On September 18, 2011, Northlight Dramaturg Kristin Leahey sat down with the creators of Snapshots: A Musical Scrapbook to talk a little bit about working in musical theatre.
Kristin Leahey: Thanks so much for joining us again. This discussion is geared particularly toward students, who are interested in what the profession of musical theatre is, what type of training on needs to do and what musical theatre means today. My question for both of you is: what’s your training?
Stephen Schwartz: I studied music, piano and subsequently composition for about 10 years starting when I was about 6 or 7. When I was in high school I went to the Juilliard Music School in New York City, Preparatory Division, where I studied piano, composition, theory, orchestration, etc. Because I knew I wanted to do musical theatre, I then went to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, which had one of the best undergraduate drama programs in the country, and while there I also wrote or co-wrote four original musicals. When I was in the drama department at Carnegie, even though I didn’t want to be an actor, I took a lot of acting classes, which were very helpful to me as a writer. I also studied directing, set, costume and lighting design, voice and speech, etc. I think it’s really important to get as much training as you can, and particularly to get some experience in the area you want to follow.
David Stern: I went to the University of Pennsylvania and studied Computer Science Engineering. I grew up in the south, and the idea of working in the arts was not on the table. My parents were not supportive of that kind of choice and felt that I should do something practical. Further, I didn’t know anyone who worked in the arts or made a career out of it – so it just wasn’t an option. But while I was in college I worked on all the shows. I was directing and writing plays and musicals. And when it came time to graduate, I was really faced with the choice of what I was going to do: would I take a job as an engineer or take a shot at this impossible career? I took a leap of faith and decided to move to New York and try to find a job somewhere in professional theatre. The only person I could find with any connection to Broadway was my brother’s youth group advisor’s assistant – who had a job at ASCAP but also worked part-time for David Shire. I called him, and he ultimately introduced me David who then introduced me to Richard Maltby, Jr. I then called Richard every morning until he gave me something to do — I believe my first job for him was sitting in his apartment and waiting for a carpet delivery. And then ultimately, when he went into production on Miss Saigon and on Nick and Nora, I was there — so I got to work on those shows. My training really came from having a front row seat to the major leagues. I soon began writing on my own and getting feedback from Richard and other professionals. They taught me the craft of writing, and over time my work improved to the point where people became interested in it.
KL: Who are your mentors?
SS: I didn’t really have mentors the way, say, Stephen Sondheim had Oscar Hammerstein to read his early material and give him advice. But I got interested in musical theatre because my parents were friendly with a composer named Goerge Kleinsinger. When I was a kid he was working on a musical and we’d go over to his house and he’d play some of the songs for us. I’d go to the piano and kind of pick out the tunes. George said to my parents, “I think Stephen has some musical ability, you might consider getting him piano lessons.” So in that way he was certainly influential on me, and also because my parents ultimately took me to see his show when I was about 9. It was the first show I ever saw, and I got immediately bitten by the musical theatre bug. Of course I learned a lot from people along the way. Early in my career, I worked with Leonard Bernstein, and I would say he was a little bit of a mentor, in that I learned so much from him.
DS: There are significant people in my life who have helped me get better at what I do. Writing is an unusual profession in that it’s very difficult to gauge where you are in terms of climbing the ladder of success. In most careers you see a title or you get a salary bump. But in the commercial arts you really can only base your sense of success on what you think of your own work, and what other artists that you respect think of your work. The combination of the two will give you a sense of Am I talented, and if I’m talented then where am I in the soup? And so there have been a number of people who have been helpful for me in that way: Richard Maltby, first of all, taught me about structure and how to build the book of a musical to support the songs. Stephen has been hugely influential, partly because he was the first person to take my ideas seriously as a peer, and partly because he was willing to follow through and actually create with me. And then once I started writing for film, Ivan Reitman was very helpful in terms of honing my comedy and understanding movie structure.
KL: How do you choose your collaborators – for instance a composer and a lyricist as well as a book writer – maybe, Stephen, you could address that?
SS: For the most part my collaborators have come to me. Someone approaches me with an idea I respond to, and we work on it together. But there have been times when I’ve had an idea for a show and sought out collaborators. In that case it’s like casting, asking myself who would be good for a specific project. For instance, when I was starting to work on Wicked, I knew it would be helpful to have a female bookwriter because the show is about relationships between women. So I thought of Winnie Holzman because of her writing for the television show My So Called Life, which I liked very much and which had a lot of the tone I imagined for Wicked. Or when I was putting together Working and I was looking for other composers, I sought out songwriters I admired and who seemed to write the kind of songs I thought would be appropriate for some of the characters. I’ve always gotten along really well with my writing collaborators. I’ve never had a situation where I’ve started collaborating with someone and we found we couldn’t work together. Sometimes we haven’t completed the show because we couldn’t solve it, but it wasn’t because of the collaboration itself.
DS: I wanted to work with Stephen because I was a fan of his. Luckily, he was open to hearing ideas from a twenty-two year old — and I was able to convince him to collaborate with me. I just began pitching him idea after idea after idea – and a few of them took seed. In terms of other collaborators — since working on a musical is such a difficult and time-consuming proposition, I only approach people whose songs “do it for me”. If I am not moved by their music, I will never be able to make it to the finish line with the show. As far as movies go — I like to work with people who know more than me. That way every project is a learning experience – and hopefully I will continue improving at my craft.
