Maria Bilbao “always knew” a career in entertainment was in the cards. Miguel Gil caught the acting bug after working on theater’s technical side. Jasmine Forsberg was lighting up Central Florida stages as a child.
All three share something beyond calling the Sunshine State home: They all made their Broadway debuts this past season. And they are in three of the most talked-about shows in New York.
Bilbao plays sweetly determined Johanna in the revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical “Sweeney Todd,” fronted by Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. Gil covers three different roles in “Kimberly Akimbo,” which won the best musical Tony Award in June. And Forsberg has a featured part in the unusually staged “Here Lies Love” — and will move to a different Broadway show, the hit “Six” about English King Henry VIII’s wives, at the end of the year.
“It’s still really surreal for me,” said Bilbao, born and raised in the Miami suburb of Kendall. “I have a lot of pinch-myself moments.”
That sentiment is shared by her fellow Floridians, who all credit their family, friends and communities here in getting them where they are today.
“It feels in every way like a dream come true,” Forsberg said.
In Bilbao’s case, her mother and grandmother found the Miami Childrens Theater for her when it became clear where her interests lay.
“I was always really expressive, and I always loved music; I was that kid who was singing everywhere,” she said. Her first role was a frog in “Honk Jr.,” she recalled with a laugh.
“I’m so grateful for the foundation Orlando gave me,” Forsberg said when pondering if being on Broadway adds pressure to performing.
“Yes, it’s Broadway with a capital B,” she said, “but what I find is the training and love for the theater I was able to cultivate in Orlando inform my experience here.”
Floridian visits
A highlight of Gil’s tenure with “Kimberly Akimbo” has been visits by former teachers, including drama instructor Jonathan Jackson of Gil’s alma mater, Windermere High and Linda Boot, now choral director of Horizon High.
“She said I was her first student to book a Broadway show,” Gil said. “She was thrilled.”
He still jokes with Jackson about a mishap early in his scholastic theater career when a train he was supposed to push on stage got its wheels stuck and came apart in front of the audience.
“Mr. Jackson still makes fun of me for that,” he said.
And while his family is proud, he has a teenage sister to help keep his feet on the ground.
“She’s still my sister,” he said with a laugh. “She needs to keep me humble.”
Gil, who was born in Venezuela and came to Orlando with his family when he was 3, first thought sports might be his calling.
“I tried out for the basketball team, which was kind of a joke,” he recalled. “I didn’t make it.”
He later served as a technician on “White Christmas,” the first show staged in the newly opened school.
“Mr. Jackson recruited me right away,” he said. “I liked the people I was hanging out with, and then after that, it turned into ‘This is really fun.'”
His first starring role was as the Kevin Bacon character in the stage adaptation of “Footloose,” and in 2021, he was a nominee in the national Jimmy Awards program, a celebration of student theater excellence run locally by the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. That led to auditions for “Kimberly Akimbo” before its off-Broadway run.
Feeling pressure
He just missed out on being cast, but when the show transferred to Broadway, the creative team remembered him and came calling. Gil was studying musical theater at Shenandoah University in Virginia but took a break from school for the chance to work in New York — a daunting proposition.
“Literally, the first day of going in and saying my name was scary,” he said.
Bilbao — who says she mediates a lot to fight “imposter syndrome” — has felt the pressure, too.
“I think it hit me we were on Broadway in our first preview and seeing an audience that size,” she said. “The pressure can get very real when you start thinking, ‘I’m on Broadway, and I have to make all these people proud.'”
She said co-star Ruthie Ann Miles, a Tony winner, was particularly helpful in reminding her: “I am enough; I deserve to be here.”
Bilbao and Forsberg both sought out their roles.
“I saw the promo when Annaleigh and Josh were revealed as stars of the new revival, and I reached out to my agent,” Bilbao said. Her agent wasn’t optimistic, thinking the production would go with established stars, “and then suddenly out of nowhere in November…”
Her family was understanding when she rearranged Thanksgiving plans to audition in New York. It was worth being a little late for the turkey when she got the role.
Forsberg, a Filipino American, was intrigued by “Here Lies Love,” which features a cast of actors all with Filipino heritage and tells the story of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos’s rise to power in the Asian nation: “I messaged my agent and said, ‘How can we look into this?'”
After a stint in the touring musical “Six,” which played Orlando in the fall of 2022, she was Broadway-bound with “Here Lies Love.”
The show has drawn attention not only for its subject matter but also for its presentation as a dance-disco musical. The theater is set up like a nightclub, and patrons move around the dance floor to follow the action taking place on moving platforms (some traditional seats are also available).
“It’s invigorating,” Forsberg said. “Hopefully, it can change the landscape of what Broadway theater can be.”
She’s a dynamic presence in the show, unleashing a power-packed pop voice in her solos as a kind of conscience or internal devil’s advocate for Imelda, who with her husband lived lavishly and amassed a huge personal fortune while leading the Philippines; the couple was deposed in 1986, and she’s still entangled in criminal charges.
“I like to think of my character as a way for the audience to see what is going on in Imelda’s head,” said Forsberg, a Timber Creek High graduate who worked at Winter Park Playhouse and Orlando Family Stage as a child in Central Florida. “Humans are complex.”
Cultural connections
Forsberg is particularly proud to be part of a “history-making” show with its all-Filipino cast.
“I feel so fulfilled, not only artistically, but also tying it back to culture,” she said.
Bilbao is grateful for the diversity in her show.
“As a Latina, I feel like I’ve broken a glass ceiling for myself,” she said — pointing to the Latina girls who tell her at the stage door how she inspires them.
“That means a lot to me,” she said. “We’re all humans in this show, and children of color can see themselves in it.”
Orlando’s Jasmine Forsberg rules the stage in hit musical ‘Six’
All three Floridians say they have learned much from their experiences in the Big Apple.
Bilbao stressed the collaborative nature of working on “Sweeney Todd” and the attention to detail she and her original scene partner, Jordan Fisher, put into the complicated song “Kiss Me.”
“We had an intense session, just the two of us,” she said. “We talked about young love and how that feels.”
Their work paid off in one of the production’s most thrilling scenes in which Bilbao’s clear soprano, first heard on a sparkling rendition of “Green Finch and Linnet Bird,” creates emotional energy to complement the physicality on display.
“Every kiss means something,” she said. “Every touch is intentional.”
On his toes
As an understudy, Gil has to keep track of three roles in “Kimberly Akimbo,” a musical about the titular teen girl who looks like a senior citizen because of a rare medical condition. He has performed about 50 times so far, he said.
In the role of Seth, the boy who proves a loyal friend to the title character, Gil displays a charming combination of friendliness and awkwardness with natural comic timing.
“It keeps me on my toes, and I always have to be reviewing and ready,” he said of understudy life. “It has been a lot of learning on the go and getting advice from people in the company. They’ve really helped me out.”
He especially appreciates the collaborative nature of star Victoria Clark, who won a Tony for her portrayal of Kimberly.
“After every show when I’ve been on, she’ll stop me and ask, ‘Do you have any [feedback] for me? Let’s talk about the show and how we felt about it.'”
Gil is contracted to “Kimberly Akimbo” through April; Bilbao says she’ll stay with “Sweeney Todd” — which just announced an extension into the spring of 2024 — “as long as they want me.”
Forsberg is leaving “Here Lies Love” later this year to rejoin “Six,” this time on Broadway. She missed her final performances on the “Six” tour because she was ill but had a feeling “my time wasn’t done with that show,” she said. “I think the universe was looking out for me.”
And she’s planning her first solo headlining show at New York nightspot 54 Below. Her Nov. 19 performance, titled “Music That Made Me,” will feature songs and stories that have shaped her life.
“I’m really looking forward to it,” she said. “There’s going to be Orlando memories in there.”
Follow me at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Find more arts news and reviews at orlandosentinel.com/arts, and go to orlandosentinel.com/theater for theater news and reviews.
