Conversation with Joe Barros, Artistic Director of NY Theatre Barn

Broadway ReFocused is in conversation with Joe Barros, Artistic Director of New York Theatre Barn, home for new culture shifting musicals during incubation. Joe is a New York-based stage director and award-winning choreographer working on Broadway, Off-Broadway, regionally, and internationally. Joe recently directed and choreographed two national tours of “A Charlie Brown Christmas”, the new musical “Love and Yogurt” in New York, “Aida” in Singapore, and “A New Brain” at Five Towns College on Long Island. New York Theatre Barn has programmed over 30 new musicals in their New Works Series since March 2020, uplifting and including diverse stories, voices and writers.

BR - S1, E5 - Conversation with Joe Barros, Artistic Director of New York Theatre Barn

Spencer Williams: Welcome Joe Barros, the Artistic Director of New York Theater Barn, to Broadway ReFocused today. We're really excited to have you. We're excited for multiple reasons. One of the things that we've been talking about in class is about the musical RENT, which for me, and for others, our age has been a pretty formative musical in our life.

And so we're excited to hear a little bit about that, but then we're also excited to learn all about the New York Theater Barn and the new musicals that you've been producing and uplifting new voices. So, why don't we start with a little bit of your background and how you got into musical theater and what you're doing today.

Joe Barros: Sure. So, I grew up in a little town called Pacifica, California, a few miles South of San Francisco, a surfer town. I got to see the beach everyday. Never, never appreciated it.

When I was five, I had seen a production of The Wizard of Oz at my local community theater. And then a few years later they revived it. So my mom said, "Well, do you want to audition?" So, there's this picture of me being held by the scarecrow and there's pee running down my leg. I peed my pants in the two-hour show, but I wanted to stay and get a picture with pee all over my leg, with the scarecrow.

So, it meant a lot to our family -- pee on the leg meant a lot of our family, I guess. So, I went and auditioned for the show. Everybody had a script, I could dance. We didn't know I got up and did the choreography. They had scripts and I said, I don't need it. I know the words. So, I got cast as a munchkin.

It was a community theater production. And then I was in like the next 25 shows, at that theater, the Pacifica Spindrift Players, and then everything just sort of grew from there. I got to go to the San Francisco School of the Arts High School, where I studied theater. We weren't allowed to do musicals and I did musicals outside of the school and one of those places was called the Young People's Teen Musical Theater Company of San Francisco. And we did real musicals and that's where I really got to dive into doing Sondheim. And we did a review, one of the first shows I did was called the "90's on Broadway" and RENT was a part of it. So, around that same time, when I got connected to the Young People's Teen Musical Theater Company of San Francisco, and I got to leave my little small sheltered town of Pacifica to go to the San Francisco School of the Arts High School, SODA.

I began to discover RENT. A friend of mine, Rick, had the CD and I, took it home and I hid it under my pillow because it had a drag queen and I had never seen characters like this. And about that same time, I also discovered William Finn's Falsettos, which began as March of the Falsettos and Falsetto Land.

And so for the first time ever, I found a musical, Rent and Falsettos that felt like me -- made me feel special, made me feel seen, made me feel represented. And what I didn't really understand then was that these were stories about queer people on the stage, just being queer, not focusing on, what makes them extraordinary and special, but what just makes them normal in society. I really discovered that I thought I wanted to be a director when I was working with the Young People's Teen Musical Theater Company because I felt really empowered there. Diane Price, the director said, "No, you're going to be a director." She really listened to me.

I felt I had so much to offer. I spoke up about ideas and how we were telling stories and how to make them even stronger and more exciting for both us and the audience. So, I discovered Falsettos, and it just blew my mind. My grandparents died of AIDS in the 80's. My grandfather had a blood transfusion and passed it to my grandmother.

And again, this is why RENT felt so close to home. These did not feel like foreign people. They felt like people I knew. I should also note that all of my dad's friends were dying of AIDS while his parents were dying of AIDS and it was called GRID then -- Gay Related Immune Deficiency. And each week my father would bring home a new stack of CDs from another person that had died at his work or a partner.

So, this was very real and very much a part of my history. I thought I have to do Falsettos and I have to direct it. And this was 2000 and I got Alicia Humphress and my friends who were alums who were in Beach Blanket Babylon. They were already out of high school, I was just a junior. Alicia was about to go off to Boston Conservatory, Anna Tie Bergmann was in the show as well.

And I contacted the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. They're men who mock the Catholic Church and raise money for charities. And they dress as clown nuns, it's a really extraordinary organization. They said, if you come on pink Saturday of PRIDE, the Saturday before -- for every person you bring, we'll give you $50 and you have to stand around in the Castro and you have to collect funds.

So, I raised all the money. I produced Falsettos. I got the rights from Samuel French. I was 17. I had no idea what I was doing. I just had a need to do it. My dad built a set in my backyard and we loaded it in like we were a professional company. And it was the best production anyone had ever seen on this stage. The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, were like, "Woah, we thought we were coming to see a bunch of kids" and they left in shambles.

My father was weeping. It created closure for our family and it said, you know, "I see you and I'm going to tell our story." It was very powerful and it was sort of a coming of age for me, discovering that I wanted to guide artists to their own discovery. I wanted to lift people up and be able to tell more stories like this.

Spencer Williams: That's amazing, Joe.

How'd you go from there, from producing in your backyard to working in New York City? What was that jump like for you?

Joe Barros: One of the biggest parts is my privilege, in that I had incredible parents, and they gave me a lot and, you know, they paid for me to go to college.

They worked hard so that I could have an opportunity that they actually didn't have. My father never finished college. And my mom went back to school to get her business degree when I was like 12 years old. My parents worked very hard, but they wanted me to have everything that I want and they're not from the theater world.

So, they gave me that, I went off to the Hartt School as a musical theater major. I was excited about the school because it was two hours from New York. And, two hours from Boston where a lot of my friends went and I knew that the Goodspeed Opera House nearby had done the original Annie. And now Blair Russell, who's from Goodspeed is actually on the board of my theater company cause I met him cause I directed Spencer's show at the Goodspeed Opera House. We're all connected. And that the Hartford Stage was nearby and that the Hartford Stage was the first theater company directed by Graziella Daniele to combine March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland in an evening called March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland.

And so that was a big deal in 1990. In fact, sorry, '91. I ended up at the Hartt School. I was a musical theater major there, and we did new musicals. That was one of the coolest things we had new musicals, published shows, Shakespeare, Moliere, everything.

 And when I was a Senior, I got to choreograph both of them, The Singing Cowboy and Weinsberg, Ohio, and I was in The Singing Cowboy. Even though I really didn't want to be, and I was really miscast, but I was being given an educational opportunity to fail beautifully. But when I was a sophomore, there was a musical called I Married Wyatt Earrp, and I made fun of this show.

I said, Wyatt Burp, this is stupid. I don't want to see a musical about the Wild West. And this is a musical about the women of the American West, a story rarely ever told, and the Jewish wife of Wyatt Earrp, this is why Wyatt Earpp, legendary frontier lawn man, is buried in a Jewish cemetery, Colma, California. And it's an all female musical.

I saw this show and it blew my mind. This girl from San Francisco travels to Tombstone with a Pinafore on wheels company. She has adventure and love. Wow. This is the stuff of musicals. Basically I'm going to fast track that story. And I told those writers that I would one day produce their show and I moved to the city in 2007, I created New York Theater Barn, which is a home for original culture shifting musicals during incubation. And I had this need with my friend, David Rigler to create this home, for new musicals to empower and lift up writers and, new stories, stories that we need to hear from, from writers that we haven't heard from, along with Sheila Ray, who was the lyricist and co-book writer of I Married Wyatt Earpp.

Which has subsequently become a show called The Belle of Tombstone. And we created the company and we did produce that show Off-Broadway in 2011 as a co-production with Prospect Theater Company, starring Carolyn McNeeney and Heather McRae, who was in the original Falsettoland in the Original Broadway production of Falsettos.

So, it really came full circle and that's how I got to be at New York Theater Barn. And that's how I became an accidental producer or Artistic Director and curator of new amazing works.

Spencer Williams: That's amazing. So, within your work right now with New York Theater Barn, I know you've been working really hard through the pandemic.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about the New Work Series, that you had started pre pandemic, but then also how you've continued that New Work Series.

 Joe Barros: Sure. Well, to quote a very famous lyricist "Art isn't easy". And for some reason it seems like it got even harder, but what I've been trying to examine and evolve and communicate to people is that, it has gotten harder, but what can we do? There's so much we can do. And I've been stealing Lauren Latarro's words, our great choreographer of Waitress, an amazing director. She says "If you're ready, it's time to return. We are essential. We are fundamental," and she's right. Things are happening. We are getting back to work and for those who feel comfortable, it's great.

However, we don't want those who feel uncomfortable to feel excluded in a world that we're struggling to make inclusive and demanding. The New Work Series is now in its 13th season, which sort of blows my mind. And since the pandemic began in March, we have done 29 installments. The series usually brings together two musicals. Each has 35 minutes in their concert presentation with some basic staging elements and we present the show for 30 minutes, for some of these shows it's the first time they've ever been presented or the first time on their feet. The writers learn a lot about truncating and making their shows leaner by seeing a "commercial" of it.

We have two different audiences that get to see each different show, because two different shows are bringing in different groups of people that they know, plus we're bringing in industry people. We also film everything for a global audience, so those videos would always be available a month or so after the presentation.

And they've helped those writers get more attention. People buy their sheet music, or people want to produce their show. But now somehow with this "limitation is creation" New Work Series. That's now gone virtual, starting in March, we're somehow we're able to reach even more people. So, now we do about an hour long show, 45 minutes, and we present two songs from each show and a robust conversation with the writers and the creative team, with recorded and live performances by Broadway performers, some students. We have students of Western Carolina University and we also had an installment of four musical theater writers under 20.

Which was really, really exciting. I should also note in the midst of creating this New Work Series, which has an installment this coming Wednesday, we did also evolve our Choreography Lab. So, we did two virtual installments of that. And earlier this summer we presented: Tessalon Buoy and Raja Feather Kelly who's the choreographer of Pulitzer Prize winning A Strange Loop. They each presented pieces and then last Monday we presented excerpts of a musical number from the show Suenos and a musical number from, I Don't Want to Talk About it.

This was the first time that  both of those musicals were presented on their feet. They had been previously presented in our New Work Series. Both were performed live by actors in real spaces at Broadway Dance Center, wearing masks, performing live to a virtual audience.

So, that was very, very exciting. And in the midst of all that, we also did a round table, that included a conversation about inclusivity with Stephanie Ybarra, Daniel J. Watts, Ken Davenport, Joe Iconis, Kirsten Childs, Byork Lee and Jerry Mitchell. Can't believe I remembered all of that, but I've written so many grants in the past week that I should know that.

And then we also created Theater Barn Records, which is an imprint of Broadway Records, focused on original musicals in development. And, with Broadway Records, we released our first album Willow, which I don't even know how many streams, it has over a million streams on Spotify.

It's on its way to recruitment. It's about 60% right now and it debuted at number seven on the Billboard Cast Album charts. So, a lot of great things have come out of evolving our programs and focusing on what we can do versus what we can't right now. And like I said, that sexy, sexy catchphrase is "limitation is creation".

Spencer Williams: That's amazing work that you've done over the last, what? Six, seven months. That's a lot.

 Joe Barros: Thank you.

Spencer Williams: Can we go back a little bit about the Choreography Lab? Why is it important for a musical? You know, you talked about seeing the New Works in front of an audience, like as a concert. But what about the dance?

Like you do something very specific at New York theater Barn, and I want people to fully understand that Choreography Lab.

Joe Barros: Sure, so the bigger picture thing is that we're trying to get the world to understand the importance of incubation and development and how to examine a new musical while it's being worked on. And that development is important. So many times producers don't want to spend the money and everybody wonders how a show got there. Well, a lot of money needs to be put into a show's journey and nurturing a writer and their team on evolving that story. So, the Choreography Lab is a platform for choreographers and writers to collaborate on movement for new musicals during incubation.

And this is the only platform in the world that I know of that does this. Quite often a show will open out of town and everyone will wonder why the choreography isn't working. And so then they'll fire the costume designer. I'm being silly, but that's what happens if the choreography isn't the thread of the show.

With Suenos, the writer learned so much about the number because that number actually had never been performed before. It was a new song that he had just worked on and we achieved a lot.

In that, we created a platform for the choreographer, Kristin Nancy, to be showcased as a choreographer, a woman of color, who also was mentored by a woman of color, Maria Torres, who is the associate choreographer of On Your Feet and does In the Heights everywhere around the world. And Twan Melanowski  -- he's an Asian American choreographer. We got to empower him in his work and he was mentored by Tony nominee, Joshua Bergoss, plus Ben Kaplan, the writer, got to learn a lot about his storytelling and it was the first time that his song, the pill song was on its feet, where the protagonist is visited by, the various pills that he's interested in taking it, each have a different personality, musical style and physical way of moving.

So, by staging a number, especially in a time where it feels virtually. Sounds weird to say that word for virtually impossible. Cause it's not virtually impossible. It's impossible to bring people together. We had to, we felt it necessary. So, we're keeping theater alive by keeping incubation and development alive.

Spencer Williams: Going back to RENT, we've learned that, when Jonathan Larson started to conceive RENT, it was back in 1989 and it took till 1996 to hit Broadway. And that was a long time in its development. Do you see that as a similar track for other musicals? As you've developed, these works like -- seven, eight years. Is that a normal thing? How does that play out now?

Joe Barros:  I think every musical is different. Every story is different and every journey is different. But I think now more than ever everything has changed, so the rules are meant to be broken. Everything should be thrown out and I don't focus so much in the commercial world. I focus on stories that need to be told and people who need to tell them and people who need to see them. And then if they're good, they make their way to the top where they make their way to whatever the top is for you.

You know, Broadway, isn't the end all be all. But I will say that the shows that have won the Tony for the past few years are the shows that don't have a lot. Shows that are stripped down versions that have no set or have no walls, or they are told in the round or are told in a conceptual world with musicians on stage where actors tell a story and those shows are Once, Fun Home and Hadestown. You know, they're really about the story and the storytelling.

Spencer Williams: What other shows are you looking at right now? How do you get to know new works or new voices as they come through New York Theater Barn? Is it a submission or is it something that you're looking at or at this point, you know enough writers and enough people that these kinds of fall on your lap type-of-thing.

Joe Barros: Right now we have a lot of people who are submitting. We have people who, other writers are telling us about other writers, or reaching out to a lot of our New York Theater Barn family members who are writing new pieces or lifting up their piece from the past once again. I'm really excited about Truth Bachman and Truth's new musical Shapeshifters, which is a queer comic book musical, which, you know, allows queer non-binary and transgender characters to just be who they are. They don't always have to be in a story where they're coming out or where other people are denying their identity. Jamie Jarrett is also writing another fantastic comic book musical called Wonder Boy.

Spencer Williams: With Broadway being shut down, with COVID giving us a pause to really kind of think about Broadway and the racism that we see on Broadway.  We've seen a lot of people of color come out and talk about their experiences on Broadway. We have new organizations that are calling theater artists, theater organizations, to show up better and not just say it with a mission statement that there actually needs to be people of color on boards, producing, and casting rooms, et cetera. So, we have this pause right now. What do we need to do so that we continue this really important work?  And then how do we make that so it actually gets on Broadway so that these diverse  stories are being told to a bigger audience?

Joe Barros: The sort of obvious response is like, it starts at the top and it does, so that's a thing, but what is the top and who is at the top? And isn't there room for all of us at the top. And the answer is yes. There's room for all of us. So, I think it starts with you. It starts with me. It starts with us. We all have to listen. We all have to write our stories. We all need to support and lift up other stories that we don't know. Now I can't direct a show that I want to direct that I have no experience coming to the table with. Does that make sense?  So, for every artist, I think their journey, their stories and their work is evolving right now. But like we said, it does start with the top and it starts with the people that represent you and your company. So, for me it's important that on the staff of New York Theater Barn, on the advisory board of New York Theater Barn, and on the board of directors of New York Theater Barn, that there are representation for all of the people and all of the stories that we do.

Spencer Williams: Absolutely.

We have 10 quick fire questions that we ask everyone who comes on. So we're gonna do it really quick. Okay?

Joe Barros: Sure.

Spencer Williams: What was the first musical you ever saw?

Joe Barros: The first musical I ever saw was The Wizard of Oz.

Spencer Williams: Favorite musical of all time?

Joe Barros: Falsettos.

Spencer Williams: A musical guilty pleasure?

Joe Barros: Smile.

Spencer Williams: What high school musicals were you in?

Joe Barros: Company, Funny Girl, Into the Woods. Side Show. Pippin. Pajama Game.

Spencer Williams: Your high school did Side Show.

Joe Barros: The Young People's Teen Musical Theater Company did Side Show.

Spencer Williams:  That's amazing. Your favorite piece you've directed?

Joe Barros: I have to say that, Aida that I did a year ago in Singapore was pretty special because I never thought I'd be directing Aida. And I never thought I'd love the show so much. I had the incredible opportunity of doing the show at LaSalle College of the Arts. And I got to set the show in the 2011 Egypt revolution, during a protest, riot.

And basically what happens is in the pre show a police officer attacks a woman and she becomes a news reporter and she starts standing up and she sings "every story". And there's two cameras that are wireless that are filming it, like for the news live and it's projected in the background and she inspires the protesters to tell the story of Aida as a protest using only what's around and in the end, you sort of find out through the signs and everything that president Mubarak is overturned through the power of the story that I'm telling the story through protest. And it was in Singapore where protest is illegal. So, I got to sort of empower my cast and teach them about protesting.

One of the things I asked them was if you could fight for something that you believe in, what would it be? And it's all the things that you and I take for granted for, that we already have, or that our country says we have, but don't but you get the idea.

Spencer Williams: Very cool.  What is your dream show that you would like to direct?

Joe Barros: Wow. Well, I'd really love to direct Falsettos, like on the big stage, and to do it a different way. And I'd really, really love to resurrect Smile. The Marvin Hamlisch/Howard Ashman musical. It's a spoof of the eighties written in the eighties.

And I think, it's time to resurrect this story about image and women, and honestly For Tonight and more, shows written by you. Cause I think you are a really incredible storyteller and For Tonight is an amazing show that I share with my students all the time.

Spencer Williams: Wow. Thanks, Joe. A few more... your favorite cast album?

Joe Barros: It's the compilation of March of the Falsettos and Falsettoland on the two Off-Broadway discs combined.

Spencer Williams: Love it. One of your favorite theater companies that you've worked for or with ?

Joe Barros: I would have to say Out of the Box Theatrics and Transport Group. Out of the Box Theatrics sees all of their work outside of the box - in found spaces, not theaters. And they've given me opportunities to really create there, including, a production of Alice in Wonderland that I wrote for children at Alice's teacup, the Alice in Wonderland themed restaurant. Performed by actors with disabilities. And then I did my first show ever in New York with Transport Group called Normal about a family struggling with their daughter's eating disorder.

And it was directed by Jack Cummings, whose wife is Barbara Walsh, who was Trina on the original Falsettos.

Spencer Williams: Amazing. And then our final question for today is can you tell us a quick snapshot or moment you miss about live theater? Anything?

Joe Barros: I miss watching the audience watch the show. That's my favorite part. That's just so thrilling to see it differently each night and to see how they react to the work that we've done. And I think I also missed that circle -- the circle before we go on stage for those of us that like to do it, there's something powerful. In high school and community theater, we always pass the pulse.

It was so special. In our teen theater company, we used to sing the song called Rose Rose.  I missed that sort of checking in with everybody before the show. It's almost, it's almost religious. It's like this, this incredible moment. Like we're going to change the world together.

Like there's an energy you can't even see.

Spencer Williams: Now that you mentioned the circle, it's like making me all emotional. I miss that as well.

Joe Barros: It's so important, because it's like our individual energies meet to become a collective energy for that day. And it's never the same sort of what everybody's bringing to the group.

Spencer Williams: Absolutely. Thank you so much for sharing part of your story today and telling us about these new works at New York Theater Barn and everything that you're doing. Thank you for doing that work, especially throughout this pandemic and giving new writers an opportunity to find their voice. I know I really was grateful for New York Theater Barn presenting For Tonight. And it was as a writer, you have something in your head and to see it in front of people is a magical experience and also a very scary one as well. But thank you for giving that gift to so many writers, Joe, I don't know if you told that very often, but thank you.

Joe Barros: Well, thank you. And that's very, very kind of you, and it's a privilege to get to be a part of that journey for all these writers. It's a privilege to get to speak with all of you. So, thank you for the amazing work that you're doing.