Los Quijadas no se quedan quietos. Imagínate: Marvin and his youthful brother Brian play and play and make a house film collection they proudly name Critically Joking. Their dad and mom swear they’ll develop out of it, however after each summer time day stuffed with chores, they handle to squeeze in a film, a narrative, or an experiment in making folks giggle.

As we speak, most theatre of us invested in new work know their names or marvel at their boundless inventive ingenuity. Many know Marvin Quijada because the one with the strikes and Brian Quijada because the one with the phrases, however the true story of those two brothers exhibits extra overlap than we learn in present applications. Having grown up in Chicago, Marvin and Brian usually workshop new performs and musicals proper at house within the metropolis earlier than they go on to draw audiences nationwide. Whereas some bigger firms would possibly prioritize tried-and-true storytelling their subscribers will acknowledge, the Quijada multi-hyphenates show the worth in protecting issues contemporary, dangerous, and genre-bent.

Marvin’s new “silent musical” The Dream King lately charmed audiences at Teatro Vista with its raucous sense of play, its thrilling theatrical tackle silent motion pictures, and the elegant bodily storytelling that has been central to Marvin’s creative life. Cultural organizations have come to like him for his DJ, clown/mime, and digital artist work. Mexodus, Brian’s new musical with Nygel D. Robinson, had a restricted run on the Wirtz Heart on Northwestern College’s Chicago campus and has 2024 productions scheduled at Baltimore Heart Stage and Mosaic Theater Firm. Innovating kind by means of reside music looping and discussing how we historicize care amid atrocity, the musical gives hope for the way forward for American theatre. Additionally recognized for The place Did We Sit on the Bus and Someplace Over the Border, Brian has completely modified how I view musical theatre and who it could possibly be for. Audiences at each brothers’ exhibits really feel like house.

You is perhaps shocked to study that these two didn’t get their begin tremendous early as theatre children. Within the summertime, whereas different children of their neighborhood may afford summer time camp, they’d full chores round the home and squeeze in time to observe a film or make a house video. By this, they started to domesticate a way of play and pleasure by means of on a regular basis storytelling. With their dad’s over-the-shoulder digital camera, they explored sketch comedy to make their mates giggle. Critically Joking would loop of their grandmother, in a real household affair. Nice group sprouted from there as Marvin’s mates circulated their movies. And thru a household CD subscription and a job at Blockbuster, Marvin and Brian would achieve entry to motion pictures and music, falling in love with silent movies, Nineteen Eighties pop, and Golden Age Mexican music unexpectedly. And their reside looping performances? That’s what GarageBand was for.

However the brothers didn’t totally join the dots to their shared vocation till a lot later. The primary present that sparked their curiosity in theatre, Marvin mentioned, was Cabaret at Columbia Faculty, a manufacturing his mates have been in. 

“I bear in mind seeing it and being like, ‘Holy moly, this is likely one of the best issues I’ve ever seen,’” Marvin mentioned. “I’ve all the time liked my brother and I all the time liked sharing issues that I discover cool. And I used to be like, ‘Brian, I must take you to this present Cabaret.’ I liked sharing that with my brother. I noticed that present 4 occasions. It was so good. That was the primary present I ever noticed.”

Whereas Marvin was college-aged on the time, Brian was in center faculty. Brian recalled fondly how they purchased the Alan Cumming forged album and listened to it each night time, marveling on the intersection between political theatre and leisure, glorious efficiency and delightful writing and composition.

“Past that, it planted a seed—of loving that, of wanting to try this,” Brian mentioned. “I feel that’s what made me go audition for my first musical. It made me check out for the after-school choral program, as a result of I needed to do a musical, and you may solely do a musical if you understand how to sing. It was all due to that.”

As they set their sights on theatre, they continued taking in music and media at house, exchanging concepts and inspiration. Brian mentioned, “It began in the identical pool of concepts, in the identical pool of consuming a bunch of what was being performed in our home.” They each liked bodily work and the emotional energy of music, however in early maturity Marvin put the pedal to the steel on the previous and Brian on the latter. 

When you take a look at every of their items, you’ll see the overlap. The narrator in Brian’s Someplace Over the Border engages in clowning and bodily play, and Marvin’s The Dream King incorporates unique compositions and soundtracks they liked rising up. Although their household didn’t include working artists, their dad and mom’ creativity fueled them.

Regardless that they hoped the children would prove docs or, as Marvin put it, “one thing that will have a sustainable monetary way of life,” mother Reina and pa Eduardo understood whence their children’ creativity and drive sprouted: She liked to sing, he performed guitar, and each would dance. The brothers, in some ways, honor their household of their work.

“They have been all the time proud,” Marvin mentioned. However their dad and mom have been from El Salvador at a time the place artists weren’t incomes a residing. So the brothers labored additional onerous to show to their dad and mom that they might do it, not solely severely joking but additionally severely creating.

“My dad would depart at 4 a.m., come again at 6 p.m., go to sleep at 8 p.m., as a result of he needed to go do it once more the subsequent day,” Brian mentioned. “We noticed their work ethic, and I feel it both was handed on in genetics, or we simply noticed it and we’re identical to, okay, let’s work as onerous as they’re working.”

Additionally they honor their dad and mom extra straight: Marvin’s silent theatre is designed to resonate past spoken language, and Brian’s musicals heart border politics. The brothers have realized that they create for his or her household, for people like them to really feel seen.

As we speak, the fact of artists of coloration incomes a residing has began to look extra doable to the Quijada dad and mom. When Reina and Eduardo got here to the US within the ’70s, the alternatives have been few and infrequently hole. Each onstage and within the viewers, the brothers mentioned, their dad and mom are the form of of us they need on the theatre. So the brothers have continually seemed to Teatro Vista and the corporate mission of giving Latiné artists and artists of coloration significant work when others wouldn’t. 

In its early days, ensemble member Sandra Marquez shared, Teatro Vista wanted to prioritize get funded, market themselves, persuade funders they’d promote, and construct a large viewers base. That’s extremely onerous work for a corporation of coloration, contemplating the U.S. historical past of constant erasure. As an example, a 2021 report discovered solely 3 % of staff in media are Latina. Fortunately, firm conversations immediately are extra about nurturing the artwork than about how Teatro Vista will battle to outlive. Now that it’s a women-led Latiné multimedia theatre firm, co-artistic administrators Wendy Mateo and Lorena Diaz are setting precedents by making house to experiment with new work, style, and multimedia.

“The {industry} will develop if it chooses to develop and the folks inside it select to develop,” Marquez mentioned, trying on the industry-wide shifts towards repairing relationships with artists of coloration.

Nonetheless, Diaz worries whether or not the Quijadas’ specific brilliance will proceed to be cultivated with beneficiant rehearsal rooms. The panorama hasn’t all the time recognized how to create space for modern artists of coloration.

“I would like the American theatre panorama to maintain these brothers,” Diaz mentioned.

Reflecting on their most up-to-date new work tasks, The Dream King and Mexodus, Marvin and Brian prioritize relaxation, one thing neither is especially accustomed to given their fixed hustle. Brian invoked composer Michael R. Jackson’s “helpful procrastination” follow. “It’s only a matter of fixing the vocabulary,” Marvin added. “Relaxation changing into a luxurious,” he mentioned, feels detrimental. They contemplate, once more, Reina and Eduardo.

Aside from relaxation, the brothers’ inventive processes make house to deliberately invite inspiration. Marvin cited the Picasso axiom that inspiration finds you whenever you’re working. Brian has drawn power from Anne Lamott’s Fowl by Fowl: Some Directions on Writing and Life and Rick Rubin’s The Artistic Act: A Approach of Being. He’s thought of a piece “achieved” or “prepared for now” not when “you’re feeling like you’ll be able to add extra, however truly when there’s nothing else to remove, when there’s nothing else to subtract.”

Whereas comparable, Brian and Marvin’s paths, pursuits, and strategies led them to distinct creative personas. Brian has deeply loved writing new musicals however waited some time earlier than entering into Mexodus. 

“I discovered an article years in the past on Fb,” Brian mentioned of the present’s inspiration within the true story of a Mexican community for escaped enslaved folks from the U.S. “I bear in mind copying, pasting it and placing it in a Notes web page on my telephone, of performs that I wish to write. I assumed, I can’t write this alone. I knew that was true. And second, I used to be pushing aside discovering a collaborator, as a result of I knew what number of books I’d should learn and analysis I’d should do.”

After he met with musician Nygel D. Robinson, the pair wrote nearly by means of the pandemic, their friendship blossoming alongside the story. Following a previously enslaved man’s flight to Mexico, the story’s central friendship, between Nygel and Brian’s characters, feels transferring, therapeutic, and actual. Certainly, the occasions of this live-looping hip-hop musical are primarily based on varied legends and tales of extraordinary survival. And the expertise of Mexodus feels stuffed with historical past however doesn’t play like a historical past lesson. It’s extra like an pressing prayer, a battle cry.

“Between me, Nygel, and our dramaturg, Tlaloc Rivas, we learn the whole lot that there’s, all the wars, all the battles,” Brian mentioned of the usually painful analysis that included search and needed adverts. “There’s a wonderful fantasy a couple of runaway slave who floated on the Rio Grande on a bale of cotton. We thought it was stunning, as a result of the factor that enslaved this man was the factor that made him float to salvation. So what we did was, we ended up taking these bits and items—as a result of there isn’t one story of a person or a girl that we may observe. There simply isn’t sufficient. There isn’t sufficient analysis. It was secretive for a cause. There may be not lots of documentation on it. We ended up taking composites of all of those tales.” 

Speaking to Marvin about his course of, it doesn’t sound all that totally different from his brother’s. Although The Dream King is a really totally different form of story—about an on a regular basis man who falls in love with a girl in his goals—Marvin mentioned he crafted particular world-building lore and guidelines primarily based on actual human feelings and experiences. Having a forest of foot flowers, because the protagonist of The Dream King does, is probably not a typical expertise, however battling psychological well being and dependancy is, as is looking for some restoration magic in an imaginary world. Devising alongside and riffing off of co-directors Sandra Marquez and Alice Da Cunha, Marvin devoted mind house to the connection between the protagonist, magical facets of his goals, and on a regular basis life.

“This notion of constructing a world which you could’t poke holes round could be very precious,” Marvin mentioned. He goals to create a spot, he defined, “whereby an viewers can are available, sit again, and undergo the mythology of no matter that particular creation is. Perhaps in different variations there shall be much more specificity in regard to the foot flowers’ powers and the world. However this notion of making a world is improbable, as a result of then you’ll be able to create your guidelines after which you’ll be able to break these guidelines. A few of my favourite theatre is whenever you break guidelines, as a result of then it begins to doubtlessly really feel harmful.”

Marvin seems again on Child Prince and Pablo, a present he co-wrote together with his brother, very fondly when talking of valuing care within the rehearsal room. “Like with The Dream King,” he mentioned, “it’s vital to construct a room of individuals I belief—and who discover me humorous!” That definitely applies to their work collectively, as each brothers mentioned a number of occasions that every was one of many different’s favourite performers. The 2 are contemplating a few concepts to put in writing collectively, realizing they really feel particularly courageous round one another to take dangers mixing music, bodily theatre, and multimedia with tech. 

Some future tasks and goals embrace the opportunity of audio performs, and the innovation current in Marvin and Gabe Ruiz’s graphic novel collection Detective Q. They hope for extra tasks with illustration that doesn’t segregate—i.e., they might like to work with siblings throughout totally different backgrounds. And after laying a basis of tales primarily based in their very own expertise and reality, they mentioned they’re excited to inform extra sorts of tales, and to interrupt away from trauma narratives.

After coming off the extremely bodily The Dream King, Marvin is DJ’ing with Idris Goodwin at Milwaukee Rep in addition to with Chicago Shakes. In the meantime Brian is taking Mexodus across the nation. However they’re nonetheless dreaming up what’s subsequent, and so they have one another’s again all the way in which.

“The one means I can really feel assured in being who I’m as a performer is that if I’m round love,” Marvin mentioned of their shared expansiveness when collaborating. “If there’s love, then I’m courageous. And if I’m courageous, then I’ll go anyplace. But when I’m not courageous, then I’m gonna journey very small.” 

The brothers smiled to one another. 

“And so,” Marvin mentioned. “I’d relatively be courageous.”

Gabriela Furtado Coutinho is the affiliate Chicago editor for American Theatre. gcoutinho@tcg.org

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