AURORA, Colo. — Andres Quintero plays Baby Doll in the Broadway touring production of "Moulin Rouge the Musical," which runs until June 26 at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.
Quintero moved from Venezuela to Aurora with his family in 2001, when he was in eighth grade and barely spoke any English. But his teachers at East Middle School, and then at Rangeview High School, saw a spark in him. To this day, he credits his success in theater to the teachers who told him, yes, you can do it.
(Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for context and clarity.)
9NEWS: What is it like to be back home, knowing you’re going to perform in the Buell Theatre?
Quintero: I just walked in, and it hit me -- actually just from the stairs down there, I saw the big Moulin Rouge banners. It’s incredible. I’ve been on the other side in the audience many many, many times, like 50 times. People talk about that expression "full circle." That’s what it feels like. Just what a building means to the growth of a person, because I very much came here many times during high school. This building is a building block of my career, and I’m so excited to be here.
You moved here in middle school from Venezuela. What was that transition like?
Quintero: I spoke very little English. I had a teacher, Mrs. Johnson, at East Middle School who, when I took the English as a Second Language test, I barely failed it, but she was like, "I feel that I can put you in regular classes and it’s going to be more beneficial to you." It is that decision, I still believe today, that she put me in regular classes, that just advanced my English learning skills. And then she also ran the theater department at East Middle School, and I got into the play.
When you went to Rangeview, you continued to do theater there?
Quintero: I was submerged into theater from my freshman year. We would do like four or five plays a year. I would do almost all of them. And it was that involvement in theater that just really shaped my whole time at Rangeview HS. I remember coming home one night and being like, "This is what I want to do."
As a Latino man, what kind of barriers have you faced in this industry?
Quintero: I think my path to getting here was very difficult. And I think those difficulties came from, a lot of it, my background. I really just always go back to the core of what I was taught when I was in high school, and what I experienced.
How did what happened in high school make you believe you could do it, even as you faced failure in New York?
Quintero: The opportunities that teachers gave me in high school were actually more radical than the opportunities that I was given when I started my career in New York City. And it was that radical thinking of, "Yes, you can be a brown person playing Jesus, and, yes, you can be a brown person playing Marius, and yes, you can play Joseph, and yes, you can play Lumiere, even though you don’t even speak English! You can play these characters." Those four years were so formative to me because I believe that it created this mentality that even when I went into the professional world and it wasn’t necessarily as inviting as I thought Colorado was and Rangeview was, I knew that I could because I had teachers that taught me and showed me that I could. And so that energy always stayed with me during the failures and during the many, many, many, many times that I was told I couldn’t do it.
You’re where you are today because those teachers said "yes?"
Quintero: They said "yes", and sometimes all you have to do is just say "yes" to somebody and see what they can do with that "yes."
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