Color Theories

Julio Torres is not trying to do stand-up in any recognizable sense. Instead of a stool and a brick wall, he spends his second HBO special emerging from a giant pop-up book set, sporting a book-light antenna on his head and using markers to lecture the audience on the traits of the color spectrum. He argues that yellow is the platonic idea of childhood, navy blue is the color of bureaucracy, and orange is the volatile meeting point between childlike wonder and rage. It is a show built entirely around a self-invented system of logic, relying on his deadpan delivery to make bizarre claims about colors feel reasonable.

Filming took place during his theatrical run at Performance Space New York in September 2025, ahead of its premiere on HBO Max in March 2026. Coming off his series Fantasmas and his feature film Problemista, Torres is at a point in his career where his performance art has earned enough trust to let him do whatever he wants on a stage.

He frames the entire performance as a mandatory curriculum he plans to take into New York public schools, a scheme he believes is guaranteed to happen because he donated $130 to a mayoral campaign. The set features two silent assistants dressed as a music box and a puddle of spilled wine, whose only job is to move set pieces. Meanwhile, Bibo, a robot assistant voiced by Joe Rumrill, periodically pops out of a clock tower to remind Torres to stay on track.

The humor is observational but heavily filtered through his unique synesthesia. He assigns political roles to shades, explaining why Democrats and Republicans are navy blue and burgundy because of what those colors hide, and sketches out a hypothetical city administration where Julia Fox runs the transit authority and Lena Dunham runs the DMV.