This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Martín Acuña: Hi, everyone. I am Martín Acuña, and you are listening to Backstage Talk.

[0:18] Martín Acuña: Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Backstage Talk. Today's guest is a New York-based Mexican-American director, book writer, and choreographer specializing in new musical development and reinvestigating the traditional American book musical. He aims to inspire audiences' imaginations, spark curiosity, and compel patrons to be skeptical of the status quo. Jason Aguirre strives to be radically inclusive in his practices while delivering a theatrical filmstone vitamin to audiences, a sociopolitical message served through candy-coated entertainment. Jason, I am super excited to have you over. You are one of the first Latin heritage people I have on the show, and I am just honored. Thank you for being in Backstage Talk, and welcome to the show.

[1:19] Jason Aguirre: Oh my gosh, thank you so much, Martín. Thank you for having me.

[1:23] Martín Acuña: Okay, so you have Mexican heritage. You are based right now in New York, but I want to ask you, what was your aha moment, or when was it that made you choose the thespian path in life?

[1:40] Jason Aguirre: Totally. I actually found it completely by accident. I grew up in the Midwest, in the suburbs about 30 minutes south of Chicago, and like any good small Mexican-American boy, I played soccer because that's what my parents put me in. I was a heavier set kid when I was little, and my parents really wanted me to do a winter activity, and I didn't want to do it because it's cold in Chicago, and I didn't want to go outside. So I remember my dad getting upset with me, and he opened this community book with all the activities in it that happened in our town, and he was like, whatever I point to in this, you're doing because you have to do something. And he put it on the kitchen table, and it opened up, and he pointed to something, and it was tap lessons.

And I still remember the look on his face of like, I know I have to follow through with this as an example, that you have to follow your word. All of those things were communicated on his face that quickly, and so he took me. He like was really great about it. He got tap shoes for me, and I went, and I had no idea what I was doing, but something about the rhythmic nature of tap I really, really fell into, and I stuck with that. I dropped soccer, and then I just kept dancing. I think I was 11 or 12 when it started.

[3:05] Martín Acuña: I love it. And from there, where did it go? You went to college for theater. You also have an MFA in, is it musical theater collaboration creation?

[3:19] Jason Aguirre: Yes. Yes. Well, it's not new anymore. They'll be in their second cycle soon, but Temple University has a program where they pair composers, book writers, and directors specifically to study the creation of new work in musical theater. And so in addition to studying the development, we actually create work every week, culminating in two full productions at the end of the three years.

[3:45] Martín Acuña: I love it. That sounds super exciting, but I want to go a little bit back. So tell me a little bit about your journey in musical theater. So you started with tap, and where do you go next?

[3:51] Jason Aguirre: Absolutely. So I kept dancing for a long time, and that eventually led to competitive dance. And at one dance convention, Chicago Dance Connection, where I actually took from one of your past guests, Kenny Ingram, way back in the day when I was just the youngest of people. I won the competition. I got the best of whatever that, I forget the exact title of it. And two things happened that day. One, the artistic director of Chicago Dance Connection came up to me and said, like, what you're doing is very theatrical. Do you do musical theater? And I don't know how old I was. I was like, no, I don't know. I knew what it was, but it didn't occur to me to do it. And so that was one. And two, the other artistic director, Joel Hall, who's an incredible, incredible Chicago-based teacher and artistic director, said, a young man, this is today's trophy.

How will you win tomorrow's? And that just kind of stuck with me from, I think, the age of 14 or 15 all the way to now. I think about that almost every day. How will you win tomorrow's trophy? And like, just that idea of not being complacent with your victories from one day to continue to improve as you move forward. So of course, I went back to high school and started doing musical theater. And then from there, I fell in love with it and started doing summer theater and studied as a performer in college. And after college, we graduated. And being close to the city, I had agents and would audition and stuff. But my friends were finding they didn't have a lot of work. And I was still choreographing, like, full musicals by that point already for different universities in the area.

So I thought, well, I kind of know what's going on here. I'll start directing our own shows. I'll form our own theater company. The head of the department for my undergrad was nice enough to, like, let us borrow furniture and props and whatever we needed. So we would rehearse our shows in the music hall of the university. And then we would go up to the prop attic, take all of the furniture we needed, load it in the truck, drive up to the cheapest black box we could afford in Chicago, and do our shows there. And that went on for about a year. And then I thought, okay, I want to go to New York and, like, see what that's like while I still am excited about all of this. So I did that for a while.

And unfortunately, at the time, it was not terribly different than it is now. But it was even less racially inclusive at the time. As a performer, I was auditioning for four shows. It was either Alter Boys, In the Heights, West Side Story, or Chorus Line. That was it. I knew that Paul monologue like the back of my hand. And, you know, I was an okay performer, but I wasn't particularly excited about it. And I think it was really obvious when they auditioned. And it was just always really disappointing to me. And I was in a final callback for a production of West Side Story. And my entire being said, you don't want to be here. And this was after maybe six and a half years of being here. And I thought, no, I don't want to do this.

And I left. I left the audition, which is incredibly unprofessional. I'm pretty sure I'd be upset if somebody did that. But I just felt it like in the bottom of my feet that I had to get out. And so a mentor of mine encouraged me to try improv and sketch because that's really a place where you can create your own work and your own characters and be whoever you want. So that led me to studying here in New York at the Pitt at the Upright Citizens Brigade, which unfortunately doesn't exist here anymore. And from there, I thought, okay, let me keep following this because this is exciting. I had like, I was with a sketch troupe here in Brooklyn. I was doing gigs here and there. So I auditioned for the Groundlings and for Second City in New York.

And I thought, I'll go wherever I get in. And I got into both. So then I had to decide where I wanted to go. And I hadn't lived in L.A. yet. So I went there to study at the Groundlings, which is, you know, it's Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig and Melissa, not Melissa McCarthy. Oh, yeah. Melissa McCarthy, of course. And that was such incredible character training and comedy training. And during the day, I was working at the Academy of Motion Pictures, which was like this whole other, like, dream side of Hollywood. And that was an incredible place. But by the end of that, I had let my artistry go a little bit. I wasn't creating my own work. And I really and I was supporting incredible artists, but I felt like I wanted to get back and do my own work.

So I started doing the MFA route of auditioning as a director because that seemed to be the only place all of my skill sets can come together. And I, of course, love directing. So Temple approached me in my interview and said, we're trying to start this new program and take directors who are specifically interested in musical theater and put them over here into this program. And what was interesting in all of those different programs is a lot of them don't let you choreograph. A lot of them want you to be a director and they really don't let you touch musicals. They want you to do contemporary realism or classics. And I thought, well, if you're going to let me choreograph and you're going to let me, like, make new musicals, this is exactly what I've been wanting to do since I left that audition all those years ago. So that was that. And then that was three years of my life when I went to grad school.

[9:59] Martín Acuña: I love it. It's such a roller coaster of a journey, but it's so encouraging. And especially for me as a performer, because when I was in college, I always thought that I want to end up being a performer and I enjoy it. I truly enjoy performing. I love performing. But there is a part of me that truly enjoys more being on the backstage part of work. So being either a director or an assistant director is way more fulfilling in some way. And I just love your journey, jumping from Chicago to New York to L.A., back to Philadelphia, is it, where it's Temple, right? And then back to New York. So it's just truly encouraging and inspiring all the ups and downs you had on your journey. I want to now ask you about your

[11:00] Jason Aguirre: Work specifically as a director, and what is your favorite way to approach a new show? Yes, there's something interesting that I learned in grad school, and it had nothing to do with what they taught me, and everything to do with just talking to other directors. As you know, directors don't have the opportunity to speak to each other that often. It's really, really insular, and people come to you with questions, and you're doing your best to answer based on your vision. But I came to realize that when I start to read a show, the second I open the script, I start to do the show in my head from beginning to end. I can see the way it plays out. I can see, even if it's an enormous musical, I can see where the ensemble is going, how it's moving, what it looks like, what the colors are.

And so, to be a little bit corny about it, I literally start from a place of imagination. And I didn't know that was a skill set that I had and I a little bit took it for granted that all of these years I've been building all of these musicals for free in my head and seeing them to full fruition. So, a little bit of the trick is deconstructing what it is I'm seeing and saying, okay, that's your first impulse. Is that really where we're going to go with that? And then I usually trail off into themes and a lot of visuals. Every person that's worked with me has seen 100 different photo concept collages of what the show looks like. Because I like to give people a sense of the motion of the show, but also its general energy and colors. And I find that helps me communicate with a lot of different departments.

[12:51] Martín Acuña: That is amazing. And it is a great way to, as you just said, start speaking with other departments, with light, with design, with costumes, with hair and makeup. It's just a great way to connect the dots, not only for you as a director, but for them as in their creative process too. So now you just gave us a really quick approach of your process, of your directing process with a new show, but how is it from day one until opening night?

[13:26] Jason Aguirre: Sure. Yeah, what a process. I think I have to like scoot back a little bit then from day one and like tell you another story. When I was, I must have been like two or three at the time, because we were living in Michigan at the time. And I was a very curious kid. Like I had a lot of questions and my parents have been my biggest champions from the very start. I love them so, so much for that. And like whatever direction it is that I went in, they followed. And I do recognize how fortunate that is. So when I had all these questions, either because my mom was being supportive or tired of answering them, she bought me this huge book. I mean, it's like three or four inches thick, called The Big Book of Tell Me Why.

And it like has every question a kid could like, why do we have Easter eggs? Why is the sky blue? And I would like tear through that book all day and like answering all these questions for myself because I was so curious about them. And so that's a lot of my approach still, as I have a lot of questions when I look at the script. Why is this character doing this? Why are they looking for this specific thing? Why are they singing this way? Why is the music? So I write all those down or like, you know, keep notes for myself somewhere and start to really investigate the script in that way from the point of questions to see how the script answers them and to see how I'm going to answer them visually later on.

Because it might not necessarily be there clearly in the text or like as plainly in the text. And maybe it's answered through motion or maybe it's answered through stage picture or acting. And so I want to keep those in my pocket for myself. So that's kind of where I start with that. Once we get into physical rehearsals, I typically treat it's a little bit different, depending if it's a new work or a show that's existed for a while. But I typically like to treat the first week like a 29 hour reading process where we're really digging into the script. We're looking at just the libretto and the music, just the bones of it, and then culminating in end of week, full reading of the show with music so that I can hear the entire thing and the whole cast and ensemble can hear these things.

But to lightly steal or like full out steal a metaphor from my collaborator, Adam Renier. He says that musicals are bilingual. And I completely agree. And you have to speak the music of the text, you have to speak the music of the show, and you have to speak the text of the show. And so every process of mine starts with music. And that's having a really wonderful music director. And I've been incredibly lucky to team with really great music directors. But it has to start there. If the company doesn't understand the music language of it, we really can't move forward or we're going to have to make up that time later on. So using that full week as like a reading process to make sure that we understand the skeleton of the show is super important to me.

And of course, if there's like, you know, if it's an 18 person cast, and nine of those people are dancing, then they're going to start learning that big dance number as soon as humanly possible. Or if I'm not choreographing, whoever the choreographer is when they feel like it's time to start getting that in there. So a lot of stuff starts to happen at the same time, as you know, musicals have a ton of different departments that are all moving at once. Yeah, and then we just kind of start sketching slowly. I usually make my way through the show within like a week of the entire show, just getting a sketch of where everything goes, knowing our entrances and exits. And that entire time, I'm having really close investigative conversations with the actors and saying, like, who is your character?

Where do they come from? Why do they speak this way? And it's really, really important to me that every performer know their character better than I do by the end of the run. And it helps them and me tune the characters' moral compass. And once that compass is tuned, we can make all kinds of decisions. And it allows the actor to behave viscerally in any given situation, without having to like premeditate, oh, I know this character goes here and says this line this way. But if you know your moral compass, and you know the morality of your character, the same thing, you can make all of the decisions in the moment. So now you have a full company of actors who are fully realized human beings interacting with one another, even in this musical world.

[18:06] Martín Acuña: Yeah, no, I love it. I absolutely love it. Your MFA is in creating and collaborative new musical theater development, right?

[18:17] Jason Aguirre: Yes. I have very few experiences with either devised theater or collaborative creation. But when it comes to musical theater, I just think it fits so well. So I wanted to ask you, how do you approach that collaborative creation and new musical theater development?

[18:42] Jason Aguirre: Absolutely. Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned devised theater, because there is a lot of, you know, coming from dance, and from improv and sketch, I've done a lot of devising and a lot of the principles carry over to one another. And I always mentioned this metaphor of a potluck anytime that I'm like, building a team or thinking about who I want to, who I want on my team. If you're doing a potluck, nobody likes the person who walks in with a fork, and no food, you have to bring something to the table and contribute something. And so I'm of the mindset that I'm going to bring a proposal to the table, I think the show looks like this. And then I want to bring in collaborators who are going to bring other plates to the table and say, like, well, I actually think it's this.

And I think it's this. And from collaborators, I mean, like creative team, performers, producers, everyone that's going to touch the process, I love all of them to have their opinions about what the show looks like. Because at the end of the day, I know people use the metaphor a lot, the best idea wins. I think the story wins. Yeah, there, the idea might be brilliant, but it might not be the story, or it might not be the story we're telling in this moment. So the story has to win in that. And when everyone brings all of these rich ideas to the table, then we can start saying, like, I like that, that works, that really works for this person. It doesn't work for this person, maybe we find something new to do.

And that's a very broad statement on that. But like, really, really, really finding those collaborators who are interested in proposing ideas and aren't just going to show up to the table with a fork.

[20:25] Martín Acuña: I absolutely agree. And in the end, it's all a mix of everyone's ideas, not only your vision as a director, because you nurture your own vision based on their visions. And that is something that I really love about musical theatre, because it's a lot of departments giving their two cents to bring into fruition the bigger vision, for the lack of a better word.

[20:48] Jason Aguirre: Absolutely. And, you know, I tell performers a lot that they're the guardians of the story. That, you know, if the story is this, like, medieval type of castle, we're the guardians of it. And we're protecting it with all of our decisions. The minute we compromise it for the sake of, like, getting a laugh or doing a trick that we've done in the past, we're not guarding our story.

[21:21] Martín Acuña: Yeah, absolutely. So after all this wild journey you've had in the industry, what advice would you tell the younger version of yourself?

[21:28] Jason Aguirre: Uh, sure. You know, I don't know if my younger self would listen to me. Probably not. None of our younger versions would, but... But, yes, absolutely. I would definitely encourage appreciating where I was. I think a lot of the time, you know, the great thing about hearing something like, this is today's trophy, how are you in tomorrow's, which definitely instilled a sense of drive in me. But it also, I think I learned the wrong lesson from that when I heard...

[21:59] Jason Aguirre: This show had an off-Broadway run in 2018, and you just worked on it as the director. So, tell us a little bit about this show. How was that process after that 2018 run? Absolutely. It was a really interesting process. I got the call from Jim, the artistic director of American Theatre Group, and he was looking for a director who would treat this like a new work, because Dan and Doug, the writers of the show, had done it, as you said, off-Broadway. And Jim saw that run and wasn't particularly interested in it, but he liked a lot of the show, and he had been longtime friends with Doug. So, I pitched my idea of the show, which was, in this evolution of Henry Mann, I don't really see a ton of evolution in it.

He really doesn't have a larger character arc, and also the female identifying characters of the piece didn't have a ton of agency in it. It was really a Henry-centric piece, which does make sense because he's a title character, but I was interested in a story where it was three performers on stage, not one performer and two people serving that person. So, Jim liked that enough to hire me, and again, I picked it apart like a brand-new show that had never been written before, and we went to a bar in Midtown, and Dan and Doug were super nice and let me ask all the questions and say all the things that I saw. Which, I was very polite about all of them, but this is something they've been working on for a very long time.

So, the graciousness of them to open up and listen to this new person tell them about their show or what they saw in their show was incredibly kind of them, and I'm very appreciative of what our relationship became. Yeah, so that's a little bit of how that came together, and then, you know, we're still mid-pandemic, so casting sessions all took place over Zoom, video submissions and then Zoom callbacks, and it's interesting creating an ensemble of three people who work incredibly close together, and yet they never saw one another. They never read with one another. They never met one another because it was just too difficult to coordinate what that might be with all the different protocols. So, we went into rehearsal, and like I mentioned before, I treated the first week like a 29-hour reading, and in the months leading up to it, Dan and Doug wrote a lot of different versions of the script, and there was one song in particular, if you talk to either of the writers, they'll tell you it existed in every incarnation except for ours, and it's a song called Hard that comes in about a quarter of the way into the show between two characters, and it just didn't land for the artistic director and was interested in seeing a different take on it, and so Dan and Doug wrote a lot of, not a lot, they wrote different songs that we tried out, and so in that week with the actors, we workshopped a bunch of different versions of the show and kept taking notes and notes and notes, and then at the end of the week, we presented it to them, which was a little nerve-wracking because I was like, I hope this is what you all thought we were doing, and you know, they were really happy with it, and in that moment, we had to decide what song we were going with.

One song was the one that had existed in the show, the new song had not, and it was re-orchestrated, and even after the reading, they did some rewrites on it, and that had like a dance break in it, so that's like an entirely different number to put into the show, so yeah, and then we were able to move forward and like continue deconstructing and exploring these characters and think about what does it mean to tell this person's narrative when every character has equal weight on the show, and really, really sculpt that journey for Henry, so it was a really great experience. The ensemble was wonderful, and Dan and Doug were super gracious the entire time.

[27:00] Martín Acuña: That's amazing, and what a fun story through this show, I love it. Thank you for sharing that. Can you tell us a little bit about the new works you have in process, or what are you working on right now, because I think it was recent that you were chosen as the Artistic Producing Fellow, right? At Vineyard.

[27:21] Jason Aguirre: That's correct, yes. So can you tell us a little bit about the new works you have right now? Totally. Yes, I've been there about a little over a month now. It's an incredible place that you would hope. The Vineyard and some of the other institutions I've had the opportunity to work at, there's times when you feel very lucky that everybody in the building is working from a place of passion, and that doesn't come up all the time, and so from that I'm incredibly thankful. I can't talk a ton about the work that we're doing there, because it's like stuff in their season that hasn't been announced yet, but that's been really wonderful to work on readings and workshops and start dramaturging new shows that are just going to blow away audiences when they're in front, and learn from incredible, incredible people who've been doing this, who are at the top of their game.

So that's kind of Vineyard life, and then in my freelance life, I have a reading coming up of a new show, My Own Worst Enemy, in two weeks, gosh, just right before the holidays really kick off, and so we're getting that together to perform for a small group of producers looking for backing. Well, fingers crossed everything goes right with that reading. Yeah, it's a really cool show, and I'm very excited to be working on it.

[28:48] Martín Acuña: Okay, one surprise question before we wrap up.

[28:54] Jason Aguirre: Oh no, okay.

[28:54] Martín Acuña: Which are your top five favorite musical theater shows?

[29:01] Jason Aguirre: Oh gosh, that's, that doesn't be, I, let me tell you my top five like experiences in theater, because we'll be here all day, me listing musicals that I love to do, and like no one wants that. Great, top five theater experiences. When I lived in Michigan, I must have been three or four, and I don't really know why he did this, but my dad took me, he was at the University of Michigan, and he took me to a production of Funny Thing Happens on the way to the Forum, and I still remember the ensemble coming out and like spraying each other with toy water pistols, and like laying down in the audience, like passing out, like I remember the physical comedy of that, and that still kind of informs a lot of what I do, so that.

I by myself sat like center, center mezzanine, and saw the original Company of Spring Awakening, and just the direction of that piece, I remember how wild that was to experience alone, so there's that. I was at the first dress of American Idiot back in the day, and the second that guitar lick started, like the music was like in my bones immediately, I was like that's musical theater, like not this quiet business, that. So that was really such a fun experience, and I learned a ton. One of my first jobs in New York was ushering different Broadway theaters, and so during the show we would have to sit in back, and on a new show the writers would sit in back, and you know try out jokes, and things like that.

So there was a show, Let's Estrada Jones by Douglas Carter Bean, and like I learned so much from watching Douglas Carter Bean react to that show, and like take little notes, and like see how the audience leaned in, so before that I think about that show a ton, and gosh what's my last, I guess my last one would have to be, I saw the one of the tours when I was a kid of Beauty and the Beast in Chicago when it was touring, and I remember being so, this is how I was as a kid, and maybe still not, I remember being so upset that the way the person who sang Gaston didn't sing it exactly like the album, like it confused, I was like why aren't you singing it like the album, that's what we know, what are you doing, and you know of course like now I'm like oh he was making a choice, but as a kid I was like I don't understand why you just wouldn't sing this perfection that's on the album. So yeah, those are five experiences.

[31:39] Martín Acuña: I love them, I love them, all of them. Jason, thank you so much. If someone wants to contact you, work with you, call you for a new show, a new reading, where can people find you, what's your social media handles, everything.

[31:53] Jason Aguirre: Totally, my social media is at jasona57, it's not terribly interesting, but that's the thing that I have, I've had it for a long time, or my website is j-aguirre.com.

[32:08] Martín Acuña: I love it. So if people want to work with you, go to your website, to the contact form there, and get in touch with you.

[32:17] Jason Aguirre: Absolutely.

[32:17] Martín Acuña: Awesome. Jason, thank you so much for coming over. I have loved every single second of this conversation, and I cannot wait to see your new works, to see where you're going, and I wish you the best.

[32:36] Jason Aguirre: Thank you so much, and thank you for having me, it has been great.

[32:40] 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.