urban excavations

Mexodus
Featuring Brian Quijada and Nygel d. Robinson
Audible’s Minetta Lane Theatre
September 9, 2025 – November 1, 2025 [extension]
production site

Mexodus is a musical that pushes boundaries — part hip-hop tune smithing, part history lesson, full of timely messages for the current day, and a demonstration of the wonders of dynamic live sound-looping and live acoustical performance beats.

The Minetta Lane Theatre small playing space expands to fit a functional set (Riw Rakkulchon) with dynamic and ever changing videos (Johnny Moreno) and colorful lighting (Mextly Couzin) that expertly frame and play with and against the genre-bending, exuberant talents of creators and performers Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson.

Many individuals can report rarely-told stories of enslave individuals in the United States escaping their enslavers — as histories, as “sit down and I need to tell you this story, it’s important so listen” instructional experiences. What Quijada and Robinson have crafted in Mexodus is an illuminated tale (condensed, fictionalized, but based in truth) of a phase and chapter of the Underground Railroad of African slaves moving not north from southern slave states but toward the west and south across the southern border to Mexico. Charismatic and musically stunning craftmanship and performances by Robinson as Henry, a Kentucky-born man sold to an abusive cotton farmer in Texas and Quijada as a Mexican war veteran seal the deal.

Robinson escapes (with a price on his head) across the Rio Grande to Mexico to a slavery free jurisdiction, only to encounter additional new threats on a farm run by Carolos (Quijada). Each man has a story they want to change and overcome. Henry wants to live free; Carlos is coping with his own behavior and trauma during the Mexican-American War. We feel their engaged energy as characters and in their masterful performances, feeling each ballad as a cry of the heart. They forge a bond of friendship, crafting a personal and potent piece of theater out of the extensive research the two creators have conducted.

While this story as a story is worth our while, the true thrill of this production and these performances is the music, the lyrics, and the technology that surrounds them and makes the whole an entire universe of sound. A stand-up base, an acoustic guitar, a piano, beatboxing strategies, and an accordion augment the delicious vocals. Mikhail Fiksel has designed a sound and looping world, an architecture, that allows the performers to build a universe during each performance anew within established parameters. Couzin’s concert lighting, Rakkulchon’s set, and Moreno’s projections frame this world and extend it visually, delightfully. Director David Mendizábal keeps the world humming, moving from platform to platform, from instrument to instrument, from ballad to ballad, from beat to beat.

I will note that the final tune, a call to action, may strike the audience as perhaps a bridge too far in a theatrical universe. We have been inspired by the theatrical historical story, enough to drawn the lines to the world of today, without being reminded of “protesting border politics”, but this is the artistic choice of these creators, best experienced live.

© Martha Wade Steketee (September 21, 2025)

Playwrights | Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson
Director | David Mendizábal
Choreographer | Tony Thomas
Set Design | Riw Rakkulchon
Costume Design | David Mendizábal
Lighting Design | Mextly Couzin
Video Design | Johnny Moreno
Sound Design | Mikhail Fiskel
Music + Lyrics | Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson