The First Musical

This was our first musical. Ever. And of course, we chose one of the weirdest, boldest, and most technically challenging pieces out there: a dystopian satire about a world where people have to pay to pee.

A young revolutionary rises up against an evil corporation that controls public toilets, and chaos (& music) ensues. Written by Mark Hollmann, with music by Greg Kotis, and directed by yours truly.

Our cast, orchestra, crew and creative team.

Casting Chaos

Finding 16 people crazy enough to sing about toilets took three rounds of auditions. The cast: Regina Cañas, Adri Mojica, Gabriel Pinto, Oscar Guardado, Bryan Lestrange, Boris Barraza, Paolo Salinas, Emy Mena, Claudia Palacios, Jon Nite, Otto Rivera, Gabi Rivera, Bea Garzona, Majo Bustamante, Larissa Maltez, and Elizabeth Valdez. They'd end up playing more than 30 characters between them, and every single one delivered.

The Process

From day one, this was different. We spent the first month focusing on music and vocal work. Letting the cast build a real relationship with the score. We then layered choreography and movement, crafted by our movement director Elizabeth Valdez, who designed ridiculously smart and stupid dances to match the show’s tone. Yes, there were jokes everywhere - little nods to local productions and inside references for the theatre fans in the crowd.

The real test came during tech week when we completely restaged an entire musical number the day before opening. Flipped the whole thing, mirrored it. The cast didn't even blink. Just learned it and nailed it.

Adri Mojica (Hope Caldwell) during rehearsal.

The Underground

The set was unlike anything we’d done before: built on two levels, with an open gate and a half-pipe platform where the orchestra performed. At the center, a massive moving staircase that acted as a bridge between levels. Everything was in constant motion. We had no raised stage or performing platform - we staged everything directly on the painted concrete floor of our theatre. Oxidized metal sheets (láminas) dressed our walls, and smoke machines helped us build that dirty, dystopian atmosphere.

One of the visual elements we were most proud of was the integration of practical lighting directly into the set. We embedded exposed bulbs and industrial fixtures throughout the space - especially in the underground scenes - to create a raw, lived-in look. The glow of bare bulbs flickering against oxidized metal and concrete gave the world of Urinetown a claustrophobic, underground feel - like the characters were really trapped in a rusted, crumbling system.

The costumes were this perfect contradiction - gorgeous but falling apart. Majo Bustamante designed these outfits that looked like they'd survived the apocalypse but still had style. Rich leather jackets with deliberate tears, fabrics that were expensive but looked like they'd been dragged through dirt for months. The poor characters wore layers of distressed cloth that told stories - you could see where they'd been patched and re-patched. The corporate villains got sleek suits that were just slightly wrong - perfect tailoring but in colors that felt poisonous, or with subtle details that made your skin crawl.

Migue Siman (director) and Gabriel Pinto (Bobby Strong) during rehearsal.

The Music

Our musical director Jorge Gómez came in like a hurricane and turned our little theatre into a concert venue. This was our first time working with him, and watching him conduct was like seeing someone wrestle music into submission.

The Urinetown score is nuts - it jumps from rock to blues to jazz to whatever-the-hell-that-was, sometimes in the same song. Jorge made it all make sense somehow, even when the music was supposed to sound chaotic.

Having the band onstage changed everything. We couldn't just stick them in a pit and forget about them - they were part of the show, sitting on this half-pipe platform where everyone could see them. Which meant we had to completely gut our sound system and start over. The acoustics were a nightmare - live instruments bleeding into vocal mics, feedback loops waiting to happen, the whole mess.

Then there was the mic situation. Sixteen actors, sixteen wireless mics. Do you know what happens to wireless mics during a two-and-a-half-hour musical? Batteries die. Tape comes loose from sweat. Actors forget to turn them on after quick changes.

By opening night, our sound engineer looked like he'd been through combat. But it worked. Somehow, it all worked.

Emy Mena (Little Sally) and Bryan Lestrange (Officer Lockstock) on stage.

Opening Night

Opening night felt like walking a tightrope. The audience sat through the entire first half in complete silence. Not the good kind of silence - the kind that makes you sweat through your shirt and wonder if you've just ruined everyone's evening.

I kept peeking out from backstage, watching their faces. Nothing. Are they hating this? Did we completely misread what people want? Is this whole thing a disaster?

But then intermission hit and I realized - they weren't bored. They were processing. Trying to figure out what the hell they'd just watched.

Second act was a completely different story. By the finale, they were on their feet, cheering like we'd just all beaten the people from URINE GOOD COMPANY.

And I can’t forget: Paolo Salinas had to do a mid-scene costume change onstage because the two characters he played had to kill each other. You read that right. Read about it here.

Gabriel Pinto (Bobby Strong) during rehearsal.

The People Who Made It Work

Stage manager Ale Pira kept the chaos organized through 10 sold-out shows. Eight crew members handled the constant costume changes, mic swaps, and transitions that never stopped coming. I had the immense joy of doing lighting design - spent weeks figuring out how to make concrete and rust look like something you'd actually want to watch.

Our co-producers Alex Miranda and Ale Martin juggled an insane number of moving pieces while producer Chechi Santos held the whole thing together. She's the one who believed in this ridiculous idea from the start.

The final applause belonged to everyone else. Jorge leading the orchestra, Majo designing costumes that told stories, Elizabeth making us laugh while we learned to dance about dystopia. A whole team of people who decided that singing about toilets could actually be art.

A Bittersweet Goodbye

This production also marked the final bow for Teatro de Galerías, the first theatrical home of Black Coyote. Closing the space with this show felt fitting - loud, messy, and full of heart. We said goodbye surrounded by the people who built it with us.

“Urinetown is not a physical place, but a metaphysical one.” We’d like to think Black Coyote is the same.