just said, there's something so much more powerful or palpable. They're taking on the clothing as an underrepresented group. They're taking that identity for themselves.

[20:15] Nathan Leitão: And that creates a really, really powerful symbol as they're fighting for equality.

[20:19] Letitia Bullard: Yeah.

[20:20] Nathan Leitão: Yeah, this is an oppressed group. So that means that the oppressor kind of sets the rules. So sometimes you just have to play by those rules until you take what's meant to be yours.

[20:33] Letitia Bullard: You take your power back. Dressed Like Them is a lot of the power that there is in the wisdom and the strategy mindset of playing by certain rules.

[20:43] Nathan Leitão: There's power in that as well. There's a way to dismantle certain systems. Systematic oppression is a complicated thing. The song was kind of meant to empower there. There was a lot of underlying, I would say, anger and dissatisfaction when we wrote that song.

[20:57] Letitia Bullard: Yeah. I mean, the way things are going in this country, you don't know. This is what happens when you—

[21:35] Letitia Bullard: Look, I'm never gonna put on a red hat because I'm never gonna dress like them, per se. But I think another thing that is really telling and powerful about the story is this idea of, like, what do you do when you're in the oppressor's shoes? Like, what path do you end up taking? Right? Like when you are given like a certain modicum of power, or when you are suddenly in a position in which like, the tides are turning, what is it that you do? Do you remember your lived experience? And without giving away the end of your show, because I think it's really masterfully done, I think that question is definitely raised in this song, in the sense of like, yes, I want to be able to fight for myself. But how do I also make sure that fighting for myself does not make me the thing that hurt me? Yes. Without spoiling the ending, I will say just like Brandon Sanderson, when I read the ending of Magia, I felt very, very satisfied.

[22:28] Nathan Leitão: Yes, very. But for those who want to know how this ends...

[22:35] Letitia Bullard: Well, tell us what's next for Magia. This ties into our next episode, which is we're going to be talking with Kathleen Wren of New Works, New Voices at Syracuse University. And you're going to be participating in that program. So we'd love to learn how you got involved with New Works, New Voices, what you're planning to accomplish there.

[22:50] Nathan Leitão: Yes. One of our professors from Berkeley, once again, Dan Marshall, who sent all of us a link because they had submissions. And I think their submissions were shortly after graduation. But we submitted to be a part of the workshop series. We ended up becoming a finalist and being chosen to be that show that they're featuring. So completely blessed and excited to be a part of that coming up.

[23:24] Letitia Bullard: What are your goals when you go out there as you're developing the show?

[23:27] Nathan Leitão: To experiment, actually, with some rewrites. Kathleen is a great dramaturg as well. So she's been just giving some ideas and thoughts and insights. So we have the opportunity to experiment with putting this show together. I wouldn't say it's necessarily a 29-hour reading. It's more so really a workshop where there will be four performances. And it's also for the students an opportunity to develop their abilities with new work. And in our case, to just try some stuff with this musical.

[23:55] Letitia Bullard: Love it.

[23:56] Nathan Leitão: I'm going to try to speak on behalf of a lot of musical theater educators that I've met. Each year, I attend the National Alliance for Musical Theater Conference, the NAMM Conference in New York. And I've met so many educators there who want to develop musicals at their institutions, because the cost of developing musicals is so, so immense these days. But when you workshop something in a university setting, you have free buildings to use. You have students who are very excited and engaged by the material, especially as theater audiences tend to trend older and older. Unfortunately, it's really, really important to engage younger performers with this kind of work so that they can become part of that process, get excited about it, and they can provide you insights that you might not have thought of. I don't want to assume your ages. There's generally like insights that they can offer that you might not have seen about your piece on your own.

[24:43] Letitia Bullard: No, I think it's super important. And it's an incredible opportunity that we're grateful for with Syracuse. And just in general, I think universities and schools really adopting new works is just a wonderful initiative all around. Before I came to New York, specifically for Berkeley's program, I was teaching for two and a half years in my island in Grand Bahama. So much of the, actually all of the musicals that I had done before then, I was working with youth groups and schools to put this on. And it was such an enriching experience. And not just like to see the work that I created on stage, but more so to really see the development of the students and to see them get excited about the arts, to get excited about musical theater, and to really just discover even themselves as artists as they work on this. So shout out to all the teachers and the schools and universities that push programs like this and really encourage their students' growth while also supporting new and upcoming artists.

[25:49] Nathan Leitão: Well, we're very excited to talk with Kathleen more about your process and the process of many musicals that have been developed there. Teresa, we should squeeze in our game.

[25:53] Teresa Attridge: Oh my gosh, we gotta squeeze it in. We love a little squeeze.

[25:58] Nathan Leitão: Yes. So our game for y'all today, this week, it is called One Wish, Two Wish.

[26:05] Letitia Bullard: Oh, wow. It's a joke about fish, which is a joke in the show. It's one lyric, but it really stuck with me. Anyway, so the idea for this game is that if your show centers around this idea that everyone in Tekoa gets, when they come of age, they are granted one wish. The game that we came up with revolves around the idea that if you could drop one character in any musical, the opportunity to get a wish, what character, what musical, and when do you give them the wish?

[26:38] Nathan Leitão: So I had two answers that couldn't be more different. My first one I thought of was I was like, I really want to give Maria from West Side Story the wish because I know that she would bring Tony back and maybe, maybe they could all just work it out and the end wouldn't be so sad because I was like, no, man, that girl wanted that boy to wake up. And then my second answer was Jojo from Seussical. So complete 180 because I was like, anyone with an imagination like that is going to come up with a really, really fun, cool wish.

[27:12] Letitia Bullard: I'm very excited to go next. This is a really fun prompt. I kind of wrote in another category. My mind immediately went to Julie Jordan and Carousel. And Teresa's rules were that you give them a wish and that they have the ability to choose their wish. And I do believe in letting her have that choice. But the thing is, I think she needs to get away from Billy Bigelow. I want to wish her away from that relationship. I have two more. I want Bobby Strong to be able to reshape the world of your town and restore that world.

[27:39] Nathan Leitão: Greg Kotis, friend of the pod.

[27:39] Letitia Bullard: To come back. Greg Kotis, our very first writer, our very first episode. I want Bobby Strong to be able to save that world. And the other thing is, this is debatably the nerdiest podcast we've ever done. Because now my mind is thinking about Dragon Ball and Resurrection.

[27:50] Nathan Leitão: Yes.

[27:55] Letitia Bullard: I want Joe from Little Women to be able to resurrect that.

[27:59] Nathan Leitão: Oh my god, you shut up. How dare you? How dare you bring Beth into this?

[28:07] Letitia Bullard: And like in Dragon Ball, they are always wishing back characters. People say that it kind of breaks the concept of death and makes it less consequential. Sure, maybe. But Beth needs to come back. I just want you to play the piano one more time.

[28:19] Nathan Leitão: Just once, man. I think I have a few.

[28:22] Letitia Bullard: Ooh.

[28:23] Nathan Leitão: One that immediately came to my mind. I know it's further down her life, but I just think she deserves this. This one's for the culture. I think Abuela Claudia needs a wish, man. A wish granted.

[28:34] Letitia Bullard: Oh my gosh, Paciencia IT.

[28:38] Nathan Leitão: Abuela Claudia, if there's someone that deserves a wish granted at any point in her life, man, she's been Paciencia IT the whole time, scrubbed up the whole of the Upper East Side. She deserves a wish. So that would be one. I have so many in my head. There's just so many names bouncing around. Cole House, Orpheus, all these names. Orpheus, shut up. That hurt me. Oh no, that hurt me. Did you do that? Oh my gosh.

[29:07] Letitia Bullard: At this point, you've taken my stuff.

[29:09] Nathan Leitão: Oh, I'm so sorry. Okay, I'll just say one more then. And then you go. There were many names, but this one was just there. And I was like, oh. And it's just heartbreaking. But man, there's a specific moment if Louise and Gypsy could just get a wish granted when she's singing Little Lamb. Just right there. It's her birthday, for God's sake.

[29:26] Letitia Bullard: A birthday wish?

[29:27] Nathan Leitão: How dare you? In my heart. Going right to the heart.

[29:30] Letitia Bullard: I didn't realize that this game was just emotional violence when we came up with it.

[29:36] Nathan Leitão: Sing out, Louise. Sing out, Louise.

[29:38] Letitia Bullard: All right, Letitia, are you going to make us more sad? Or do you have something to bring the spirit back? Are you like, sorry, nah, I got another one?

[29:45] Letitia Bullard: I don't know. You actually mentioned two of the shows that I was thinking about, also in the Heights. I would love to give Sonny a wish.

[29:54] Nathan Leitão: Yes. Great choice.

[29:55] Letitia Bullard: I want to give him a wish when he's like 96,000.

[29:59] Nathan Leitão: Dollars?

[30:00] Letitia Bullard: Yes.

[30:01] Nathan Leitão: Yeah.

[30:01] Letitia Bullard: I hope he wishes for more than 96,000. He's out there talking about gentrification, and he's like in high school. Give that boy a wish.

[30:08] Nathan Leitão: I would love to say Sonny, I would have had a crush on Sonny in high school. I would have been like, wow, he's never going to notice me because he's busy saving the neighborhood. I hope he gets 192,000. I hope he goes like at least way more, way more.

[30:22] Letitia Bullard: Yeah, no, for sure. I just love what he was talking about. Like, out of all the people in that song who wanted the fun, I was like, I would, yes, please. You take them.

[30:33] Nathan Leitão: Yes.

[30:34] Letitia Bullard: I'm thrilled that we brought it back to In the Heights. This was the Lin-Manuel Miranda episode, honestly.

[30:40] Nathan Leitão: Everyone from Café con Leche, Maiga Vidal, would be like right there with you. They'd be all cheering. They all chose In the Heights answers, so fantastic.

[30:49] Letitia Bullard: And just great answers all around.

[30:51] Nathan Leitão: Eliza.

[30:52] Letitia Bullard: Eliza.

[30:52] Nathan Leitão: Leticia, Natan, it was just so great speaking with you. Truly a pleasure getting to talk with you about this piece and your work together and the development process, especially. We wish you the very best at New Works, New Voices.

[31:07] Teresa Attridge: Yeah, thank you so much for being here.

[31:09] Letitia Bullard: Thank you for the laughs, for the beautiful smiles.

[31:12] Nathan Leitão: Thank you so much. This is one of our giggliest episodes to date. Y'all are a blast.

[31:16] Letitia Bullard: Debatably the nerdiest episode we've ever done.

[31:18] Nathan Leitão: Debatable.

[31:18] Letitia Bullard: And it was such a pleasure.

[31:20] Nathan Leitão: I mean, to be real, it's a musical theater podcast. You know what you're setting yourself up for.

[31:26] Letitia Bullard: Guys, thank you so, so much. You guys are like amazing hosts. This was, this was so fun. It feels like I've known you guys for like years.

[31:34] Nathan Leitão: All right, well, I already requested to be both of your friends on Instagram, so y'all can prove it and reply to those.

[31:40] Teresa Attridge: Let's go. I was about to ask, where can I find you guys?

[31:44] Nathan Leitão: At Pals Mox. Look for that follow request soon.

[31:46] Letitia Bullard: Thanks for listening, Barnacles. We'll see you again very soon.

[31:49] Nathan Leitão: Goodbye, Barnacles.

[31:56] Teresa Attridge: Thanks for joining us on New York Theater Barn's Backstage Pass, hosted by Teresa Attridge and Pals Mox. And if you believe in supporting original culture-shifting musicals, please like, subscribe, and share.