Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. Critics called the musical Mexodus a thrilling multicultural hip hop history lesson and something truly dynamic. Now the show is back for an encore run at the Daryl Roth Theater on Union Square. It resurrects a little-known history of the underground railroad that ran south into Mexico. Researchers estimate between 5 and 10,000 people fled enslavement in the United States by migrating into Mexico, where slavery was fully outlawed in 1837. In the show, the history is reflected in the characters Henry and Carlos.

Henry is an injured slave who flees his Texas plantation across the Rio Grande, where Mexican sharecropper Carlos finds him unconscious and tends to his wounds. It is as much about the past as it is about the present, reminding us to lend a hand to those in need today. The musical is titled Mexodus. It is running at the Daryl Roth Theater. Whew. I'm out of breath. I'm sorry. At the Union Square. It has now been extended through Sunday, June 14th. Woo hoo. Its creators and stars, Brian Quijada, who plays Carlos, and Nygel D. Robinson, who plays Henry.

The two joined us to talk about the show a little while ago, but now they are here in Studio 5 with a big old bass and a guitar, and they are going to perform for us. Thank you so much for coming back to the studio.

Brian Quijada: Oh, my God. Thank you for having us.

Alison Stewart: All right, tell us about the first song we're going to hear.

Nygel D. Robinson: Oh, you got to come out hot.

Alison Stewart: All right.

Nygel D. Robinson: The whole thing about the show is that we come out as ourselves, introduce ourselves, and are like, we learned some history that you probably haven't heard about. We're going to share what we researched and what we learned in a groovy, fun way.

Brian Quijada: Yes.

Alison Stewart: All right.

Brian Quijada: Here's the first track. It's called Two Bodies.

[MUSIC - Brian Quijada & Nygel D. Robinson: Two Bodies]

Alison Stewart: Oh, we had a harmonica.

Brian Quijada: Just at the very end, little surprise.

Alison Stewart: My guests are Brian Quijada and Nygel Robinson. They are Mexodus, which is performing at the Daryl Roth Theater in Union Square. It's extended through Sunday, June 14th. Brian, you could have told the stories many, many ways. Why did a musical make sense?

Brian Quijada: Oh, wow, that's a great question.

Nygel D. Robinson: Musicals always make sense.

Brian Quijada: I love me a good musical. There's a reason why we're so proud of it, I think. It is as American as apple pie musical theater. I really, truly believe that music, they say it's the first language of humans. It's the first way we communicated was through rhythm, and beat, and melody. I just think it's so powerful to be able to sing these songs. We say we only sing in it because that's the way we live with it, and truly, I do believe that. By the end of the show, we get people singing with us, and it's just so powerful.

Alison Stewart: Why do you think musical makes sense for the story?

Nygel D. Robinson: Oh, I think the reason why we sing in a musical to begin with is because our emotions are so high and it's so heightened that we must sing. We cannot speak it. I'm one of those guys who's like, if I'm in a theater watching something, don't talk to me, sing at me. It's already ridiculous. Let's make it more ridiculous. We're only singing it because that's the way we're living it. Also, music is in the fabric of both of our cultures, and it's a means of protest, it's a means of revolution. Especially hip hop music in particular, that we're using a lot in the show style that we both grew up with.

Lin-Manuel, I do love this. I want to quote him. He said, "Hip hop is the language of revolution," and this show is a small part of a very general revolution and awakening that is happening right now. We have to use music in order to tell this story.

Alison Stewart: Brian, tell us what Carlos is about. What is he feeling in the show?

Brian Quijada: Yes, Carlos is-- Both of these characters are composite of a bunch of research, but Carlos is a veteran of the Mexican-American War, so he fought. He was a medic in the war and fled the war, and his brothers on the field was displaced, moved farther south into what is now has remained the southern border of the United States, and is a sharecropper now, is a farmer. His whole world is really kind of flipped upside down when he finds Henry floating in the river and takes him out, and goes back to his instincts of being a medic.

Alison Stewart: What's Henry's backstory, Nygel?

Nygel D. Robinson: Henry's backstory, when he was eight years old, he got split from his mom and other family members in Kentucky and got sent down to Victoria, Texas. We meet him when he's around 20 years old. He is an enslaved individual who, for I can't tell you exactly why he runs away. You have to come see the show for that.

Alison Stewart: Yes, you will.

Nygel D. Robinson: I don't want to give that up.

Brian Quijada: It's a secret.

Nygel D. Robinson: It's a situation where it's either be killed or kill and run away. He chooses to kill and run away, and he washes up on the shores of Mexico. Like Brian said, these people are composites, and there's a lot of us in them. Like the way I write, the way I think, there's a lot of that. Henry, very contemplative and musing and trying to figure out, like, "Why am I in this? What do these things mean?" Try and explore that in an artistic way. Like this next song is very musing on what it is, and then also using old spiritual to do so.

Alison Stewart: We'll get to the next song after a break. This is All Of It. You are listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. I'm in studio with Brian Quijada and Nygel Robinson. They make up Mexodus. It's an off-Broadway show about a little-known underground railroad that ran in Mexico. It's back for an encore run at the Daryl Roth Theater at Union Square through Sunday, June 14th. Before the break, you promised us a song.

Nygel D. Robinson: I did promise a song.

Alison Stewart: Wade in the Water. That's a Negro spiritual.

Nygel D. Robinson: Tis tis. Henry finds himself on the banks of the Rio Grande, and a storm is coming up. For this moment, I was like, I've used some juxtaposition. Like use this very-- I mean it's not calm, but it's like Wade in the Water, as if the water is calm, but using that in the mind to get through this storm. This is Wade in the Water.

[MUSIC - Brian Quijada & Nygel D. Robinson: Wade in the Water]

Alison Stewart: You are listening to Mexodus. My guests are Brian Quijada and Nygel Robinson. We just got a text that said, "This is extraordinary. Is there going to be a recording? Fantastico.

Brian Quijada: Yes.

Nygel D. Robinson: Interesting.

Alison Stewart: Will there be a recording?

Nygel D. Robinson: Yes.

Brian Quijada: There is. You can go to mexodusmusical.com and pre-order it. It's coming out on Audible, the Audible platform on April 16th.

Nygel D. Robinson: It is gonna come out on one of those days.

Alison Stewart: One of those days?

Brian Quijada: No. April 16th for sure. We're dropping the entire album to play through the Audible platform. Again, you can go to mexodusmusical.com and pre-order it.

Alison Stewart: Now, as you have expanded to the Daryl Roth Theater, what have been the challenges of taking this play to a bigger space?

Nygel D. Robinson: Well, it's not bigger.

Brian Quijada: It's actually less seats.

Alison Stewart: It is?

Brian Quijada: It's actually quite more intimate, which is quite nice. You really see us sweating up there and spitting. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: Oh, that's interesting.

Brian Quijada: It's great. It's only like eight rows deep, and so it's a truly-- You go in there, we are like, talking straight to the audience.

Alison Stewart: Oh my God.

Brian Quijada: Yes, it's amazing.

Nygel D. Robinson: It's a different kind of storytelling where you're not trying to play up to the mezzanine and play way, way back. We're like 10 feet away from the nearest audience member.

Alison Stewart: What kind of reactions have you gotten from people being that close?

Brian Quijada: Oh, people are more vocal. We invited. We say, "Hey, listen, you come here, you yell, you dance." People really chat with us.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting because there have been shows that have been at the Daryl Roth which have gone to Broadway. Is that something that you see for yourself for the show?

Nygel D. Robinson: If you say it out loud.

Brian Quijada: From your mouth to God's ears.

Nygel D. Robinson: Start a rumor that it's going to Broadway? Rumors are just manifestation techniques.

Alison Stewart: How does the show keep developing and growing over time?

Brian Quijada: Yes, go ahead.

Nygel D. Robinson: As the times get more turbulent that we respond to that, and different lines mean different things today than it did a year ago.

Brian Quijada: There's a line in the show that goes, "We are given reasons to fight and start wars." That hits different. A little different than it did two weeks ago, but little things like that, that I think, we wake up, and we're talking about Black and brown solidarity. You wake up to the news cycle, and we get to go to work every day.

Alison Stewart: I understood there was a line in the show about Cesar Chavez.

Brian Quijada: Yes.

Alison Stewart: Tell us a little bit about that and what you decided to do.

Brian Quijada: Just recently, obviously, the New York Times, a lot of news outlets came out with the allegations against Cesar Chavez, which is incredibly sad, and we feel terrible for the victims, and kudos in respect to California, changing it from Cesar Chavez Day to Farm Workers Day. There is a line in the show that was-- When we're talking about moments of Black and brown solidarity in history, and one of the places that we cited was Cesar Chavez joining to have a civil rights-- civil wrongs righted, we say.

We swapped it out with Dolores Huerta. It is amazing. I think artists should be a reflection of the times, of society, of our communities. That's one where we're like the art has to reflect what's going on, and we have to listen and be in solidarity with the survivors.

Nygel D. Robinson: Broadway is like, when you have to lock something for sure, for sure. Like, there's no changing it. It's immortalized, whatever. Being in a space where, like, off-Broadway is technically still, like, development, like, we can change things whenever we want. I like to think of plays and musicals as living documents until they have to be set in stone. This show is a living document, and if something happens and we catch it, we'll change it on the fly.

Alison Stewart: As artists, how do you see your role as artists in fostering these critical dialogues about the society we live in?

Nygel D. Robinson: I think we get to express feelings in a different way, rather than try to talk you into feeling something, we get to, [strums bass] what does that mean to the heart? Rather than words, but we get to put words on top of it. We get to sing out feelings. I think people don't like being preached at. They like being shown. If I can invite you in and try to get you in a moment, and not preach at you, but just show you something. I think my favorite thing about this show is that we're not preaching about solidarity.

We're showing you what it can look like. Like Brian hits a button for me, I'll record something. I hit a button for Brian. We're helping each other the whole time.

Brian Quijada: What it means for just two people to create an orchestra's worth of sound. What's amazing about being an artist is that we are able to create balms. I think people come into our theater thinking that they're going to-- the first third of the play is a slave narrative. Nygel goes into his ancestral history with it, but by the end, you are dancing with us and singing with us. I think it is an act of rebellion. It is a triumph to be singing in times of, I think, troubled times. It's quite moving for us, healing for us to be able to do the show, but also for our audiences, who I think need a place to sing and dance.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear one final song. What are we going to hear?

Nygel D. Robinson: It's called Libre.

[MUSIC - Brian Quijada & Nygel D. Robinson: Libre]

Alison Stewart: That was Brian Quijada and Nygel Robinson. They are part of the off-Broadway hip hop musical Mexodus. It's back for an encore run at the Daryl Roth Theater on Union Square through Sunday, June 14th. You should definitely go see it. It is a great, great show. The album is dropping-

Brian Quijada: -April 16th.

[laughter]

Nygel D. Robinson: Yes. That is the date we landed on.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for coming in and performing for us.

Nygel D. Robinson: Thank you.

Brian Quijada: Oh, you're the best. Thank you for having us.

 

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