Él y Ella Is Coming to Camp
2026 Guild Hall William P Rayner Artist-in-Residence - Jaime Lozano, Florencia Cuenca & Adrian Alexander Alea
Photography: Jessica Dalene
Jaime Lozano, Florencia Cuenca, and Adrian Alexander Alea bring their new musical to Drama Club Camp for an intensive Commercial Takeover
This summer, the artists behind Él y Ella are leaving the starts, stops, commutes, and calendar gymnastics of city development behind.
Writers Jaime Lozano and Florencia Cuenca, director Adrian Alexander Alea, and their collaborators will gather at Drama Club Camp in Mount Vernon, Maine, for an intensive developmental workshop devoted entirely to the next chapter of their new musical.
The residency is presented by Drama Club in partnership with Straighten Your Crown’s Development Initiative and will lead to a free public performance at Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium this December.
Inspired by the true story of two Mexican artists who fall in love and move to New York on a whim, Él y Ella is both a romantic comedy and an immigrant story. It follows a couple building a life through art while remaining connected to their roots and raising their Mexican American son.
The musical’s vibrant Spanglish score draws from mariachi, cumbia, ranchera, corrido, and norteña traditions and is performed by four multi-instrumentalists. The result is a story that is deeply personal and culturally specific, but expansive in its questions: What does it cost to build a life as an artist? What do we carry with us when we leave home? And how do love, family, ambition, and identity evolve when they all have to share the same small New York apartment?
For us, Él y Ella represents exactly where the musical goes next.
It is joyful, theatrical, emotionally direct, and unmistakably born from the lives of the artists creating it. It also arrives at Camp with a formidable development history, including support from The Johnny Mercer Writers Grove at Goodspeed Musicals, Guild Hall’s William P. Rayner Artist-in-Residence program, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and Rhinebeck Writers Retreat.
Now, the team is ready to put the entire musical under one roof.
The Commercial Takeover
Drama Club’s Commercial Takeover model is designed to replace fragmented development with immersion.
Instead of squeezing rehearsals between other jobs, losing hours to transportation, or stopping just as the room begins to unlock something important, the full company takes over our 65-acre campus. Writers, directors, performers, musicians, and designers eat together, work together, and remain in conversation with the musical throughout the residency.
The goal is not simply to generate pages. It is to create the conditions for meaningful leaps.
“At Drama Club, we are committed to giving extraordinary artists the time, space, and support they need to create work at the highest level,” says Drama Club Founding Artistic Director Shannon Morrison. “Él y Ella is exactly the kind of musical we want to champion: deeply personal, joyfully entertaining, culturally specific, and universally relatable. Bringing this team together in an immersive environment gives them the freedom to move faster, dig deeper, and arrive in New York with the strongest possible version of the show.”
Director Adrian Alexander Alea will lead the staging and narrative work during the residency. He joins Lozano and Cuenca alongside musicians Yahir Montes, Hugo Moreno, and George Sáenz; choreographer William Carlos Angulo; Mexican music producer and longtime Lozano collaborator Demián Cantú; and cinematographer Julian Alvarez.
A Partnership Built for the Next Step
The takeover also marks a new partnership between Drama Club and Straighten Your Crown’s Development Initiative.
Led by Nicole LaFountaine, Straighten Your Crown provides the commercial infrastructure and management expertise necessary to help ambitious new work move from development toward large-scale production. Its nonprofit Development Initiative centers the belief that artists should receive a living wage while creating.
That combination makes the partnership a natural one: Drama Club creates the environment for focused artistic acceleration, while Straighten Your Crown helps build the bridge toward the musical’s commercial future.
2026 Guild Hall William P Rayner Artist-in-Residence - Jaime Lozano, Florencia Cuenca & Adrian Alexander Alea
Photography: Jessica Dalene
Meet the Artists
Mexican musical theatre writer, composer, director, and activist Jaime Lozano has been described by Lin-Manuel Miranda as Broadway’s “next big thing.” His work includes El Otro Oz, Carmen La Cubana, Children of Salt, A Never-Ending Line, Desaparecidas, ROJA, and the developing Frida, The Musical. His albums with Jaime Lozano & The Familia include three volumes of Songs by an Immigrant, and his film work includes orchestrations for In the Heights.
Florencia Cuenca is a Mexican immigrant actor, singer, writer, and director whose work spans theatre, television, music, and concert performance. She originated the role of Estela in the Broadway production of Real Women Have Curves, becoming the first Mexican immigrant to originate a leading role on Broadway. Her directing credits include Desaparecidas, A Never-Ending Line, and ROJA, and her album Broadway in Spanglish was released by Concord Theatricals Recordings.
Together, Lozano and Cuenca founded The Familia, an organization dedicated to creating community and artistic opportunities for Latiné and immigrant artists.
Adrian Alexander Alea is a Latiné director and creative producer working across theatre, film, and live events. A 2026 Drama League Directors Project recipient and Helen Hayes Award nominee, his work has been seen or developed with The Public Theater, INTAR, The New Group, Repertorio Español, Lincoln Center Presents, Paper Mill Playhouse, New York City Center’s Encores!, NBC, and others.
This summer, they bring all of that experience, history, music, and possibility to Torsey Lake.
Then, this fall, Él y Ella heads to Lincoln Center.
That is the journey we built Camp for.
From first draft to first preview. From Torsey Lake to Times Square. Drama Club is where the musical goes next.
