By Rebekah D. Mason
I saw this play the other day for the third time. I saw its world premiere at Baltimore Center Stage and just a few weeks later, I saw it in the District of Columbia at the Atlas, but I just had to see it again. I have also booked tickets for the fourth time and I will get to experience its closing performance in DC this Saturday, June 15. Mexodus is a live looped musical created by Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, directed by David Mendizábal, and stage managed by Shayna O’Neill. It features at least 12 musical instruments and is truly a banging good time.
Have you ever been utterly transformed in one 100 minute sitting? Have you ever looked across a room at a perfect stranger and somehow seen yourself in their story? Ever walked into a room filled with hundreds of strangers and left as a part of a community? Have you ever experienced something so beautiful, that you were left connected, in solidarity, with all of humanity, suddenly aware that the air you breathe is a gift from your ancestors?
I have. Imagine walking into a room to discover that you are surrounded by all of your ancestors, hundreds and hundreds of those who came before you and, for better or worse, they bring with them stories which have never been allowed to be spoken aloud, let alone written down. No one ever got the chance to tell these stories on a mountain, they were whispered-secrets, hidden under bushels, in the dark of night. Consider your family and your friends and each of your communities’ who came before you all united, as you witness together their wildest impossibilities conjured into life on stage. Are you ready for this?
If you have made it thus far, into the audience of Mexodus, and I very much hope that you do, then buckle up for a truly fantastic voyage where you will travel through both space and time with Nygel D. Robinson, and Brian Quijada—your tour guides on the odyssey yet to begin. The music is bumping, and the vibe is hip as these men embrace their musical instruments and offer bouncy notes to you as you are radically welcomed into the space. Scenic design by Riw Rakkulchon creates a modern space uniquely overlaid with authentic historic context. There are instruments both hidden and displayed prominently around the space, guitars, a piano, and a red accordion hangs in a corner. There is a turntable and other sound equipment center stage amid this rustic barn setting. You can sense it, feel it in your bones, you are in for something wholly revolutionary.
And every time they perform this show, they are changing the world. What the entire creative team of Mexodus has done is taken seeds from the talented minds of Robinson and Quijada and grown it into this expansive and intimate garden, tilled with the dreams and hopes of Nygel’s and Brian’s ancestors, and my ancestors and yours, and they just give it to us and to the people who will come after us.
Impeccable sound design led by Mikhail Fiksel teamed with additional sound technicians in the booth support Robinson and Quijada in the creation of a live-looping experience while they share the story of the Underground Railroad of formerly enslaved Black people who ran toward freedom in Mexico, where slavery had already been outlawed. Quijada plays a Mexican war veteran, Carlos, and Robinson portrays a formerly enslaved Black man, Henry, in search of his own freedom. The audience bears witness to these glorious truths, unearthed as if from a time capsule, while our two performer-creatives stay busy impressively revitalizing and revolutionizing, the musical theater landscape. They are boldly (re)imagining and markedly (re)inventing and (re) defining, (re)purposing and ultimately (re)claiming what musical theater can or should be.
Folks have compared (and will likely continue to compare) Mexodus to Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. I understand why folks may think Mexodus is like Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, but even a ‘hip reimagining’ of our nation’s settler colonial roots is still the same whitewashed history, glorifying oppressive, white supremacist, slave-owning colonizers pursuing genocide, which we’ve all been force-fed to celebrate as part of the birth of a ‘great nation’.
Mexodus is not that.
Breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly to us, Nygel reflects on the village of family support that surrounded him and his mother as he was born. He calls on the names of the family members who came before him and invites us to consider what we have done lately to honor the debts our ancestors paid for us. This quiet invitation is a universal call to action but feels deeply personal. Brian later kneels before a makeshift campfire to warm his hands, then breaking the fourth wall, recounts a memory of learning to fear those who were different than him. He challenges us to consider what it might be like if we chose not to be afraid of those who are different from us.
As the story of Mexodus unfolds on stage, something is awakened inside of me which I cannot ignore. I am more connected to community than I have been all my life. I see my own work as a Mexican American poverty lawyer and advocate working toward peace, justice and equity might just be the greatest inheritance I have ever received. Quijada embraces the songs and cries of our shared Latino people as he strums his guitar and sings and cries out about the life he longs for free from oppression, effortlessly transitioning from bilingual to Spanish and back to English again.
My life’s work, I begin to understand, has been composed of actions and lived responses to the dances and marches toward freedom that Black and Brown bodies have shared for generations before me. It is a piece of my story I see on stage, and maybe yours. And it is a story of Black and Brown people, who have at times rallied together against all odds, to form some of the most impactful and united fronts against mutual oppressors.
A moving lighting design by Mextly Couzin, floods you magically with stormy seas and rains connecting you even deeper to the show. I was overwhelmed as I watched Carlos and Henry celebrate their respect and friendship even as Henry prepares to take his next steps in his daunting and hope-filled future, as a free man. As Robinson turns his back to the audience to leave, and he sings out that he is free, to everyone and to no one in particular, Robinson’s voice is sweet perfection and the warm amber lighting together make for truly magical theater.
By the time the 100 minutes of the show come to a close, you see that these two men have revealed before us a profoundly intimate message in a bottle, both a warning and a comfort, todos estamos juntos en esto; we are all in this together. Whether or not we are ready, this call permeates throughout the show. It is meant to be carried away with us and we are asked to pass it along. Why is it that the caged bird still sings? Because he is prepping for the day that he will be free!
I was prepared to urge you to do whatever you could to experience Mexodus in DC’s Atlas Theatre before it closes June 15. But they are sold out! Now you will have to travel to experience the show. Mexodus is heading to the Berkeley Repertory Theatre next where the team expects to begin rehearsing in August and to open in September.
