Buzzy Broadway show '& Juliet' heads to Tucson with talented teen in lead role

Tyler, Texas, teen Fabiola Caraballo Quijada is living every musical theater kid’s fantasy.

Just four short months ago, she graduated from Tyler Legacy High School.

On Wednesday, she appears on the Centennial Hall stage in the lead role of Juliet in “& Juliet,” one of the year’s most buzzed-about Broadway tours.

“I think about where I would have been today if, you know, this hadn’t happened to me, and sometimes I can’t even picture it,” the 18-year-old Venezuela native said during a phone call from the show’s run in San Diego last week.

Quijada is part of the second-year cast that started rehearsals in New York City in mid-August before joining the tour in Costa Mesa, California, in early September. She made her role debut on Sept. 24 in Sacramento, and by the time she hits Centennial Hall Oct. 29 with Broadway In Tucson, she will have performed the role in four cities, including Reno, Nevada, this week.

Quijada’s fast rise from high school graduation to the professional stage in a lead role of a Broadway tour started back in her native Venezuela.

Her mom saw talent in her young daughter as she danced around the house and sang at every chance. There were plans to enroll her in the children’s choir program at El Sistema, Venezuela’s prestigious music training program whose alumni include Tucson Symphony Orchestra Music Director José Luis Gomez, but the family emigrated to Texas in 2013 when Fabiola was just 5.

“My mom said ‘we’re going to keep this artistic spark in her growing’, and she put me in acting classes at our acting conservatory back home, the Tyler Civic Theater Center,” Quijada said.

She took acting and voice lessons, landing her first role at 12 in the musical “Shrek Jr.”

“I was Donkey, and that was the most fun,” she recalled. “It just felt amazing to have so much unbridled fun on stage, and I knew that I wanted to keep going.”

She continued performing in school plays in middle and high school and in 2023, was nominated for a prestigious Jimmy Award for her performance as Motormouth Maybelle in “Hairspray.” Nominees have a shot at competing in New York City for the National High School Musical Theatre Awards, aka the Jimmy, presented annually by The Broadway League Foundation.

“That was when I first realized that someone saw the potential in me to be something greater, and so I took that as a sign,” Quijada said. “I can’t let this go to waste. I really wanted to hone in on this craft that I loved.”

Quijada took voice lessons and dance classes and looked for any opportunity to get on stage.

“I searched for anything and everything,” she said. “I was always looking to be a part of new productions. And if someone was looking for an artist to sing at some convention or special event, I was there. I wanted to put myself out there.”

She went on to be nominated for a second Jimmy in 2024 for her role as Nostradamus in “Something Rotten!” before finally making it to the finals this year and winning top prize in June for her role as Sandra Bloom in “Big Fish.”

Not long after the Jimmys, her agent called. “& Juliet” invited her to audition for the North American tour’s second-year cast.

She auditioned in July and made it to the final callback.

“And then I got the call that they wanted me to be Juliet, and there was no doubt about it,” she said. “I was set to be a freshman at Texas State University. I was going to study musical theater, and I was so, so excited, but this opportunity came knocking, and I opened the door. It was so unexpected, but I knew that God had a plan for me. He still does, and all I could do was just follow Him, because I knew that it was going to be a good one.”

Quijada’s parents, an aunt and uncle, two cousins and a friend she met through the Dallas High School Musical Theatre Awards, the organization that nominated her for the 2025 Jimmy, were at her Sacramento debut.

“I cried so much at the stage door when I saw them,” she recalled. “It was so, so special to have someone supporting me, someone that has seen me grow since forever. They can attest to the times that I was singing karaoke in their living room and me making a complete fool of myself. And now I’m still making a complete fool of myself, but I’m just on stage doing it.”

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About “& Juliet”

The jukebox musical from Emmy-winning Canadian screenwriter David West Read (“Schitt’$ Creek”) poses the all-important question: What if Shakespeare’s tragic love story had a different ending?

“What if Juliet hadn’t ended it all over Romeo’s death ... and decided to move on and find herself, find autonomy over her own destiny,” Quijada explained.

In the musical, Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway boldly suggests her famous hubs rewrite the ending and give Juliet a chance at life. Shakespeare, not surprisingly, is not keen on the idea, but gives Hathaway a chance to propose an alternative ending.

Here’s what she comes up with: Juliet, at the funeral of her beloved, discovers that Romeo cheated on her with men and women, and while her parents insist she enter a convent to atone for her relationship with Romeo, Juliet embarks on a wild girls trip with May, her nonbinary bestie, and her nurse Angélique. Oh, and Hathaway wrote a part for her in that trip, as well, and casts Shakespeare as the carriage driver.

The trip includes a stop in France, where Juliet falls for the sensitive young musician Francois du Bois, whose overbearing father, Lance, is giving him an ultimatum: Marriage or the military. Lance ends up falling for Angelique and Francois pops the question to Juliet.

Shakespeare, though, decides there needs to be a plot twist; his plays rarely if ever end happily ever after.

Enter unrequited love between May and Francois and Romeo’s resurrection.

Yes, he’s baaack.

That all happens in Act 1; we’re not going to give away how that possible ending ends up in Act 2, but Quijada said the play is “just filled with so many messages for everybody.”

“It’s messages of self acceptance and love and empowerment, finding who you are, not letting anybody else take control of that,” she said. “There is love and there’s comedy and there’s drama. It’s just a beautiful experience at the theater.”

If you watched “Schitt’s Creek” over its six seasons from 2015-20, you have an idea of how Read weaves humor into a love story, with flashes of drama, all to the soundtrack of some of Grammy-winning Swedish pop songwriter Max Martin‘s iconic songs. (Fun fact: Martin, who has produced a number of songs for superstar Taylor Swift over the years, produced Swift’s just-released album “The Life of a Showgirl.”)

“There are three decades of music in this show and it’s music that everyone will recognize,” Quijada said. “At a certain point, you’ll be like, ‘Oh, I can sing along to this.’ And it’s just so, so much fun.”

The soundtrack includes “... Baby One More Time,” “Larger Than Life,” “I Want It That Way,” “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman,” “Teenage Dream,” “It’s My Life” and “Oops! ... I Did It Again.”

“I grew up with a lot of these songs, and I’ve always been an old spirit, you know,” Quijada said. “I’ve always loved listening to music that was from previous decades. I still wholeheartedly believe I deserve to be living in the ‘80s or something.”

Quijada said the music is cleverly integrated into the story, driving the dialogue and the plot.

“Sometimes I even forget this is a jukebox musical because ... it just feels like (the songs) are written for Juliet and they’re written for May and for our nurse and for Anne and Shakespeare,” she said.