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[0:01] Mo Brady: The Ensemblist is brought to you in part by our Patreon members, including Emily Chen, Colin Elijah, Cheryl Hodges-Seldon, Joanne T. Garvin, Christopher Gurr, Linda Lee, Joey Shoji, and Ty Williams. You can join them in supporting the work that we do here at The Ensemblist for as little as $5 a month. Find out how at patreon.com slash theensemblist.

[0:24] Mo Brady: You're listening to The Ensemblist, the only podcast that shows you Broadway from the inside out. Welcome, I'm Mo Brady.

[0:43] Mo Brady: These conversations about performers' favorite musicals have been so fun. It's been a thrill to watch their faces light up, hear the joy in their voices as they talk about their first encounters with these shows and how they continue to inspire them. I'm so excited to be able to continue this series for you today with Billy Bustamante.

[1:05] Mo Brady: Most recently in the Off-Broadway production of Soft Power, Billy is an acclaimed performer, director, choreographer, and photographer. He's been part of the Ensemblist family for many years, and so it was so fun to be able to speak to him on microphone and talk about his favorite musical, Once on This Island. Here's our conversation.

[1:38] Billy Bustamante: Hi, baby.

[1:39] Mo Brady: Hi, Mo.

[1:41] Billy Bustamante: Will you introduce yourself and tell us where you're calling from?

[1:43] Billy Bustamante: My name is Billy Bustamante, and I am calling from my living room in Quarantined Bliss in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

[1:51] Mo Brady: And what's your favorite musical?

[1:52] Billy Bustamante: My favorite musical, this day and every day, forever until the day I die, is Once on This Island.

[1:59] Mo Brady: I'm so excited to talk about this with you. My first question is, let's imagine an alternative universe where I knew all musicals except for Once on This Island. Describe to me what Once on This Island is.

[2:14] Billy Bustamante: Once on This Island is a celebration of life. Once on This Island is a story about a community coming together after a traumatic crisis to help a young child. And in trying to help her, they conceive a story that the entire audience goes on that teaches everyone the power of love.

[2:38] Mo Brady: Fuck yeah. Okay, so now give me like the 30-second story of what actually happens. That was a very good, I'm a director, Billy Bustamante. All right, but now tell me what actually happens in Once on This Island.

[2:55] Billy Bustamante: So Once on This Island takes place on an island. You can see that a storm has taken place and is continuing to take place. And then you meet a young girl, terrified. The citizens of the island come together to comfort her and tell her this story to help pass the time during the storm. And the story is about a young girl named Ti Moune, who is like the child that we meet at the beginning of the show, an orphan who gets raised by a community and gets sent on a journey by the gods of the island to test the strength of love against the power of death.

[3:33] Mo Brady: You're so good. You're so good. Okay, right. Give me your elevator pitch on why this is the best musical.

[3:41] Billy Bustamante: Once on This Island is a perfectly constructed, not an ounce of fat on it. And B, it is a story that will uplift you, take you on a journey. It'll make you laugh. It'll make you cry. And then it'll break your heart. But then it'll put it back together again in the most beautiful way. And you'll be singing the songs along with everyone else and tapping your feet the whole time.

[4:07] Mo Brady: That's a fantastic elevator pitch. I would, I jump into that. Okay. So now I want to know about your relationship to Once on This Island, Billy.

[4:15] Billy Bustamante: I heard it in high school. I heard the cast recording. My friend, my theater geek friend, Evelyn Zilberman, if you're out there listening, I thank you till the day I die. She knew I was like developing an interest in theater. So she gave me this cast recording. And I was never the same ever since. It's funny. My gateway musicals in high school were obviously like Miss Saigon, Les Mis, Jekyll and Hyde. So it's funny to think about now because I loved those shows so much. But I had never really experienced like joy in musical theater form, because those are all pretty heavy shows. So when I first, when I first started listening to Once on This Island, like for the first time, I felt joy through musical theater.

[5:00] Mo Brady: Now, okay, are we using a CD? Are we like a burned tape? Like what? How are we listening to this?

[5:09] Billy Bustamante: It was definitely a CD. And then Once on This Island, when I moved to New York, no, when I first started college and would commute up to New York, that was the first show that I watched on the Lincoln Center archive.

[5:21] Mo Brady: Ah, okay. Okay. Okay. So you were listening to the CD. And then you're in college, you are coming up to New York, you were in Philly. Is that right? I want to know about you watching it at Lincoln Center.

[5:33] Billy Bustamante: Once I realized, once I discovered that the Lincoln Center archive was a thing, my mind exploded. And my first question was, do they have Once on This Island? So I gave them a call, because you have to call. And I gave them, you know, like three titles. I can't remember what the other two were. And then once they said they had Once on This Island, I said, great, when can I come in? I'll come in whenever I can. I'll come in whenever you have an opening. So I went up there. And for those of you who haven't been to the theater on film and tape archive at Lincoln Center, A, it's a mecca. It's amazing. But B, it's a very quiet place. You are there with headphones on, you can't bring anything in but like maybe a notebook if you want to take some notes.

And then you are there like hooked up to like an old school TV monitor, and you're watching the show back, you can only watch it once. So cut to me sitting there holding my notebook to my chest, like bobbing and weaving, trying to hold in all these emotions that as I watched the show on video. Yeah, it was it was surreal. It was surreal.

[6:43] Mo Brady: Was that the first time that you had seen it?

[6:45] Billy Bustamante: That was the first time I'd ever seen the show.

[6:47] Mo Brady: What surprised you? Were there like moments in the show that you were like, I didn't know that was part of the story? Or was it like visual cues that don't make sense on the album? Like what was surprising?

[6:57] Billy Bustamante: You know, this is one of the many reasons I love that cast recording, because the original cast recording, both of them are just so well done. So you get every bit of the story you need to. But when I watched the show for the first time, it amazed me how few people there were on stage. Because you know, it's an intimate show. But to have what I think it was 14 company members on stage, doing so many things transforming into so many people. That was like another thing that I had only encountered through Once on This Island. You know, I was raised on the big epic mega musicals. So to see like so much power being held by over a little over a dozen people was something that was mind blowing to me.

[7:36] Mo Brady: I want to know what this recording actually looked like. I've only seen one thing at the theater on film and tape archive, and it's the original Godspell. And it was like this busted back of house VHS non-moving camera, right? Was that your experience?

[7:53] Billy Bustamante: Yeah, and it was amazing. You know, it was, it was, you know, back then I was not, you know, we weren't tech savvy back then. In those days, I'm aging myself, but like, in like the early aughts. But this isn't even like a, like an Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George sort of multi-cam experience, right? For those of you who know that Into the Woods VHS, and I know it well, envision it with one camera, no close ups, but then also like recorded off of three different VHSs. So like you're seeing like the copy of a copy of a copy. That's the quality that we got. And you can go there and see it for yourself. I want to know how you have encountered Once On This Island as a theater artisan.

Have you performed in it? Have you directed? Have you choreographed? Once On This Island is a show that has been at the top of my bucket list, my creative bucket list forever. And I've never performed, I've never done the show. I've never done the show in any capacity. The first time I saw it live, as an audience member, was seeing my little sister play Airzuli in a college production of the show. And my heart stopped. I think so many feelings. It's funny, as much as I love the show, it is at the top of my director choreographer bucket list. I have never felt the urge to perform in the show. Like I've never found me as a performer useful in the show, which might be another reason why I love it, because I'm not invested in it in that way.

So I can really be an audience member in a way that I couldn't, like when I watch a production of Miss Saigon. Sure, you're thinking about what would I do in that moment? Or right? Before all this COVID stuff happened, I was supposed to start rehearsals to choreograph it and associate direct it regionally at one of my favorite theaters in Philadelphia, the Arden Theater. But obviously, that is no longer happening. I'm putting it out there that it'll happen again someday.

[10:00] Billy Bustamante: I have 12 versions of this show swimming around in my head at all times. So you just tell me which one you want. I'm ready. What's your favorite moment? There is a moment, not to give anything away, but the song that's called A Part of Us. And it takes place close to the end. And you've been on the whole journey. And you've experienced every high and every low. This is the part where they've broken your heart already. They've just broken your heart. And then they proceed to put it back together again in the most beautiful way. And that is my favorite part. It's beautifully sung. It's beautifully written. In every production, it's the part that's, in my opinion, is the most beautifully staged because there's so much magic happening.

[11:43] Billy Bustamante: Yeah, we can spoil. The show came out in what? 90? 91? Timoon was given the choice to save her life by killing the man she loves, to trade her soul for his. And she decides that she can't do it because she loves him too much. So she chooses to sacrifice herself for him, which means ultimately that she has to die. So she dies in physical form. And then you see the spirits of all the people who have taken her on this journey, her parents, the four gods who have tossed her around the sea of fate for an hour and a half. And they all come together and they honor her and they show her love and they usher her into death in the most beautiful, caring, loving way. And it's funny, I'm just thinking about this now, like those gateway musicals do not treat death kindly, mostly. To see that part of life being treated as something that might not be a tragedy was, I think, is so powerful.

[12:49] Billy Bustamante: In the many times, in many ways you have seen this musical, is there a moment that you felt was just perfectly staged in a production? Like what is just like the perfect theater moment? I was obsessed with the recent revival of Once on this Island that took place at Circle in the Square. I was going to ask you, that must have been so weird because you're walking into this thing that you fucking love and you're like, don't mess up this thing that I love. Don't mess it up. And I had every, my expectations were so high, but also my faith in everyone involved with the production was so high and I was not let down. So short answer, the rain sequence in that production, so wonderfully staged, so inventive, so it puts such great use of the actors and the setting of the show.

But my favorite part of the show, of this revival, was right at the top of the show. There's like a bit of a prologue that happens. You can see during, like before the show starts, like there's cast members living in the space with you. And for those of you who didn't get to see the show, the show was set in the round. So it literally looked like you were taking a peek into this island. Once the show started and the music started playing, this is one of my favorite experiences to have ever taken place in a theater. I was looking across at the audience members from on the other side of the theater, and it was the first time where you could feel everyone going through the same anticipation of finally seeing this show on Broadway for the first time, because I'm from a generation who didn't get to see it originally.

And there's so many people that love the show that have not been able to see like a first rate production of the show. You could tell, I thought that like, I thought I was the only one feeling this way. But then as the show was beginning, you felt hands holding hands, like people like holding each other. And you could see it all happening and tears were flowing down my face. Everyone was crying, like just at the first notes, because everyone knew how important this show was. That to me was thrilling.

[14:01] Billy Bustamante: If someone who had never encountered Once on this Island is listening to this podcast now, and they're inspired, what's the first thing they should do? Listen to it, watch something online, take a bus to Lincoln Center? Like what is the best way to encounter this show for the first time? I think I think listen to it. I think listen to it because it's so well written that you get all the story you need to get you get the full experience. It then lets your mind fill in the blanks in a really exciting way. And then you get to see how other people fill in those blanks when you watch YouTube recordings or watch other versions of the show. Because no version of the show, no two versions of the show are different. That's what makes it so good. Like the show is so well written that so many different artists can like come in, do their own thing with it, and it still say something wonderful, but also unique.

[14:51] Mo Brady: Special thanks to Billy Bustamante for sharing his stories with us today. The Ensemblist was produced today by me, Mo Brady. There are two great ways you can be helping The Ensemblist right now. One is by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts, and the other one is by becoming a Patreon member, which you can do at patreon.com slash The Ensemblist. Please follow us wherever you listen to podcasts, whether that be on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, or at our home of Broadway Podcast Network at bpn.fm. You can also follow us on Instagram to see the latest information from our website and our podcast feed. Thanks for listening. Until next time.

[15:43] Mo Brady: Bye.