Janine Robledo and David Mallamud

JANINE: Growing up, my parents used to blast the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim in our living room every Sunday morning. I always watched "Into the Woods" and "Jesus Christ Superstar" on videotape. My siblings and I would even improvise our own fractured fairy tale versions of musicals, like one which we called "The Lizard of Oz".

DAVID: My mother was very musical and used to sing songs from Tommy and Guys and Dolls to me as a toddler, so my first experience with theater was really through music. I grew up surrounded by it and became obsessive early on, moving through various phases: Led Zeppelin, glam metal, then a cover-version phase - I became fascinated by famous artists reinterpreting other artists’ songs. From there it was The Rocky Horror Picture Show, rock opera more generally - especially Tommy and The Wall - and then musical theater, where I’ve been ever since. Jesus Christ Superstar was my gateway.

JANINE: I started writing stories and poetry in first grade. I also took piano lessons, but did not want to read the notes, so I would often play by rote. Sometime around middle school, I started writing songs on my keyboard. I was a piano performance major in college and then in my late twenties I went to see "Wicked" at the Adrienne Arsht Center. I think that’s the first time that I remember wondering if I could write a musical, because it combined everything I loved into one art form. When I saw that NYU had a graduate musical theater writing program, got brave, took out loans, and that was that.

DAVID: I played guitar - first rock, then classical. In rock, writing your own music is basically assumed, so I just kind of wrote; not writing didn’t seem like an option.

I was drawn to through-composed musicals because I loved the idea of using popular music, very broadly defined, over an expansive form outside of classical music. I was especially inspired by composers like Andrew Lloyd Webber, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Stephen Flaherty, and Alan Menken. In very different ways, they each showed me how expansive musical theater could be, and how composers can still sound unmistakably like themselves across different styles.

JANINE: I think I'm drawn to genre bending stories that blend comedy with philosophical themes and raw emotion. Most of my stories are about complex female characters, mythology, sci-fi, neurodiversity, and the latinidad.

DAVID: I’m drawn to writing scores that create a distinct musical world. My instinct is to let each piece find its own musical identity while still feeling guided by a single voice. That probably goes back to my love of cover versions: the idea that very different musical languages can be filtered through one point of view. Whatever the musical world, melody has to come first for me, and while subtlety has its place, I usually gravitate toward music that’s heightened and fully committed.

JANINE: David and I have such a fun collaboration because he sends me music first and then I plug lyrics into his catchy melodies. Our process is like a meta-puzzle that my brain really enjoys solving. It gets even better when something you write builds a bridge between you and the world - because suddenly, your fun music puzzle becomes an emotional bond with people you've never even met. For me, that's when it becomes truly magical.

DAVID: When things click. Sometimes that means something I’ve written connects with an audience - sometimes it’s the private feeling that something has locked in and I’ve hit on what I was reaching for.