Grammy-winning musician Joy Huerta and musical theater songwriter Benjamin Velez didn’t know one another earlier than they began working collectively on the rating for “Real Women Have Curves.” But they managed to put in writing a Broadway musical collectively in document time.
Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast under:
A musical adaptation of the 2002 indie movie and the play that impressed it, “Real Women Have Curves” opened on Broadway on April 27. Huerta and Velez, showing collectively on Variety’s “Stagecraft” podcast, stated the 2 of them didn’t actually begin collaborating in earnest till late 2020 — which signifies that, in an trade the place it’s normal for tasks to take at the very least seven years to make it to midtown, “Real Women Have Curves” managed to do it in 5.
“It was very fast,” Velez (“Kiss My Aztec”) agreed on “Stagecraft.” “Five years from starting to Broadway is crazy! And I’m working on so many other shows where it’s seven, eight, nine years and we’re still not on Broadway. Part of it was just that everyone involved was so eager, and every new draft, we were just pushing each other to go quickly.”
Huerta, one half of the Mexican pop duo Jesse & Joy, had by no means written for the stage earlier than, however she’s since fallen in love with the method. “It’s like a dream I didn’t realize I had,” she stated. “It’s just been one of my favorite experiences in my life.”
For this explicit undertaking, nevertheless, the pandemic lockdown necessitated an uncommon working course of for the duo — who didn’t meet in particular person till they’d been collaborating on the present for a yr and a half. Up till then, the 2 of them had solely met over Zoom.
It seems that on this case, it was a great factor. “It was helpful because Joy plays guitar and I play piano, and if we both had been in the same room, it would be hard to not be bothered each time one of us wanted to play around with an idea,” Velez stated. “On Zoom, we could mute ourselves and we could each fool around with different ideas, and then record voice memos and send them back and forth.”
Huerta added, “As much as we were on Zoom together and muting each other, we were keeping each other company without any sound. We were both coming up with melodies on our own. And we started getting excited, like, ‘I have an idea!’ ‘Me too, me too!’ On some songs it made the process go so much faster because we each had such different ideas and we thought: Well, maybe one idea would be great for the verse and the other idea would be great for the bridge. Things like that. Sometimes a song got pieced together so quickly that way.”
Also on the brand new episode of “Stagecraft,” Huerta and Velez clarify how they crafted particular person sounds for every of the present’s characters and defined the ways in which their very own musical and lyrical inspirations formed the event of the story general. Along the best way, Huerta additionally revealed that, though she’s going again to touring along with her band now that “Real Women” has opened, she needs to remain concerned in theater.
“I’m putting it out in the universe that I want to continue doing Broadway musicals,” she stated. “This has been wonderful. I enjoy it so much.”
To hear the whole dialog, hear on the hyperlink above or obtain and subscribe to “Stagecraft” on podcast platforms, together with Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the Broadway Podcast Network. New episodes of “Stagecraft” are launched each different week.
