Joel Trinidad’s ‘big leap’ to NYC yields play, ballet and short film

We’ve always loved working with seasoned actor-writer-director Joel Trinidad. Perhaps more than his professionalism and time-honed reliability, it’s his wit and sly humor that have made our professional interactions with him more than merely satisfying—from the 1995 Cayabyab musical “Alikabok” (Dust) and Finn and Lapine’s “Falsettos” to Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret” and the 2010 straight play “The Male Voice.”

But while we’ve always known what Joel was capable of doing as an actor, his surprising foray into the New York theater scene is nothing short of impressive—and we’ve only heard about it after he booked his first theater show, Patricia Goodson’s one-act play “Aging is Not a Fairy Tale,” one day after he auditioned for it and got the role!

“It was my first paying gig in New York City, and I got it from just my second-ever face-to-face audition, so I really lucked out,” he told us late last month, just as he was wrapping up the production’s three-week run under Robert Liebowitz’s direction. For context, as Joel is wont to do, the homegrown Filipino actor told us last Dec. 1 that he didn’t want to mislead people and give them the impression that the show he just did was a huge production. He pointed out, “It was just an Off-off-Broadway show with a tiny budget!”

Fast-forward a week later, Joel shared on Facebook a photo from his first rehearsal for his latest show “A Dancer’s Christmas,” followed by another picture of him outside its venue, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, with the caption, “Limited run of ‘A Dancer’s Christmas’ at Alvin Ailey. From Off-off-Broadway to Off-Broadway…one more ‘off’ to go!” Such wit!

We must admit that Joel’s move to New York with his actress-director wife Nicky Triviño caught us by surprise because we just wrote about the updated version of his self-penned musical “Breakups and Breakdowns” and his well-loved dad, Noel Trinidad, last April. How did the “brave” decision come about?

Next creative leap

Joel said, “In the middle of the pandemic, my then-girlfriend Nicky and I started thinking about what we could do to get back in gear, artistically speaking, once the world opened up again. She, like me, is a performer/playwright/director, and after such a long time away from live theater, we thought it would be good for us to take the next creative leap forward.

“Our first idea was to take classes in New York, a place we’d both dreamed of living, and arguably the ‘Center of World Theater’ (along with London’s West End). As we explored our options, we realized that what we really wanted to do was work in New York rather than just study.

“It was then that Nicky reminded me that there was a special working visa granted to established artists. I figured, why not give that a shot? As it happens, a close friend of mine had been granted that same kind of visa years earlier; so I asked her for the contact details of her immigration lawyer and consulted him about it.

“After reviewing my case, he said I was a good candidate; so we started the application process. A little over a year later, Nicky and I (now married) got our green cards. A few months after that, on Aug. 5, 2023, we were in NYC.

“We didn’t have any concrete plans or job offers. All we had was our luggage, our life savings, a tiny room in a boarding house in Queens, and a few enthusiastic local theater contacts we’d made through the years. It was definitely one of the most ill-planned immigrations ever, and will make a great success story one day … as long as it actually ends in success. Time will tell.”

Joel may have made his terrific feat look easy, but he knows as much as any full-time theater actor worth his salt that getting one’s foot in the door is never easy. How did he get the role of the Narrator in “Aging is Not a Fairy Tale”?

“In September, a month after we moved here, I decided that I’d settled in enough to start looking for work,” he recalled. “Over here, most auditions—even the ones for the biggest of Broadway shows—are posted on online career platforms. You sign up for membership and post your resumé, photos and acting reel. Then, when you see a job you want, you pretty much just click to apply and the other party gets your entire profile.

“If you’re lucky, you’ll get a message asking for a self-tape or, better yet, an invitation to a face-to-face audition. The latter is what happened to me. The day after my audition, I got word that I had been cast as the Narrator in ‘Aging is Not a Fairy Tale,’ a one-act play by first-time playwright Patricia Goodson.

Numbers game

“It was my first paying gig in NYC, and I got it from just my second-ever face-to-face audition in NYC, so I really lucked out. (It’s just an Off-off-Broadway production, but it’s a start!)”

We told Joel how “badass” it was for a Filipino actor to get cast in a straight play—after all, most homegrown Pinoy performers have a better shot at roles in musical theater than plays … for obvious reasons. Will he be pursuing roles in musical theater as well?

“Yes, ‘Aging is Not a Fairy Tale’ is a play rather than a musical,” he said. “I do intend to eventually audition for musicals. But since I’m more an actor than a singer, I’ll need to train my voice a bit more—OK, a lot more!

“In the meantime, I’m happy to focus on looking for nonsinging roles in plays, commercials and films, of which there are literally hundreds—with more posted every single day. (I spend hours every day just going through all the listings online! Who knew that looking for acting gigs would be a full-time job on its own?)

“It’s definitely a numbers game, and the hard work does occasionally pay off. After almost a month of rejections, in the last week, I’ve been cast in a dramatic reading, a short film, and a ballet. Don’t worry, in that last one, I play another narrator—not one of the dancers. Progressive though New York may be, I don’t think it’s ready for that yet.”

In this interview, Joel also talks about the plays he’s written and the stark contrast between auditioning in Manila and New York.

The rest of our Q&A with Joel:

Can “Aging is Not a Fairy Tale” be appreciated by theater aficionados in Manila?

It is about fairy tale characters—in this case, the Queen from Snow White, Prince Charming, the Three Little Pigs, Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin—and their struggle to find meaning and purpose in the latter years of their lives.

It starts out as a comedy and gets a little serious toward the end as it touches on not just aging, but also such varied topics as substance abuse, wealth inequality, even deforestation. The show seems to have resonated with people over here, especially seniors; and although it contains a few references to current New York ads and trends, I think some Manila theater patrons might enjoy it, too.

The play’s three-week run just ended. Did you think your extensive acting experience in the Philippines helped you land the role?

We closed on Nov. 26 to a more-than-full house. (I’d have called it “standing room only,” but many of our audience members were too old to stand for an entire show… haha!) I think my experience helped in that I was able to show the director, Robert Liebowitz, a wide range of characters, voices and accents in my audition and throughout the rehearsal process. Shortly after the first rehearsal, my role was expanded. I don’t know if there were already plans to do that before I came into the picture, but Robert did say, based on what he saw I could do, that he wanted to give me more stage time, so …

What’s your takeaway from the play and from this whole new experience?Takeaway No. 1: Everything is different. There are hundreds more acting jobs here than in Manila … but much more competition for them, as there are thousands more actors to fill the roles, many of whom are willing to work for less money—or literally no money, just to get some kind of career momentum going. You need to go online to find any theater job, and most of the time, when you apply for one, you won’t hear back at all—so even just getting an audition is a major achievement. Audition panels have a kind, warm and welcoming energy, unlike the “Prove To Me That You’re Worth My Time” vibe some panelists exude back home. (You know who you are.)

Takeaway No. 2: Everything is the Same. The stories about past productions shared in the dressing room; the anxiety about whether there might be more people onstage than in the audience; the concern about whether the ones who show up will like or loathe the show; the tingly, nervous energy in the wings right before the lights go up; the thrill of seeing familiar faces in the audience; the stifled laughter onstage when someone messes up a line; the camaraderie; the spontaneity; the laughter; the tears; the pure rush of joy at curtain call … It’s the same theater life, just in a different place.

Could you talk about your short play that made it to the New York Theater Festival?

It’s a farce called “Food Fight”—a 10-minute four-hander about an extremely posh restaurant that takes the concept of high-end service to ridiculous extremes. It’s based on a time when my family was in an expensive restaurant and my Mom had the temerity to ask the waiter for—gasp—Maggi Seasoning!(To say more would be spoiling the show.)

I wrote the piece in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, because I was stuck at home (just like everyone else in the world) and had run out of excuses not to write.

You also have a play that’s about to be published in a literary magazine. If memory serves, didn’t you also have another play that was featured in a festival or series or anthology of sorts on Broadway some years ago?

Every year, there are literally dozens of theatrical festivals in NYC and all over the US, and since 2010, I’ve been submitting my work to as many of them as possible. This time around, an online magazine called Fleas on the Dog will not be producing my short play “Take That, Sucker!,” but “publishing” the script in its December issue. (The piece is about a pair of schoolchildren who try to convince their principal that their history teacher is a vampire.)

So far, I’ve had four of my short plays produced here in NYC over the years—”Food Fight” will be the fifth. Most of the producers I’ve worked with have been small, independent theater companies who didn’t care that the playwright was living 13,600 kilometers away and unable to attend any of the shows! Sadly, I have not yet had anything produced on Broadway. But hope springs eternal. INQ

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