INTERVIEW: Gabriela Carrillo on the power of bringing women together at ‘Six’
Photo: Gabriela Carrillo, center, plays the part of Catherine Parr in Six: The Musical. Photo courtesy of Joan Marcus / Provided by BBB with permission.
Six: The Musical continues to amplify its powerful message of female empowerment eight times a week at the Lena Horne Theatre in Midtown Manhattan. This theater-pop-concert mashup presents the stories of six women who were once wed to King Henry VIII. They may be historical figures from the Tudor era, but they present their thoughts and life stories via a pop sound, with microphones in hand and danceable choreography at the ready. There’s nothing quite like Six on Broadway.
Gabriela Carrillo, who plays the character of Catherine Parr, has been with the show for three years. She became connected to the Six team before the pandemic, and then when theaters started opening up again, she joined the national tour. Now, she’s bringing her vocal power to the role on Broadway.
“As far as how I got involved, I just got the audition notice from my agent, and I remember months prior I had so many friends coming to me telling me about, ‘There’s this musical called Six. You need to be a part of it,’” Carrillo said in a recent phone interview. “And I had no idea what they meant because they were just saying, ‘Oh, it’s about the six wives of Henry VIII,’ and I was thinking, OK, what about that makes them think of me? I haven’t done that many historical dramas or anything like that, and then when I got the audition notice, I realized that it was this pop concert extravaganza. And I was like, OK, yes, this is for me. This is my perfect job because I love theater, but I’m also trained as a pop singer and a musician. I’ve always dreamt of touring and performing pop music, and I love to dance and all of that. So this show really married both of those things for me.”
After Carrillo realized the magic of Six, she knew she needed to land this role. The actor kept telling herself that this was her job, so she began the audition process, which was lengthy. She received a callback, and then she had a Zoom session with the creative team. Then, unfortunately, COVID-19 struck and closed theaters.
“And so we really weren’t sure what was happening with the tour, if it was going to happen,” she said. “We didn’t know what was happening in the world really, and then when theater started to come back, they contacted me, the team, and said they were still interested in seeing me to possibly go on tour. And I went through this long, long, several month-long process of auditions and callbacks and all these things, and finally I was cast as Catherine Parr. Day one I’m in New York. I had never worked in New York before, and all the girls met the team. Toby [Marlow] and Lucy [Moss] were there, the writers of the show, and I just had to keep pinching myself. But it’s been a beautiful ride, top to bottom.”
Once she landed the part, Carrillo was impressed by the Parr character. She said that Catherine’s journey is a “beautiful” one, and she particularly enjoys the solo number “I Don’t Need Your Love.” “There’s such room as an actor to play,” she said. “There are so many different grooves and feels in the song and stylistic inspirations, and so it is for me just a playground. Playing this character is like a playground for being a multi-dimensional performer. It’s a blast.”
To better learn about the real Catherine Parr, Carrillo and her fellow cast members were tasked with developing a presentation on each queen’s life. They presented this material to everyone during the rehearsal process, and the project gave Carrillo a better understanding of Parr and the other historical figures — Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, Anna of Cleves and Katherine Howard.
“I got to do extra research about Catherine Parr and her life and what mattered to her and what kind of person she was,” the actor said. “Also, I got to learn about the other historical queens from the women playing them. I loved that part of the rehearsal process, and then on the side as well, I was definitely doing my research. I’ve always been a fan of The Tudors, that TV show, not that it’s completely historically accurate, but I’ve always enjoyed the Tudor era of history. A really nice part of the show was getting to know the historical Catherine Parr.”
Each night when Carrillo performs her role — alongside Khaila Wilcoxon, Storm Lever, Jasmine Forsberg, Olivia Donalson and Didi Romero — she finds the audiences to be electric and varied, with no two shows being exactly alike.
“What’s so fun about this show, and I guess this is the magic of live theater in general, you never know the energy that you’re walking on the stage to meet,” she said. “Every audience is so different, and some of them are really silly. And they really want to engage with our more comedic moments, and they’ll laugh really, really hard with these beautiful, hardy laughs that we hear from the audience. Or, some of them are more cheering-us-on energy. They really want to empower us through the show, and then some people you could see are really emotionally connected. I look out, and I see people crying during certain parts of the show.”
Carrillo added: “One of my favorite things is I always see mothers and daughters reach for each other’s hands, and that is such a sweet moment and such a great manifestation of the message of Six, bringing women together through the ages — of course, these Tudor queens, but also different generations of women. It’s so beautiful to see community in that sense, but, yeah, every audience is different. It’s like walking into a different party every night, and that keeps things so fresh, which is so great because I’m on year three of doing this show. So, the audiences we always say they’re like the seventh cast member of the show.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Six: The Musical, featuring Gabriela Carrillo as Catherine Parr, continues at the Lena Horne Theatre on Broadway. Click here for more information and tickets.
