The new hip-hop musical “Mexodus” takes, and tells of, a road less traveled.

The two-person show recalls the southbound underground railroad, a chapter in U.S. history that saw thousands of enslaved people fleeing to freedom in Mexico — a phenomenon that has historically received far less attention than the northbound underground railroad.

Like the subject matter, the form of “Mexodus” is a relative rarity. It is a live-looped musical: Creators Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson not only use instruments and their voices to make music but record, play back and layer tracks of that music onstage, building up complex sonic textures that are new at each performance.

For Quijada and Robinson, the intensely collaborative musical format suits the historical narrative, resonating with themes of empathy and togetherness. And in another kind of solidarity, the world premiere is a co-production of two companies: Baltimore Center Stage, where it’s running through April 7, and Mosaic Theater Company in Washington, where it goes up May 16 to June 15.

Mexico started abolishing slavery gradually after declaring independence from Spain in 1821, and in 1837, the country’s Congress fully prohibited it. In the years before abolition in the United States, Mexicans actively aided and protected enslaved people seeking refuge in the south. “Mexodus” imagines an encounter between one desperate freedom seeker (played by Robinson) and a Mexican farmer (Quijada) who offers aid while wrestling with his own personal demons.

“Mexodus” is about “Black and Brown solidarity,” says Quijada, who is of Salvadoran heritage. “There’s something really nice in that the making of the music is actually representative of the story.” It doesn’t hurt that “live-looping is one of the purest forms of theater.”

The musical collaboration in “Mexodus” shows “this is what solidarity can actually do, and what it can look like, and [how it can] make something that is worlds bigger than two people,” Robinson says.

The musical began germinating when Quijada — known for works like the hip-hop solo show “Where Did We Sit on the Bus?” — stumbled across an article about enslaved people escaping to Mexico. In February 2020, at a conference for actor-musicians in New York, Quijada met Robinson, whose credits include music-directing and performing in Shakespeare Theatre Company’s “The Amen Corner.” The two hit it off and began trading notes on music.

“Relationships like that are like shooting stars. They burn very brightly, and then they just disappear into the cosmos” most of the time, Robinson reflects.

But the pandemic kept this shooting star close and smoldering. Collaborating remotely at first, Quijada and Robinson began writing and performing a kind of concept album inspired by the southbound underground railroad, releasing video online.

When it was possible to stage a theatrical version of the musical, a challenge emerged: ensuring that the looping technology, and the performers’ need to access it, did not give the onstage action a static quality. The many instruments Quijada and Robinson play in the show — over a dozen — made the blocking even trickier.

Mikhail Fiksel, the Tony Award-winning sound designer of “Mexodus,” says the solution has involved positioning MIDI controllers, including foot switches, around the stage, allowing the performers to live-loop while moving in a manner that is theatrical and relatively natural.

The creative team’s self-imposed mandate to create the layered sound live, at every performance, is an artistic gamble. “We are trying to get all the gremlins out,” says director David Mendizábal. “And yet, if a button is pushed at the wrong time, if a guitar string isn’t the right one, all of a sudden, it throws off everything.”

But that potential for error is actually an asset, in the view of the director, who identifies as Latinx: “As an artist of color, as a person of color, the permission to fail is not a reality,” Mendizábal says. “We don’t get to fail,” because some might see that failure as representative of a broader group. In that context, “there’s something about the aliveness of the looping, and the possibility of failure that’s also cooked into the play, that’s kind of beautiful.”

The format makes for an amped-up version of live theater’s exhilarating precariousness, tailored for an era when music meets high tech.

In “Mexodus,” the audience will see a “step-by-step process of how to make a full orchestra with two people,” Quijada says. “It is just fun to watch. It is theatrical to watch — like a magic trick.”

If you go

Mexodus

Baltimore Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St., Baltimore. 410-332-0033. centerstage.org.

Dates: Through April 7.

Prices: $39-$74.

Atlas Performing Arts Center, 1333 H St. NE. 202-399-7993, ext. 501. mosaictheater.org.

Dates: May 16-June 15.

Prices: $42-$70.