From Opera to Serial Slashers in NYC, this guy has seen it all!
Iván Moreno is a Houston-based performer currently starring in AMERICAN PSYCHO as Luis Carruthers, a coworker of Patrick Bateman at Pierce and Pierce. He has appeared in the choruses of La Bohème and Tannhäuser with Houston Grand Opera. Iván received his Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance from Oklahoma City University in 2024. Other theater credits include IN THE HEIGHTS (Usnavi), RENT (Benny), and SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD. BROADWAY WORLD writer Brett Cullum got to talk with Iván about AMERICAN PSYCHO, which opens this week at the Hobby Center, and is presented by Houston Broadway Theatre.
Brett Cullum: So, you are from Houston or live here now?
Iván Moreno: I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. So yeah, I've been here forever, but I moved back and forth for the past four years when I was in school. I studied in Oklahoma City, but I'm now full-time in Houston again, so it's great to be back.
Brett Cullum: How did you pick Oklahoma City to study voice and theater?
Iván Moreno: It was more like Oklahoma City picked me. I was in high school and my senior year and was mainly a classical singer growing up. I did a couple of competitions. At one of these competitions, I met Dr. Autumn West and Courtney Krause from Oklahoma City University and got introduced to the program. I auditioned, got in, and the rest is history. I moved up to OKC for four years and studied, mainly vocal performance, but that's when I started getting a little bit more involved in musical theater, which I had not done until I'd gotten into college. I did one community production, INTO THE WOODS in 2018. I didn't really start getting really into theater and musical theater until college.
Oklahoma City University is a diamond, out in the Midwest. It's an incredible program, and it's exciting. You wouldn't predict that Oklahoma City would be the place where many incredible performers are born, but that's the alma mater of Kristin Chenoweth, as well as Kelli O'Hara, and dozens of other incredible performers, both on Broadway and on film and TV. So, yeah, OCU really is a great program. And it's just an interesting location.
Brett Cullum: How did you end up auditioning for American Psycho? It's not your typical musical, like RENT, or IN THE HEIGHTS.
Iván Moreno: I was in the same building, we're rehearsing it now. I was, I think, leaving or entering… I don't know, it was in the rehearsal, it was in, like, the tech process for Tannhäuser, which was back in the spring, and I was backstage, and I saw a listing for AMERICAN PSYCHO THE MUSICAL. I knew there was a musical adaptation of AMERICAN PSYCHO, the film, and the novel, and I was like, “Okay, this is kind of interesting. I know this was on Broadway, I know it was one of the more controversial shows that had come and gone.” So I was like, “Okay, I'm just gonna do it! It's in Houston, it's a newer company!” I looked into the Houston Broadway Theatre. I went through their website, applied for an audition, showed up, sang, got a call back to dance, and then another callback, and then ended up getting an offer, so here I am. I'm happy, I'm so lucky, because, from a little listing I saw on backstage, it turned into one of the most transformative shows I've done so far.
I'm in a lot of numbers, and my vocal track is pretty fun, but pretty complicated. I'm playing Luis for the majority of the show, but I play a couple of other minor characters in different numbers, so it's back-to-back for over two hours. It's interesting because Duncan Sheik wrote the score, and I was introduced to Duncan Sheik through SPRING AWAKENING, as well as ALICE BY HEART. The score does feel like Duncan Sheik, but it's unique in that it's way more electronic. It reminds me of electronic music from the 2000s and 2010s, like Black Eyed Peas vibes, so it's a fun score to sing. It's really, really fun.
Brett Cullum: Hey, I was there in the late 80s and early 90s. We started that club scene! The Black Eyed Peas were just “2000 and late!” Well, tell me a little about the character, Luis Carruthers, the main one you play.
Iván Moreno: Playing this character has been so, so fun, mainly because we're reinventing him, me and Joe Calarco, who's our incredible director. We've taken the liberty to redefine Luis, and we're kind of playing him a little bit of a different way than he was portrayed, both in the 2000 film and in the original Broadway production of it.
One of the bigger notes that I'll highlight is in the novel, in the movie, as well as in the original musical, is that Luis is a closeted gay man in the 80s. So, of course, like, retaining that, but I think as well as with the casting choice, with me being Latino, being Mexican-American, we wanted to highlight another dynamic that is not there in the source material. Still, in the show, he's referred to as "Louis," but his real name, and, like, my version of the character, mind you, his real name is Luis. We wanted to play around with the way a lot of Latinos in corporate America, as well as in the English-speaking world, anglicize our names. It teeters back and forth between most characters calling him Louis, which is how he introduces himself, in this predominantly white, English-speaking world. But there are moments where he's referred to as Luis, which we realize is actually his name. And, you know, not only is he wearing the mask of trying to present as a straight man in this very, very masculine heterosexual world. He's also trying to wear a mask of being the perfect idea of an American, even though he clearly has roots from somewhere else.
Brett Cullum: The book has some really rough, insensitive language. Is that used in the musical?
Iván Moreno: Absolutely, yeah. There is a lot of the original language that's used in the novel that is absolutely used in the musical, because more than anything, it's relevant to the time. And that's another direction we're trying to shift this show into, the realism. We're trying to make it real. We didn't want this to be a caricature of the 80s. We wanted this to really feel like what the 80s really were for these people. So, not only is that shown in the design from the costumes, because movies now that are produced or shows produced nowadays that are set in the 80s, it's usually really over the top, like, really exaggerated silhouettes of what the 80s looked like. We wanted to dial that back and make it more realistic, and that segues into the portrayal of gay characters in the original novel versus the way we're doing it in this show. Both Joe and I agreed, more than anything, on the way Luis Carruthers is portrayed in the film. He just simply wouldn't have survived corporate America, Wall Street bro kind of culture, being portrayed in the way that he was, in earlier adaptations of this text. Men have been closeted forever, you know? It still happens today, even as much as it did in the 80s. And, there really is a little bit of that. I don’t want to say two-faced, but it's a mask. It really is a mask. And, we wanted to highlight that, you know, Louis is extremely good at living a double life. That's literally, like, a line in the show, is that he's very good at living a double life. Our goal is to approach it from the most realistic, honest, as well as respectful way possible.
It's balancing the original source material, as well as reinventing something, because we're rewriting the show, essentially. There are so many new, different scenes; there's been a reworking of the book scenes from the original Broadway production. We have both Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Duncan Sheik; they've been involved in the process for this production. It's been an honor to be able to rework a show, workshop it, and create something new. It's exciting getting to work with the creators of the show.
I'm really starting, barely getting involved in this business. I just graduated a year ago, and that feels forever ago, but, in the grand scheme of things, that was a couple of minutes ago. So, it's exciting, especially growing up in an area where this really wasn't a reality. When I was first going to college to pursue the arts, you know, people were like, “What the hell are you doing?” It wasn't practical, you know? But I had this drive in me to just pursue it regardless, and of course, it comes with its ups and downs, and like I said, it's fate. I had no idea months ago that I would be sitting here speaking to you, you know? I had no idea that somebody would even be interested in hearing what I have to say, so it's crazy how life can just change in a heartbeat. One little audition can change a lot.
Brett Cullum: Yeah, no kidding. I mean, it's amazing that you're working with all of these people on this, this project, and it's a very daring artistic vision to bring this to Houston. How do you think that audiences are going to react to this? I mean, what do you… Like, what do you hope they get out of it?
Iván Moreno: I feel this is another chance to tell this story. It's been really clear in recent years that AMERICAN PSYCHO, mainly the film, has kind of been reduced into almost a bite-sized version of what the original intent of the story was. We can kind of see that with the glamorization of Patrick Bateman from not only his workout routine, but also some of his personal behavior is being glamorized amongst young men, especially on social media. I feel like we've literally lost the plot when it comes to those types of things, because it's been said dozens of times before that AMERICAN PSYCHO is a gay man's [Bret Easton Ellis’s] satire of heteronormativity and masculinity and consumerism and capitalism. So I really hope Houston audiences get another opportunity to experience the story from a different lens. Houston has always been a daring city, especially when it comes to the theater world. There's a humongous theater scene here in Houston, as well as an awesome, humongous alternative scene here in Houston. So, I don't think Houston is shy of darker themes or material in general, but I really hope people love this show, and are able to sit with the uncomfortable bits, and challenge themselves, and challenge their own ways of viewing this world that we've built. Here in the United States, especially when it comes to masculinity and, you know, everything that's been mentioned before, capitalism, over-consumerism, and, as well as things like vanity, gym culture, and diet culture, also play a humongous role in this show.
Brett Cullum: Well, I think what was interesting is the trajectory of it, and you hit on it several times very eloquently, but Bret Easton Ellis admitted that the book was very self-referential for him. The book is about self-loathing. He really saw himself as Patrick Bateman in a way. He was falling into this kind of consumerist void, and feeling empty, and all of these different things. And then with the movie, Mary Harron, I think one of the things that you're reacting to with Luis Carruthers in the movie is that Mary Harron wanted to lean into the whole idea of it being a gay man's satire, so I think she allowed Luis to be a more flamboyant, just so that she could kind of key into that. Now with this musical version, in a weird way, you are one of the most important characters, because you are, in the core, probably the identity of the author, and kind of the thing, because the argument is that Patrick Bateman might be a closeted homosexual himself, and that it is becoming this kind of self-loathing that makes him do these things, or imagine that he's doing these things. Because obviously, the line of what's real and what's not in AMERICAN PSYCHO is blurry.
Iván Moreno: Yeah, and you touched on a really, really big point. I was just talking yesterday in another interview about my favorite part of playing Luis; he parallels Bateman's arc. They have the same character development throughout the show, but you have Patrick Bateman diving really deep and getting sucked up by the obsession with masculinity and what being seen as the perfect man does to somebody. And then we see Luis, we see him kind of get freed from that. There is the possibility that Patrick Bateman is a closeted gay man. In my own personal experience, I've dealt with the most homophobia and the most abuse from men who were closeted.
Brett Cullum: It's the guys that are not comfortable, yeah.
Iván Moreno: Exactly!
Brett Cullum: They see themselves.
Iván Moreno: Yes, they see themselves.
Brett Cullum: It's definitely a show about masks, it's definitely about delusion, it's definitely about machismo and being the perfect man in business and in shape, and everything else like that. I'm so excited that you're adding this new layer to Luis Carruthers by making him culturally diverse; that's amazing. And that is something that only Houston could bring, so I am totally glad to see that happen. And I'm excited to see you do this, and my gosh, from opera singer to AMERICAN PSYCHO. What a ride!
AMERICAN PSYCHO THE MUSICAL is running at the Hobby Center through the 14th of September. It is in the smaller space, Zilka Hall, which means that we get a little bit more intimate. I'm a little bit nervous, because I've bought my tickets, and I'm up close, and I noticed that the closer you get, it gets a little bit cheaper, and I'm like, am I in the splash zone? Am I gonna get blood on me?
Iván Moreno: Oh, you have to come and find out!
Brett Cullum: No! If you get blood on my Armani suit, I will cut you!