Epic The Musical

 Epic: The Musical  is a loose adaptation of Homer's Odyssey by Jorge Rivera-Herrans, who wrote the music and lyrics and also orchestrated and produced the tracks. His song clips and process videos have gone viral on social media with over 60 million views across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. The yet-to-be-released musical also has an active Discord fan community of over 40,000 people who share fanart, memes, fan theories, cover songs, positive affirmations, and tattoos of the lyrics.

The Beginning
Rivera-Herrans first started working on the musical around June of 2019 in his college dorms. He wanted to create a musical that was inspired by video games and anime/manga to "emulate their addictive sense of progression". He was heavily inspired by these forms of media and its effects are seen throughout the musical.

On January 17th, 2021 he uploaded his first video on TikTok where he introduces the musical and sings one of the older drafts of the opening song Full Speed Ahead. Over time he released other clips of songs from the musical that slowly began to garner an audience.

The Process
Following his TikTok, there is an entire timeline of his journey through the making of each song up to the release of each saga. He has created videos documenting his process as he goes through the songs, edits and rewrites in the span of about 2 years. He also held auditions over TikTok to find voices for the characters. The first notable audition was for Calypso in April of 2021 following which there have been auditions for Ares, Penelope, Zeus, Tiresias and more. Many of the songs in the musical went through rewrites with some songs being cut and other having been changed to better fit the story and characters. The final draft was completed on the 29th of August, 2022.

The Community
Over the course of several years he has cultivated a large group of supportive cast and community members across several platforms including TikTok, Discord, YouTube, Instagram etc. Some of the notable members of the Epic team include producer Blair Russell, Sound mixer JP Warner, as well as the talented cast members from around the world, many of whom auditioned through TikTok, consisting of Teagan Earley (Athena), Steven Dookie (Polites), Luke Holt (Zeus), Armando Julián (Eurylochus), and more. Other important members of the team are highlighted by Jorge on his TikTok in various clips and in a segment called "APPRECIATION NATION" where he talks about all the people who work hard in the background to make EPIC happen.

Songs
Epic is a fully sung through musical consisting of 2 acts with 20 songs per act for a total of 40 songs. Furthermore, each act is divided into "Sagas" or chapters. The entire musical has a runtime of 2 hours and 16 minutes. Act 1 is about 1 hour and 9 minutes long (1:8:32) and consists of 5 sagas (The Troy Saga, The Cyclops Saga, The Ocean Saga, The Circe Saga and The Underworld Saga). Act 2 is about 1hr 7min long and consists of 4 sagas (The Thunder Saga, The Wisdom Saga, The Vengeance Saga and The Ithaca Saga).

Themes And Musical Language
There was a lot of attention to detail put into the creation of the songs of EPIC. Many of the songs draw inspiration from video game characters, epic moments in the media, and movies. Some of the most notable ones are:


 * 1) When Jorge was younger he watched "Peter and the Wolf" and was inspied by the use of specific instuments to represent each character. So many of the characters in EPIC are represented by specific instruments like Odysseus (Guitar, but the type of guitar changes depending on the context), Athena (Piano, because of the dexterity and skill needed to play piano), Poseidon (Trumpet +Brass Section, that gets more electronic and distorted depending on how angry and wrathful he is), Circe (Strings), Zeus (Electronic Base + Drums), Aeolus (Airy Vocals + Flute), Aphrodite (Saxophone), Hermes (Lyre), etc.
 * 2) Furthermore, the more divine the music gets the more electronic elements are heard in the score. The mortals generally get more traditional orchestral music, while the gods get more electronic music.
 * 3) Vocal backing for the mortal characters usually come from characters present in a given scene like the "CREW" or "SOLDIERS" while backing vocals for the gods come from an ENSEMBLE the god created to emphasize their point or emotions in a given scene.

The Cast
Based on order of appearance throughout the musical.