Draft:Jorge Rivera-Herrans

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Jorge ("Jay") Miguel Rivera-Herrans is a playwright, composer, lyricist, and actor. He was raised in Dorado, Puerto Rico, and is now known for writing and composing, EPIC: The Musical.

His inspirations for composing music, mainly come from video games and animations, where he pulls musical elements commonly found in both in order to tell his stories.

Education
In college, he studied film, television, and theater at the University of Notre-Dame. However, Rivera-Herrans was originally a pre-med student, even having accumulated over 200 hours of shadowing surgeons when he was in high school. It was only after he began realizing just how much he loves theater that he made the choice to swap majors.

In 2018, Rivera-Herrans played the title character in the In The Heights production at the South Bend Civic Theater.

During his time as a university student, he wrote a semi-autobiographical musical, Stupid Humans, that he got to produce and star in in 2019 with the help of his professor Matt Hawkins.

My Heart Says Go
Rivera-Herrans received a faculty grant before graduating in 2020 to pursue production of his play he wrote during his time as a university student. The musical originally being called, Stupid Humans, Rivera-Herrans worked with his professor, Matt Hawkins, in order to rewrite and rename it to be the “My Heart Says Go” out today. It got produced at the South Bend Civic Theater in April 2023.

Loosely based on Rivera-Herrans' own experiences, the musical itself tells the story of a boy named Indigo, who drops out of medical school against his father’s wishes in order to follow his dreams of becoming a musician.

EPIC: The Musical
Rivera-Herrans began writing EPIC: The Musical at the end of his studies in 2020.

EPIC is based on the Odyssey. It centers on Odysseus, played by Rivera-Herrans, struggling for 10 years against monsters and gods to return home to his wife – Penelope – his son – Telemachus – and his kingdom of Ithaca after the Trojan War.

Fully sung-through, the musical has pop, electronic, rock, orchestral and world music influences.

The concept album aims at telling Odysseus’ voyage through 40 songs, released in 9 albums – called “sagas” – containing four to five songs each.

The first, The Troy Saga, was released on December 25, 2022

The second, The Cyclops Saga, came out on January 27, 2023.

The third, The Ocean Saga, released on Christmas Day, December 25, 2023.

The Circe Saga, the fourth saga to be released, came out on Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2024.

The Underworld Saga, the last saga in Act I of EPIC, was released on April 26, 2024.

EPIC: The Musical went viral In January of 2021, when Rivera-Herrans shared his progress on EPIC and snippets of the songs on Discord and TikTok.

Interestingly, he was using TikTok to do open auditions for most of the characters. Much of his cast came from those auditions.

Auditions for parts in EPIC: The Musical are closed.