Nico Juber
Interview Highlights
We need more women in decision-making positions so they can be champions for women-centered stories.
Imposter syndrome is real. We need to give ourselves permission to be good at the things we’re good at.
It’s important to have women doing all different kinds of work in the theatre industry to serve as role models.
We need to build a strong infrastructure that includes funding to support the development of new voices in theatrical spaces.
Find Nico Online:
Website: www.nicojuber.com
Nico’s Current/Upcoming Work:
Check out Millennials Are Killing Musicals at 54 Below on April 4!
Bio
Nico Juber (she/her) is an award-winning musical theatre composer, lyricist, bookwriter, Millennial mother of two, and 20-year cancer survivor. Her songs from Millennials Are Killing Musicals have been selected for and performed at the Artists Striving to End Poverty (ASTEP) Art of Wellness Benefit, A Little New Music, The Latest Draft Podcast, New York Theatre Barn's New Works Series, McGuire & Simon Songwriter’s Salon, Feinstein’s/Vitellos mostlyNEWmusicals, The Green Room 42, and Feinstein's/54 Below. She is a member of Dramatists Guild, ASCAP, Maestra, and Ring of Keys. Her sci-fi short musical, Holo, won one of the top awards in the 2020 NAMT Challenge. Holo had its premiere at the Beck Center for the Arts (with Baldwin Wallace Music Theatre, directed by Ciara Renée) in Spring 2021 and was chosen for the 2021 Broadway OnDemand Short Film Festival. She recently won the Drama League Light the Lights Challenge for the song “Our Next Act” (with collaborator Selena Seballo), performed by André De Shields at their benefit in October 2021. Nico holds a B.A. from Tufts University and previously worked in high-tech marketing. She gives back through her small nonprofit for other cancer survivors called Thrive/Survive Los Angeles.
“Womanhood is central to my writing, which is a reflection of who I am and how I see the world.”
Meet Nico
Hayley: We are here with the wonderful Nico Juber. Nico, can you please share your pronouns and tell us a little bit about yourself?
Nico: I’m Nico Juber. I’m a Los Angeles-based musical theater writer - book, lyrics, music. I am also a playwright and producer, and I use she/her pronouns.
Hayley: Could you tell us about how you came to your creative work?
Nico: I am a “geriatric” millennial, and I did a career pivot after my first career. But I’ve always been a creative, a writer, a musician.
I had cancer - Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma - when I was 19, and that really shaped my career trajectory, because there was no Obamacare at that point. I knew that I needed to have health insurance, and it really narrowed the types of jobs that I could go for. It put creative aspirations out of my head as a viable career path, despite the fact that I come from a family of creatives - it just didn’t seem realistic for me at the time. I had always been interested in high tech, so I did that for 15 years, and had an incredible career in marketing. Then I made the very “sensible” decision to jump into theatre writing in my late 30s, after I had had my two kids - my daughters are now 6.5 and 8.5.
Three years ago, I had a break between two jobs, and I finally had time to myself for the first time in ages. I just sat at the piano and started writing, I didn’t know what I was doing, and I wrote a musical. Which is a very strange thing to do, but a little less weird because my parents have written musicals together. So I knew it was possible, but I didn’t know it was possible for me.
Nico’s Creative Work
Amy: Can you tell us about what you’re working on creatively right now?
Nico: I’m still working on the project that I started writing three years ago, Millennials Are Killing Musicals. It’s a Millennial fairy tale about finding authentic happiness in a social media-filtered world. It centers women and motherhood, and the core of the story is about peeling back these filters that we’re putting on our lives and working through them to resolve our generational existential crisis.
Amy: I think it’s a thing that a lot of people can relate to. Especially in the pandemic, when all we’ve had is our social media-filtered views of each other.
Nico: Exactly. I have another show that is at a very early stage of development, with a collaborator named Selena Seballo. We wrote a song together for the Drama League and were one of the winners of their TikTok songwriting challenge, and the song was performed by André De Shields last October. Our new show, Reset, is very early in the writing process.
It was very strange to be coming into the musical theatre industry during the pandemic shutdown, especially as a new writer. I was very depressed, like a lot of people. And I did the NAMT 15-minute musical challenge and ended up winning one of the first-place awards. That show is a sci-fi mini-musical called Holo, and it was produced by Beck Center for the Arts and Baldwin Wallace about a year ago. That’s how I got my full Dramatists Guild membership.
Now I’m back in Millennial land. We have a 29-hour industry reading in New York, and then we’re doing a 54 Below show on April 4, both directed by Ciara Renée. I have also been working with Sami Pyne, from Evan Bernardin Productions. In addition to doing book, lyrics, and music, I’ve been self-producing, in large part thanks to producing classes I took with Theater Resources Unlimited. I have this business background, and I thought, “Why not? I’ll do that, too!”
Hayley: Wearing all your hats at once.
Nico: I would love to empower more women to self produce and learn the business side of things. So often as writers, we sit around thinking someone’s gonna pick us up and…
Amy: Make things happen for us.
Nico: Sometimes you just have to take charge of your situation to get the ball rolling, or at least learn as much as you can to be a good partner to any future producers you end up working with. Especially if you are getting signs from the universe saying you’re on the right path. For example, Millennials was an O’Neill semi-finalist last year and again this year, and it was a NAMT semi-finalist last year. You look at those signs and in the spirit of Jonathan Larson, like we just saw in the movie Tick Tick Boom - you put it up, get it in front of people, and let them respond to it.
Amy: As moms, we are producers of our lives and our families’ lives. “These are the resources I have, how do I use those resources to make things happen?”
Nico: I think moms are the ultimate producers. Project managing, coordinating, getting scrappy, the flexibility, being able to pivot, those are all the skill sets that you need. I’m a member of Maestra and a sub-group called Maestra Moms. I’ve loved being a part of it and connecting to the other folks there. It’s been incredible to have that, and then it’s also really eye-opening. There are maybe 150 people in the group, and we’re spread across all facets of musical theatre, so the majority aren’t writers.
Hayley: We’re often told as young creatives, “If you want to be a mom, you’re not going to be able to do this.”
Amy: That you have to choose one or the other.
Nico: This is across industries. I have friends who are lawyers who are asked, “Are you planning to have kids?” But that will affect whether you’re on the partnership track. Men are not asked these questions.
I am in a very privileged position to have a spouse who can watch my children when I come out to New York. That is not a possibility for a lot of people. And my kids are old enough now that I can be gone for a few weeks. These past two years especially, when I couldn't travel and was able to do a lot of networking and laying the foundation of my career in a Zoom environment - as a mom, it was really helpful, because it is a harder thing for me to hop on a plane and be in New York without a lot of planning.
Amy: Virtual theatre, virtual networking and virtual creation of theatre has made things so much more accessible.
Nico: Absolutely. In April, it will be 20 years since my cancer diagnosis, and I’ve been in remission this whole time. I’m a cancer survivor, and I will deal with the side effects of the treatment that I had for the rest of my life. I’ve always worked remotely. That’s been a huge piece of accessibility for me, the flexibility to not have to spend the time commuting and to be careful with my energy. There are a lot of people who have invisible disabilities and other things that impact accessibility - and Zoom has created this wonderful opportunity that if you aren’t able to physically be in a space, you can still partake of it.
Hayley: I love how it’s created a more global community within our industry.
Nico’s Creative Mission
Hayley: Nico, can you tell us about your creative mission?
Nico: It took me a little while to figure out what my voice was creatively as a new writer. I’ve got Millennials, which is a comedy with heart, and Holo, which is a sci-fi dystopian future. These are really in different realms. The common thread I’ve found in my writing is that my stories center women. I identify as queer. I’ve known I was bisexual since I watched The X Files when I was 12. I’m sure that’s a lot of people’s story, right? And because I am queer, I also want to make sure that queer stories are represented in my writing.
Another big thread in my work is our relationship with technology, whether it’s now or in the future. Millennials engages with the way technology has shaped our generation, particularly through social media filters, and the way that we interact with technology is also prominent in the piece I wrote for NAMT. So you never know what you’ll get from me, but there probably will be some techie element.
Amy: It combines your two careers. Where you come from and where you’re going!
Nico: It does! I have this very strange skill set and background that have come together in this specific way for this new career, but all of my life experiences have informed my writing. Knowing and trusting that my creative voice is always there has been a big part of the process as a new writer, because I thought, “Well, I did this once. I don’t know if I can do this again.” I think any writer can relate to that.
Hayley: Being a writer IS imposter syndrome. I’ll have weeks where I’m great. And then I’ll fall on my face and feel like, “This is really hard and I don’t know anything.”
Nico: Literally every minute of every day, I have those thoughts. It’s been a big process of discovery, of saying, “Oh no, I actually do have these skill sets.” Women especially tend to suffer from imposter syndrome, and I’m like, what would the guy do in this situation?
Amy: Right. What would a mediocre white man do?
Nico: I’ve had to give myself permission to be good at this, which is a weird thing to say.
Thoughts on Womanhood
Hayley: Nico, how does womanhood fit into your identity? What does being a woman mean to you?
Nico: Recently, I did this marketing exercise for a part-time gig where I was asked to go through my bio on LinkedIn and take out any references to “she” or “her" to make it read as gender-non specific. I felt like I was taking something away from my identity. It informs so much of who I am and my path. It created empathy for people who are forced to use pronouns that don’t represent them. I think everyone should try this exercise to see how they feel about their pronouns and what they relate to. Womanhood is so central to my writing, which is a reflection of who I am and how I see the world.
Also, something I’ve been thinking about lately - when are you the right age as a woman? People think I’m younger than I am because I have a young face. I was always too young for everything in my marketing career. And now, I feel like, “Am I going to be too old for things?" I feel like we’re avocados. You’re not quite ripe, and then you’re overripe. What day are you ripe? I’m hoping that maybe we don’t have to be avocados anymore. Maybe we can be perpetually delicious avocado toast that never goes bad.
Amy: How has being a woman benefited you as an artist?
Nico: To me, the thing that’s exciting about being a woman musical writer is that the field is so open to tell women’s stories. There are endless opportunities. One of the challenges, though, is that if you’re working with a producer and a team, it could be for the rest of your life. If you have a hit show, these are the people you are married to forever. I’m really interested in seeing a lot more women and people of other gender identities in lead producing positions, because I think they’re going to be the ones who are interested in championing and being married to women’s stories for the rest of their lives.
Hayley: How do you see that your gender has limited you as an artist?
Nico: The same answer - we need to have more women in decision-making positions, which is absolutely starting to happen. There’s this real tradition of mentorship in theatre, which is starting to happen for women too, but I don’t know if people actually believe that a woman can do all of the things at once. People say, “Oh wow, book, music, lyrics, and producing? Really?” And I’m like, “If Lin-Manuel can write, direct, act, and everything else he does, there is absolutely no reason that I can’t do this.”
Amy: Theatre operates on such an apprenticeship model and when people are picking apprentices, they usually look for people who are similar to them. So because we haven’t had women in leadership positions to pick apprentices, it makes for a small pipeline.
Nico: 100%. And I think that’s changing. Some of the organizations that are training the new writers of the future are really thinking about those things. But on a very practical level, people don’t seem to know what to do with me as a self-producing writer. I don't know if that’s because I’m a writer, or because I'm a woman, or both.
Hayley: Probably both. What a gift though! For younger folks coming up, it will be very inspiring to see. That’s a gift that you’re giving to all of us to model that, so thank you.
Nico: I don’t want it to sound like there haven’t been women that have done this, because there have absolutely been. I’m thinking of that highest level of commercial success that we’ve seen for men in the industry, time and time again: the ownership of the story, music, and process. I would love to see more Maestras hit that level.
Amy: The women who have come before us have laid the groundwork for us to get where we’re going, and we will lay the groundwork for the women who come after us.
Mentorship Experiences
Amy: Have you had influential mentors who have affected your journey in theater?
Nico: All of the women in Maestra that I’ve connected with. My mom has also been a big influence and mentor. My mom is a bookwriter and lyricist, my dad is a composer. And my mom’s father - my grandfather - was Sherwood Schwartz, who created Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch. So my mom and dad wrote Gilligan’s Island: The Musical and A Very Brady Musical together, along with my uncle.
Seeing them do this was like, “This is a normal thing to do.” It didn’t seem impossible for a woman to do this, because I had a model of what that looked like. My sister is also a pop song writer, and she’s nominated for two Grammys. She is a songwriter on the Lil Nas X album, and she is also nominated for Best Rock Song for a song she wrote with Weezer called “All My Favorite Songs.”
Thoughts on Work/Life Balance
Hayley: Nico, how do you balance your creative work with the rest of your life?
Nico: Like everything in motherhood, it shifts all the time. Now, this is what I do full-time. I left corporate work a year ago, and I am a full-time musical theatre person
Hayley: That’s such a huge thing to be proud of.
Nico: It’s a leap, right? It’s also a confidence thing. I don’t lose 15 years of marketing experience by doing this. I know that I have these skill sets to fall back on. But I’ve got to do this now, also to serve as a model for my kids in pursuing the thing that I’m really passionate about.
In the beginning, when I was working full-time in marketing, it was all nights and weekends. My husband would take the kids to the beach and I would write all day, which is a giant luxury to most moms. You try to sneak in the creativity when you can. At the start of the pandemic, it was way crazier with the kids home on Zoom school. So how do you balance it? If you feel like you have to do this, even if it’s five minutes, you figure out the bit of time where you can do it.
For me, that comes as a result of lots of privileges, especially having my husband here, who can keep the kids out of the room so I can finish a song or finish a thought. Many people are in a position where there just is no time for it. Because at the end of the day, whatever is going to be paying the bills has to come first to take care of your family.
How to Improve the Theatre Industry
Amy: Nico, if you could make a change to the theatre industry, what would it be?
Nico: More funding opportunities for self-producing women. It’s really expensive to do a 29-hour reading in New York. The more of those opportunities, especially focused on women and other underrepresented groups, the better. For a truly new voice, having some kind of support can be transformative, and that usually costs money at the early phases. There are some wonderful organizations, like New York Theatre Barn, who are out there doing this kind of work already.
Also, being able to have great demos. You only get one chance to make that first impression, so having more grants or opportunities open to people for packaging themselves. There are some great grants available to newer writers, but historically, people who win have achieved a certain amount of success. I’d love for there to be smaller opportunities to fund the early packaging, branding and demos.
Amy: Yeah, it would be cool if there were smaller micro grants available. When you’re just starting out, $500 can go a long way.
Nico: Yes, micro grants, or donating studio time to make a track or two - that can make a difference in people rallying behind a project or people being able to submit to some of these opportunities. If you have a great recording of one or two songs, you can start submitting for those things and building your resume and building interest in what you’re doing. For a lot of these awards and festivals, you submit three or four tracks in the first round. Having an infrastructure to provide more of these things would go a long way to getting new voices out there.
Final Thoughts
Amy: Nico, what are you most proud of in your life?
Nico: Absolutely my kids. I’m proud of them and their resiliency through these past few years. I’m proud of how proud they are of me for what I’m doing right now. Mommy’s a musical writer.
Amy: You’re going to make me cry.
Nico: I also have a small nonprofit that I run with a friend of mine, Sunshine, called Thrive/Survive Los Angeles. That’s something I’m also tremendously proud of. We do a monthly support group for post-treatment young adult cancer survivors. This past week, I was talking to a woman who is a little earlier in her survivorship journey, and she was asking me, “What have you been able to do since your treatment?”
There were so many unknowns at that point in my life. I was told, “We don’t know if you can have kids” because of the chemo that I had. To look back on the past 20 years since cancer - I have fallen in love, had two kids, jumped out of an airplane. I wrote a book on survivorship. To have had the career that I’ve had in marketing. My life went in so many different directions that I never thought were possible. That is one of the things that I’m really proud of. And as an elder millennial, I’m knocking on 40, so I’m just about to enter my Sondheim genius years. The best is yet to come.
Hayley: Nico, this was amazing. Thank you so much for chatting with us.
