Diego Guevara on Creating a Dark, Fashion-Forward Hunchback of Notre Dame

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Taking THE HUNCHBACK to the Met Gala!

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The Hunchback of Notre Dame will be playing from June 16 through July 5, brought to us by Houston Broadway Theatre at the Cullen Theater in the Wortham Center. Diego Guevara is playing Clopin, and BROADWAY WORLD HOUSTON writer Brett Cullum got a chance to talk with him about creating a sexier, fashion-forward, yet still dark version of the classic tale.

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Brett Cullum: Tell me a little bit about this show. Obviously, it is The Hunchback of Notre Dame .

Diego Guevara : There are three different iterations of the story. There's the novel, there is the Disney animated film, and now there's the musical. All three have a slightly different approach to telling the story. The book is the darkest of the three. The musical is kind of the marriage of the Disney film and the book. The story gets a little darker than the film does, but we use a lot of the music from the film. It's a nice way to continue the story while attaching the music that a lot of film lovers and music lovers know. The musical really goes deep into the story. It follows the Victor Hugo novel more closely than it does the animated film, but then it attaches the music to it, which is wonderful.

Brett Cullum: Houston Broadway Theatre is known for doing edgy programming. Last year, notoriously, they did American Psycho , which was a wild, ambitious ride. Then I saw this Disney musical coming and thought, "What are they doing? How can you follow up American Psycho with a Disney musical?" But then I started diving into what you just mentioned, the fact that the musical was intentionally made somewhat darker than the cartoon. I've started seeing images from you all, and this looks like a decidedly different aesthetic than what I would expect from Disney. Tell me a little bit about that. Are you guys doing it a little bit more, for lack of a better word, sexy?

Diego Guevara : I think that's a fair assumption. I think it's sexy not only in what we're wearing, but it's maybe a more provocative take on the story as well. The story itself is incredibly dark, and we're leaning into that. We're leaning into the source material. The material is all written for us. We're not doing anything that is not on the page. Whatever the text is telling us is what we're following. We're following our instincts. Our director, Joe Calarco , said something that really resonated with me. He mentioned the Met Gala, specifically the year that the theme was Heavenly Bodies . The overarching theme within the show is "What makes a monster and what makes a man?" It's one of the most famous lyrics in the show. I think the marriage of those two things, the Met Gala and that lyric, is telling of society and of the world that we live in today, and it is very much apparent in the story of The Hunchback . Who gets to be considered a monster, and who gets to be considered a man? A pious man, a man that is revered, a man that is seen as smart and kind and holy, all of those words that we attach to people that are considered to be good people. And who is considered a monster? We leave that to the audience. I personally don't think that it's the kind of theme that is necessarily shoved down your throat. We leave that to you to figure out.

I do think that it is going to be a sexier production, again in terms of maybe the way that we're dressed. But it's not coming from nowhere. We're not pulling those costume pieces out of thin air. It's in the text that some people can be considered to be one thing and others get to be considered to be another thing simply by the way the world sees them.

Brett Cullum: It's an interesting duality. Joe Calarco has directed quite a few Houston Broadway Theatre productions. He certainly was on board for American Psycho , which asked a lot of the same questions, only in the inverse. They were all monsters, I mean, come on. This one's a little more sentimental and a little more humanist, I would say. You're also having the orchestra on stage with you, is that correct?

Diego Guevara : The orchestra is on stage with us. It's a 21-piece orchestra, which is massive. We had our sitzprobe, our first rehearsal listening to the band, and it is unreal. In all of the productions that I have been in, this is probably the most enveloping sound I've experienced. It really just surrounds you with sound, and it's beautiful.

Brett Cullum: It's got to be wild performing around that. Do you have to maneuver through them?

Diego Guevara : No, they're on stage the entire time, but they're a little further to the back. You'll see them there. We don't have to move around them.

Brett Cullum: Tell me a little bit about you. Where is home?

Diego Guevara : I am originally from Rhode Island. I was born and raised in Central Falls, Rhode Island, but I moved to New York City about eight years ago, so I've been there for a little while. I now consider New York City home.

Brett Cullum: How did you get into acting?

Diego Guevara : Oh, man. As a kid, I loved films. I would say films were my introduction to the whole world. My family was not necessarily a theater family, so we didn't grow up going to the theater, but we did watch movies. One of the first movies that really opened up my imagination was Spider-Man , specifically the Tobey Maguire version. I remember going home and putting tape on my fingers and thinking I was going to be able to climb walls. Unfortunately, I was never successful in climbing walls that way. But my imagination was expansive as a kid. I figured out a way to climb walls or swing from building to building. That's what my imagination told me. That and the Harry Potter films. My brain was exploding with imagination. I would go to school and pretend that when I closed my locker, it wasn't me, it was my magic doing it.

That truly threw me into a world of imagination, and it was never-ending. It didn't matter what I was doing during the day. I was somewhere else. I was on set. When I got into middle school, we had a choir that was actually required at the school I attended, so that gave me music. My dad has always been a musician. He plays guitar and sings, so I was always around it. But it wasn't until high school that I actually started doing theater. I was bitten by the bug, and it was over at that point. I said, "Oh, this is what it is. This is what it's going to be." My parents wanted me to have some sort of safety net, so I was a chemistry major for about three days and immediately left. I said, "Nope, this is not going to work for me." Then I went back into theater, and that's where I stayed.

Brett Cullum: How did you end up here with Houston Broadway Theatre?

Diego Guevara : I think it's been a long time coming. I've been living in New York for eight years, but I've been working professionally since I graduated, so about ten years now. I've done a lot of different things. I've traveled the world on international tours, which have been really fantastic. I'm a huge fan of languages and world cultures, so it was nice to get to see a little bit of the world that way. I've done film and television as well. I've done a lot of musicals.

This one came up, and I have to say, the animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame is truly one of my favorites of all time. It's in my top three. So when this opportunity came along, I said, "Oh, absolutely cannot let this opportunity go by." I decided to go into the audition, and thankfully, it worked out. Here we are in Houston, rocking it.

Brett Cullum: I'm excited to see it. The images I've seen of you suggest that Clopin is not the animated version at all. What is the concept for this character?

Diego Guevara : The concept is tied back to the Met Gala and Heavenly Bodies . That was the image we had on day one. There were images of celebrities wearing their garb at the Met Gala, which is always incredibly elevated. Part of the idea is that the characters in our version dress themselves in a way that the outside world is going to see them as something that maybe they either are or aren't. I think it's incredibly intentional, the characters we see dressed up and the characters we see, for lack of a better term, dressed down. I think I'll leave it at that. It will truly be up to the opinion of the viewer whether this person sees themselves as that or whether the outside world is what sees them as that.

Brett Cullum: How has it been working with Joe Calarco ?

Diego Guevara : He's fantastic. I have been having a fantastic time working with Joe. He's an actor's director, so he works in a way that I truly resonate with. I went to school only for acting, and musicals like this one have their foundation in acting. You have to be able to tell a story really effectively for the grandeur and the heightened stakes to land. The stakes are unbelievably high, and to ground this and resonate with people, you have to be able to act the score and the scenes and everything. He has that approach. I have found it an incredibly beautiful process to work with him and connect with him in that way. Even yesterday, and we're about to go into our tech week right now, nothing is solidified yet, but what we've been able to achieve with the material so far is fantastic. I think we've dug deep into putting the mirror up to society and saying, "This is us." Just because we're on a stage, and this is a little fantastical, and we have music to follow us, doesn't mean that this isn't what we live with day in and day out.

Brett Cullum: You guys are going to be in the Cullen Auditorium of the Wortham Complex, correct?

Diego Guevara : Correct.

Brett Cullum: That is a wild space. Have you been in it yet?

Diego Guevara : I have not seen it yet.

Brett Cullum: I'm so excited for you. It's a great space to perform in. The audience is pretty close, but it still has that feel of a traditional theater with the balcony and all of that. It sounds like you are designing something intimate, and it is going to be very important for us to be able to see these costumes and the characterization. Do you feel this is more Hugo or more Disney?

Diego Guevara : Oof. You know what? I genuinely think it's an equal balance of both. The story feels more Hugo. Things happen in the musical that don't happen in the film, and I don't want to spoil anything, so you'll have to see it for yourself. But the music definitely feels more Disney. The music is incredibly Disney-fied, while the story is a lot of Hugo. It's a marriage of the two. Even the music eventually follows Hugo as well. So maybe it tilts toward Hugo.

Brett Cullum: Do you think people are going to be confused? Do you think people will bring kids and think they're getting one thing and discover another?

Diego Guevara : I think they will bring kids, but nothing happens that is incredibly explicit on stage, so there's nothing to be worried about in that sense. But the story is darker. Definitely be prepared for a story that is not as Disney as you may expect. Nothing is explicit on stage in terms of what you may be imagining might happen.

Brett Cullum: Well, with Houston Broadway Theatre, anything can happen, so we're definitely expecting that.

Diego Guevara : Keep your mind open, for sure.

Brett Cullum: It sounds like it's going to be an amazing experience. I'm excited. I'm not super familiar with this show. I don't think it got much traction when it first went up, possibly because of the darker material. Certainly, that makes it more interesting to an audience that won't have to see a recreation of the car

_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/houston/article/Interview-Diego-Guevara-of-THE-HUNCHBACK-OF-NOTRE-DAME-at-Houston-Broadway-Theatre-20260614)._