Grammy-winning musician Joy Huerta and musical theatre songwriter Benjamin Velez didn’t know each other until they started working on scores for “Real Women Have Curves”. But they managed to write a Broadway musical together during record time.

Listen to this week’s “Stagecraft” podcast below:

The musical adaptation of the 2002 independent film and inspired the play's musical adaptation, "Real Women Have Curves" opened on Broadway on April 27. Huerta and Velez appear together variety The podcast "Stagecraft" says the two of them really started working seriously until the end of 2020, which means that in one industry, the standard for the project is that it takes at least seven years to reach Midtown, and the Real Women Owning Curve has successfully done this in five industries.

"it Once was Very fast,” Velez (“Kiss My Aztec”) agreed to “Stagecraft.” “It’s crazy five years from the beginning to Broadway! I'm working on many other shows, seven, eight, nine years, and we're still not on Broadway. Part of this is that everyone involved is eager, and with every new draft, we are pushing each other forward quickly. ”

Huerta is half the Mexican pop duo Jesse & Joy and has never written for the stage, but she has since fallen in love with the process. "It's like a dream I didn't realize I've had," she said. "It's just one of my favorite experiences in my life."

But for this particular project, the pandemic lockdown requires an unusual working process for the duo – they didn’t meet in person until a year and a half before they collaborated on the show. Until then, the two of them met only on Zoom.

It turns out that in this case, this is a good thing. "It helps because Joy plays the guitar and I plays the piano, and if we're both in the same room, it's hard not to bother each other every time we want to play an idea," Velez said. "On Zoom, we can mute, we can each fool different ideas, and then record a voice memo and send it back and forth."

Huerta added: "Like we amplify and mute each other together, we keep each other company without any sound. We both put forward the melody ourselves. We start to get excited, for example, 'I have an idea!' "I am too me too! ” In some songs, this process gets faster because each of us has different ideas and we think: One idea is great for poetry, and another idea is sometimes fast for such a bridge.

Huerta and Velez also explain how they made personal voices for each character on the show in the new episode of “Stagecraft” and explains how their own music and lyrical inspiration shape the development of the overall story. In the process, Huerta also revealed that although the "real woman" is open, she wants to continue to be involved in the drama.

"I'm rolling it out and I want to keep going on the Broadway musical," she said. "It's so good. I really like it."

To listen to the entire conversation, listen or download and subscribe to "Stagecraft" on the podcast platform, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Broadway Podcast Network, on the link above. New episodes of "Stagecraft" are released every other week.