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[0:00] Martín Acuña: Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Backstage Talk. Today's guest, I think it's the first Brazilian I've ever had on the show, I have here with me Mateus Cardoso. He is a New York-based actor, singer, dancer, and musician who recently graduated from Baldwin Wallace University with a degree in music theater. Congratulations on graduating. Since then, Mateus has moved to New York City, and with a couple of months being there, he has been involved in several readings for Broadway-bound musicals. This is so exciting. Welcome to the show, Mateus. I'm really excited to have you.

[0:47] Mateus Cardoso: I'm excited to be here.

[0:49] Martín Acuña: So, I just read a little bit about your bio, but that is not at all the whole story. So what else do we have to know about you?

[0:58] Mateus Cardoso: I guess I'll start with, I grew up in Pensacola, Florida, but my parents are both teachers and they're both Brazilian. So the summer we would have four months off. And so we would just go and visit the rest of my family there and have a little vacation because it's nicer there. My family's from Rio, so it's very, very nice there compared to Florida. It's beautiful. Like Rio is beautiful.

[1:24] Martín Acuña: Yeah.

[1:25] Mateus Cardoso: And so I just felt very involved with that part of my identity more so than I feel like a lot of people don't get to go back very often. I got very lucky that my parents had four months off of their lives, essentially, to be able to go and take me and my brother to Brazil and everything. But yeah, so that was how I grew up. And then I started doing theater, maybe my sophomore year of high school. And it all started because I was a musician, an instrumentalist before, and I started taking voice lessons where I was taking piano lessons and drum lessons and guitar lessons and stuff. And one of the people that I did voice lessons with was like, you should audition for this musical. And I was like, okay, I'll do it. And so I auditioned for it. And my very first audition, I sang On My Own from Les Mis, which—

[2:15] Martín Acuña: You tackled that song for your first audition? That is nuts.

[2:20] Mateus Cardoso: It was all that I knew. I had only seen Les Mis. I saw the movie, the Les Mis movie, and that was all I knew about musical theater. And I was like, I'll sing this song because I know it. Not Empty Chairs and Empty Tables, not anything that would make sense. I sang On My Own. But then I randomly got, I booked, I got the role as the annoying prince character and then ever since that, I just kept doing it. And yeah.

[2:49] Martín Acuña: I love that. So do you have any other moment in which you said, musical theater is what I want to do and I will get to Broadway?

[3:02] Mateus Cardoso: It was a little bit going into college. I don't think I had anticipated how much the program I went to was preparing you to be on a stage. For some reason in my brain, I thought, oh, maybe I'll write musicals or maybe I'll orchestrate musicals. No, you go to a program like that and they're like, you're going to be on stage next year. And so it was a little bit my freshman year, we did Kinky Boots and I was one of the angels in Kinky Boots. And I remember the original director, Jerry Mitchell and choreographer came and saw the show and talked to all of us. And I was like, this is crazy. I feel like I'm in it.

[3:46] Martín Acuña: You're in the business.

[3:48] Mateus Cardoso: Right. That was the first moment where I was like, oh no, I can do this. I can do it.

[3:54] Martín Acuña: I love that. And how mind blowing to have this huge figure that directed the Broadway production in your performance.

[4:07] Mateus Cardoso: Right. It was crazy.

[4:08] Martín Acuña: So nuts. I love that. I want to ask you, how has your Brazilian and Latin heritage impacted or influenced in any way your artistry and your craft?

[4:22] Mateus Cardoso: Yeah, for sure. I feel like this could be summed up in a quote that was written on my acceptance letter at my university. And the dean of the School of Music hand wrote on my acceptance letter, the rhythms of Brazil have molded you into a fine musician because I wrote my college essay about this. And so I really feel like my parents are both also very musically inclined. My dad plays guitar. That's the guitar that I grew up with that I brought to New York with me. But anyway, so yeah, he played guitar, my mom would sing. And so I was just very much wrapped in all of that kind of music like bossa nova and samba and stuff like that. And I just feel like there's a certain rhythmic nuance, I guess, that you get from that kind of music that a lot of people who just listen to American music don't understand because it's just it's so crazy. Like it's so many weird rhythms and things that normally people wouldn't have the ear for. But I feel like it helped me a lot and understanding even like classical music and stuff like that.

[5:34] Martín Acuña: I love that because I think it was this morning that I was scrolling through Instagram or Instagram stories or something. And I saw a video of you playing the guitar with someone singing and it was this bossa nova song. And I think the caption said that you kind of reeled in your friend into these type of music. So I would like I love how the stars align for me to have something to share in this episode. So I yeah, I love that.

[6:08] Mateus Cardoso: Yeah, I kind of I've been playing a lot of bossa nova around the house because I have this goal of playing like gigs at bars and restaurants and stuff. But I have to learn all these songs first on the guitar and singing. And so my roommates have been hearing that for a while.

[6:26] Martín Acuña: I love that. Yeah. What for you is the best thing about being a Latin artist?

[6:34] Mateus Cardoso: Uh, honestly, I would have to say, this is kind of I'm going to pull an anecdote from an experience that I had. I my first Broadway callback ever was for New York, New York, and there's a Latino character in that. And I remember going in for it. At first, it was it was a movement call with everyone was the first thing that we did. And it was just a different kind of sense of community that I haven't experienced in other dance calls, or any any sort of audition where it just felt like we were having a party like it just felt like we were just having fun. And I guess that kind of sums it up just the way that people can be so supportive. You're like, hey, you like, I don't know, it's just a sort of sense of community that I think isn't always present in theater. Sometimes people can be a little, you know, catty or something.

[7:34] Martín Acuña: But you know, something I love that you just shared this story because we had an other episode of this season, we actually had Angel Sigala, who is playing Mateo Diaz in New York, New York, and he said the exact same thing.

[7:50] Mateus Cardoso: Oh, really?

[7:50] Martín Acuña: The same callback with the same movement and dance audition. And he just like spoke wonders of that Latin group of people that were in the room. And that sense of community that it's not a competition, we are just lifting each other up. So I love that you mentioned that. I really love that.

[8:13] Martín Acuña: Before we close, I want to ask you if you can spill some beans about the readings that you've been doing of the Broadway-bound musicals. I know about one, and we will have at some point Joey Contreras on the show this season, too. So we know that something is in the works with In Pieces, which is one of my favorite cast recordings ever. But I'll let you tell us your story.

[9:04] Mateus Cardoso: Yeah. So In Pieces was super cool, I thought, because it was the first time that they had kind of collated a version of it with dialogue in it, which was really cool being the first kind of people to read through that and kind of give a new life to it. So yeah, I'm excited to see where that one goes. And I know they've been doing like a lot, a lot, a lot of work on it and everything. So that was the first thing I did. And then I did the Karate Kid musical reading, which was, that was a whirlwind. It was crazy. It was so cool to be in a room with people because the production had, they had an out-of-town tryout in St. Louis. And then they revisited the whole thing, wrote a whole bunch of new songs, kind of shifted some things around a bit.

And I think this was actually the very, I might be saying the wrong, like this might be wrong, but I think this might have been like the last reading before it goes on to actually being on Broadway, which is super exciting. But the people attached to that were crazy. Like John John Briones was Mr. Miyagi and Kate Baldwin as Daniel's mom. And it was just like so cool to be in a room with all those people. Ava Noblezada and Reeve Kearney were there, which is crazy. And I was just like, oh my God, that was a crazy experience. And it was really fun to be in a group of people, like some people hadn't been attached to the show before and some people had. It was just an interesting perspective to see how people reacted to the new material and stuff.

[12:09] Mateus Cardoso: I have a couple of friends that saw one of the performances, the out-of-town performances, and they called me right away and they were like, you would love this show. And we really hope that this show is going to Broadway. So Drew Gasparini, if you're listening to this episode, please tell us how can we make it happen? How can we help you to take this show to Broadway? Right. And he's so, he's like the nicest person on earth. Like he is so sweet. But yeah, that was crazy too. Drew Gasparini and the original writer of Karate Kid is writing the book too, which is just crazy. But yeah, so that was the first one. And then I did the La La Land reading, which was wildly different in the way that it was the very first iteration of it as a musical, as a stage musical.

So it was kind of, it was a very different experience because it was really like, we were playing a lot more with the material than the Karate Kid one. And it felt a lot more like grassroots, like, oh, we're all figuring this out together kind of vibe. Like nobody has seen this before. So that was the fun part of that one. And I mean, the people who are attached to that, I don't think I'm allowed to really say that part because that one hasn't been as marketed as the Karate Kid one. So I won't say much about that. But yeah, it was just, that was also a crazy experience.

[13:17] Martín Acuña: That is amazing. My last question for you would be, what are your top five favorite musical theater shows?

[13:26] Mateus Cardoso: Top five. That is crazy. The one that comes to mind right now is Sweeney Todd. I just, I think it's a perfectly crafted musical. I think it's so good. I also love the fact that people don't usually associate like horror or like anything like that with musicals, which I find interesting that they kind of pull from that kind of background. And then another horror kind of show, Lizzie the Musical. I don't know if you know about Lizzie. It's kind of a Baldwin Wallace thing because our program head was the first like director of the production. I think it was off Broadway. Eden Espinoza was in the original version of it. But yeah, that show is, it's about Lizzie Borden, who is kind of a famous murderer.

And she killed her parents, this whole thing. But I love that show. It's like a rock musical. And then I guess I'll throw Hamilton in there because the lyricism in that show is just unmatched. Like you cannot, you cannot get, like it's like Sondheim level writing, I'd say. And then I'd have to say, this is kind of a random one. I was just listening to Kinky Roots some and I was like, this is a great show. Like it's fun. It's sentimental at times. It kind of pushes a little bit of the boundaries of what people are used to seeing. I don't know. I really enjoyed being in that show. And then I was listening to it and I was like, this is a good show. This is a good show. I guess that's four. Fifth one, put me on the spot, I guess.

I guess I'll say, I'm going to say Les Mis because it was the first show that I ever saw. And it basically convinced me to want to do musical theater. So I love that. And yes, you will always, like we will always have a special place in our hearts and in our memories for that show that it was either the first or helped us fall in love with our craft. So for me, it's The Lion King, and I will always love that show. But yeah, thank you so much. Mateusz, thank you so much for being here, for sharing your story, your craft. I cannot wait to see where you go, because I know that I am in the presence of a Broadway royalty, future Broadway royalty. So thank you so much for being here. And we wish you the best. Thank you for, honestly, thank you for being part of this Ladinson Musical Theater special.

[16:03] Mateus Cardoso: Of course. Thank you for having me.

[16:09] Martín Acuña: Thanks everyone for listening to this new episode of Backstage Talk. Remember to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Backstage Talk Podcast.