 This is a new series that we've started devoted to musical theater writers. If you like what we're doing, please let me know. If you have ideas about who we can bring in, please let me know. Topics you want to discuss, contracts, anything unavailable to you via email or give me a call. Please turn off your cell phones now, right now. The format for tonight, Jason Robert Brown, who we are very happy to have here this evening. He has a wonderful bio in your program. I will just add my personal anecdote about how much I love his work. I've made all of my bosses take me to see your shows. We're going to have Jason will speak for a bit about whatever he wants to talk about. Then we will have two young musical theater writers each present a song that Jason will not have heard in advance. He will offer his impressions and some critiques. And then after all that is over, we'll open it up to you for questions. We're also live streaming on the internet, so if you do have questions, make sure you speak up loudly so the internet audience can hear. Without any further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce Jason Robert Brown. Hi, how are you? So who's presenting? Separately, you guys aren't affiliated with each other. We'll get to that pretty soon, just so we can sort of get through all of that. I guess I'm supposed to be talking about, what am I talking about? What do I do? I write musicals. I write music and lyrics for the musical theater. And why do I do that? Well, that's for my therapist to know, but I think that's just the way I know how to tell stories. It's the most effective way I know how to tell a story is through song. It is the thing I do that I think nobody else does and therefore I felt obliged to do it. That's my deal, is that this thing where a character has something to express and the best way to express it is to sing it. That feels like me. I know how to pull that thing off and that's what I'm drawn to doing. To me it makes sense when characters sing. There's a reason to do it. And of course there are plenty of characters who don't sing and can't sing and plenty of situations where they shouldn't sing. That's part of my job also, is to know when and why that's appropriate and where it goes and what to do about it. Somebody asked me just, I was giving a master class for some composers in Memphis the other day. And one of the writers said to me, alright, I'm more the book writer. What should I be giving to my composer and my lyricist in order for them to be able to do their work? What do they need from me? And I said the short answer is, presuming that they've already known who the characters are, presuming they know who the character is, presuming they know what the plot of the piece is and that's something that you'll all do together. The best thing you can ever offer to a composer is a title. The best thing you can say is the song is called this. The minute I know what the song is called, even if that doesn't end up being what I call the song ultimately, but the minute I know how to encapsulate the song in a couple of words, I can start my work. And that's my process even when I'm writing without a book writer, is I have to title the moment. I have to give it a heading. I have to say this is what it is. And I try to make it a title that sounds like a title. I don't know what that means except you sort of do. You know when a title sort of rings and you want to sing it and then you know when a title sort of sucks and you don't. And I think you have to be willing to just play around with that. When we were working on 13, there was a place for a girl to sing something that she really felt like. And Dan, the book writer, looked at me and said, well, I mean, what is the song about? And I said, well, the song's about what it means to be a friend. And I said, good, that's the title. And I wrote down what it means to be a friend. And that's the title that the song still is. And once I had that title, I knew where to go to. I knew what the last phrase in the chorus was going to be. I knew how to build it. And music started suggesting itself just by that collection of words, just by the words what it means to be a friend. I thought, oh, I know what the sound of that is. And that comes from knowing who the character is and knowing where she is on stage at that moment and what's going on around her and what the energy of the moment is. But that title helped a lot. But of course, when I say title as you've already now gathered, what I'm talking about is it is an understanding of what the theatrical moment is. What is this theatrical moment? How do I condense that? And the reason why they are songs is because a song is about a thing. A song is really a single idea. And it's important to trust that a song is a single idea. A song is one moment for a character. There used to be this sort of, it must have been a misquoted idea that the song should move the plot forward. But they don't. The songs move the story forward because the songs move the characters forward. And that's the most important thing that can happen at the end of a song is that a character has begun in one place and ends whether emotionally or spiritually or by vicissitudes of the plot somewhere else. Then the song has accomplished something because that's what songs can do. You're going to be sitting in them for three minutes, four minutes, in my case, 27 minutes. You're going to be sitting there for a long time. Why did you stop the show to let this person sing? And the answer is because something is going to change. We're going to understand something. The audience may understand something they didn't beforehand. But something, that moment needed to be crystallized for those three minutes, four minutes, 27 minutes. That all needed to happen there. And I think that knowing that you're driving and you're driving a plot, a plot, a plot, that plot has to then open up to let this song exist. The plot does stop. There's no question about that. You can't have music playing and the action of the play keeps going through it. I mean, I've pulled it off a couple of times, but it's not why any of us started writing songs in the first place. We didn't write songs so that we could write action. That's not the point. We write songs to explore something in here. And trusting that, trusting that everything's going to stop so we can get inside somebody's head so that we can watch something need to occur. That's very valuable. When I talk about character, I don't just mean one character and other good people. The town itself has a character. The setting has a character. Everything about where this place takes place, everything about that, that is character as well. And I think you have to define the character of your world as well as the character of all the people in it. I think that's very important and I think that is partly music's job. I think music has to be consistent in its understanding of character. So that when I was writing Parade, there is in fact a character to Atlanta itself. There is a character to Atlanta 1913. It has a sound. It has a feeling. And then there is Leo Frank, who is a Jewish man from Brooklyn. And so he sounds different. He has a different character. The sound has a different character than this whole place. But even within this place then, Lucille has a certain character. Dorsey and Slayton have separate characters. They have certain things, but they all come from this pool, whereas Leo comes from a slightly different pool. And its understanding how to play the musical character of those things against each other that defines how a score works. It's why to do this thing that I do as opposed to just I write a bunch of pop songs and good luck. That would be my case. It would be good luck and that would be how a pop song writing went. Because it doesn't interest me. I'm interested in building a world. And that world is made up of tiny little components and they all work together. And they're easy to betray. It's very easy for an audience to get betrayed by a composer if the composer is not vigilant. It requires vigilance. Character requires vigilance because character is defined by consistency. That's not, I think, entirely true in real life. I don't think people are entirely consistent. There are different situations and people do all sorts of weird things that you think, well, you would never do that. Plays, because they are condensed so much, we are required to be a little more consistent with our characters. We only get two, two and a half hours with them. So in that time we have to be able to understand them. That's why we're there, to understand them. And that's what the music is going to do and that's what the lyrics are going to do. And so just as much as the musical vocabulary is going to define those things, obviously the lyrical vocabulary is going to. The choices that they make in words are going to be different from one person to another person depending on how old they are, where they grew up, where they're living now, what they want. We pick different words. All that stuff counts. And so for me to listen to songs in the absence of context, in the absence of character, is to really not understand much about what you're doing at all. I'm looking for this thing. How does what you're doing fit into that? And you can feel it. You can feel it immediately. You can feel if a song belongs within something else. I can hear that even in the absence of the rest of things. I can hear that you must be going, that this is a thread that you're pulling. And you can feel that over the course of a show. And that's the sort of work that I do. And I just, I felt compelled of late. I'm getting to, I'm almost there. I felt compelled of late to sort of stress that, you know, musicals, I got into this business when really the only people who were writing musicals when I was growing up, it was really just Steve Sondheim. I mean, there was a whole period in the 70s as, you know, I think everyone in the room knows where there was really nothing being produced on Broadway at all. You know, how would occasionally get it up to produce one of Steve's shows. And that was kind of it, you know, outside of Via Galactica. I mean, there really wasn't a whole lot going on. And then all of a sudden there was cats. And then there, you know, there was, then there was, you know, Starlight Express. And so then there were these two sort of opposing polls. And one of those polls was making extraordinary amounts of money. And the other one felt like it was sort of clawing to the walls and just hoping it wasn't going to get washed away by the tide. Over the years, whole different tides have come in. But I don't, I don't think we ever, the kind of thing that I wanted to do still feels like I'm clawing to the walls. It doesn't, I'm not, I'm not writing Rock of Ages. And I, you know, I've sort of gone beyond needing to say that, oh, that's a valid piece of work in its own right or anything. I mean, I don't give a shit in either of you. It doesn't matter. But it is a different kind of theater than what I came in to do. And I stand before you now as a glorious anachronism at 42 years old. And I recognize that. And I don't care. It's just, it's all I know how to do. And I'm not interested in doing theater if it means I have to write Mamma Mia. That was not my bag. Or even if I have to write the version of Mamma Mia that has original songs in it, which I think is sort of the order of the day. Again, it just, it doesn't turn me on. I'm still writing these things about character and still writing these things that are musically ambitious because theater music is a thing as far as I'm concerned. It is a real and actual thing. And it was never a thing that spawned, you know, 14-road companies. But it is a real thing and I believe in it and I love it. And so that's all I'm really, now I feel okay saying. That's all I'm qualified to even speak on. You know, what happens in the course of a show, what theater music can make of it, that's what I'm sort of here to speak to today. And you know, I'm open to sort of that discussion. That's what I'm hoping we're going to be talking about. And of course I'm happy to pontificate on any number of other things that I really don't know anything about. All right, so what are your names? Alan. Alan and Rob. All right, so Rob, you're up first. All right, tell me what I'm hearing and why. Sure. Do I get copies? I can give you a copy? I'd like a copy. Show it. Very good. This is a song called Follow Through. And it's from a musical that I'm working on called Catch. It's set in 1958. And it's just after the Brooklyn Dodgers have left Brooklyn for Los Angeles. And a sports writer named Daniel gets fired from his job because there's no team to cover. So he decides to take his 10-year-old son to Nebraska to live with his in-laws on a small farm town. And this song takes place in the second scene where they're at Penn Station and his son just does not want to go. So he suggests to kind of take their minds off, just having a game of catch in Penn Station. I should mention that this is a two-person song. The son comes in at the very end and they trade lines. And I'll just be singing both parts. Don't forget to follow through. Ready, set, and wait not yet. Tie your shoe. Right, keep it high. Face places of the losing streak. And I will admit the outlose bleak. We've got to work on the basics, work on our skills. It wouldn't be out of line to hear the lyrics separately. In fact, that's a good idea. Rob, why don't you perform the lyrics for us? Okay. So the father, Daniel, starts, says follow through. So they're throwing the ball back for him. Follow through. Don't forget to follow through. Ready, set, and wait not yet. Tie your shoe. Good okay. Let's review what you know. No, stand this way every time that you throw. Keep your arm and glove down by your thigh. Elbow stays above right, keep it high. Face the laces of the baseball towards the sky. Get a grip, let a rip, and follow through. Once again, part by part we follow through. That's right. Daniel, from the start we play it smart. It takes heart, so stick with me. The son, why do we got to move? The father, soon you'll see things are going to improve. Okay, safe to say we've hit a losing streak, and I will admit the outlook's bleak, but we cannot quit when things change every week. What's the call? Throw the ball. Follow. We've got to work on the basics. Learn to hone our skills, just like when we throw and catch. We've got to work on the basics, if only pay our bills, so we've got to start from scratch. When your pitching is down or you're letting up steam and you can't score or steal, then you go out of town to a minor league team for a chance to heal. I know the circumstance is not ideal, but buddy, let's be real and work on the basics. Get some help, and then we'll make it to the major leagues again. Me and you. Son, on a roll, we'll follow through. Father, any control, that's our goal. Son, let's head west, both, and leave Brooklyn behind. Son, it's a quest, both. Who knows what we'll find, and then alternate. Get a change of scene, a branding place. Get a new routine, a slower pace. Grass that's really green, real wide open space. Who knows both what we can do if we two follow through. Great. All right, so, here are my questions that I have for you. My first question is the dumb one, which is to say, what do you want to work on here? I think, perhaps, I've noticed in writing it, the son does not have much to say in the song, until the very end. And I feel like that's somewhat of a little problem, because that just kind of says, what is he trying to get out of this moment? I also feel like it loses the baseball element pretty quickly. I think I'm trying to get out of it, is that the father is trying to convince the son that no matter what, they'll make it together and they'll get back to convince him to get on the train. Okay. I think that what I always ask, the main question is, what does one character want from the other character? Why does the song happen? And then understanding what that is helps the structure of the song to understand itself. Structure is our whole deal, right? Structure is the whole game. That's all we've got, really, as composers. I mean, everybody's got notes, and all we can do is to rearrange those notes within a certain structure and understand it. There's a basic structure here. There's a sort of A and A and then a whole weird B thing, and then we get back to an A idea. And so, that idea, what you just said is, I'm trying to get him to get on the train isn't the song that you start with. And I think that trying to get him on the train is pretty strong. Trying to get him to engage in a ball game is a different thing. And there's something lovely about trying to get it, you know, what a father and a son are going to do playing ball, but you're right that you lose it quickly. And I think the reason you lose it quickly is what else are you supposed to do with it? How much can you go? I mean, I'm looking at it on stage and I see them, and really, once they throw that ball twice, I'm sort of good. You know, I've sort of got what we're going on here, but if it's the understanding that there's that train right there and that kid won't get on it and it is Daniel's job to get him on that train, then I know what this song is about. And I think it would solve every other thing that I'm going to talk about because I think that all of the issues that are here in the song, because you're really good at this gig, because I read your stuff last year for the fellowship, whatever that thing I was doing, so I was one of the readers of that. So I read it and I remember saying, no, this guy's good, he knows what he's doing. But this song is mired in stasis and it's mired in it in every level and the way you could tell is that if you didn't sing the lyrics and you just sang the melody, it never goes any place. It just stays there. And the reason why the B section is so tricky, the reason why it doesn't work is because it's not taking me to some place. It's not saying, at the end of this crazy thing, I will have achieved all it's doing is mental spinning. He's spinning around and you hear him doing it, oh, well, if we can do this, then maybe that and we'll pay the bills and we're going to go and we have a whole new world and we'll follow through on that. And I see that the son sings at the end and I see that he's sort of, all right, we did it, but I didn't, I just, I don't buy it really. I don't think Daniel has made a particularly good case and kids being as perceptive as they are and having as short attention spans as they do, I feel like there's a real great opportunity for this kid to be saying, I don't want to go or don't make me leave this and the father to really say, you know, first of all, all right, get on the train. There's things we got to get done on the train. Oh, it'll be such a cool train ride and it'll be really awesome and you get to see this thing as we go and this thing. And all right, when we get there, there's all these games that we'll get to see, you know, because there's farm teams out there that are really awesome. You know, it's a whole new world that we'll get to go to and enough with these people in New York. We never liked them anyway. All right, we liked them a lot. We really did like them. I understand that, but sometimes you have to go. You just have to get on the train and you have to go do it for me. If you don't want to do it for you, you have to do it for me because I don't know what else I'm supposed to do in this place and I'm counting on you to help. And all of a sudden I'm like, all right, I got that journey and the kid's like, well, all right, I guess if I have to do it for you, I'll do it. And then there's a reason why we got from here to here and we learned a lot about them, but especially since I can see from your score that this is number two and it's early on in the show, I know that what you're doing in number two is trying to expose. I'm getting the exposition, let me get all this emotional exposition out, but it is not to me sufficiently active. And so I could, you know, I'm happy to sit and pick on you about the music because I think the music deserves to be picked on in a lot of ways because it is just sort of so static and you feel it. And you know, ultimately, as like a rule to give yourself that's an arbitrary rule and it doesn't mean anything, if you can't perform it at a party, it's not your best song. I mean, there's really, there really is something to that. Songs have to be performed by actors, but we also, they're songs. They're not just monologues. They are these things that the music is supposed to elevate. And if we can sit down and be like, this is the song I'm going to do and people are going to go, yes, that's why I'm at a musical because that song went like this and it elevated, it was great. But there's a real danger of songs that are too static, that are too flat. And I think we're entering into a perfect thing. Everyone always yells it. I think Steve Sondheim feels sort of undeservedly beaten up about this song. I think Steve Sondheim feels like everyone blames him for this. I mean, and again, I'm saying this again in the context that I think you're really good and this is, you know, but there are things that Steve does that have that nature of sort of rambling forward of sort of stasis. And yet they tend to be couched within these beautifully structured things so that even when you're just sitting in the middle of something for a while, it's because something has to percolate and then it bubbles. And this is not percolating, I think is really the thing. And so I don't know what your musical voice is with this. There's not enough Rob the composer in here. Instead, this feels like, how do I mark time? And you can feel it because you don't want to sing this melody. It's fine. I mean, it's, you know, I can see where the dots go up and down, but it's not, it doesn't sound like you. It doesn't sound like what you sing when you want to sing something. It sounds like what you put notes to if you wanted to put a speech to notes. But there's a bigger job. Does that all make sense when I say it? So I mean, that's really, I don't want to get sort of any deeper into it than that. There's a real, I get very, I remember what I was like when I would write something and then present it because my feeling was, no, this one's done. So I'm taking on this information so that I can use it for the next thing, I guess. Actually, what I generally thought is I'm hostile, I'm hostile, I'm hostile, I'm hostile. But presuming that I was actually open to what anyone was saying to me, what I, you know, what I was listening for was stuff I can use next time because this is sort of, this is good. I'm done with this. I don't want to go dig back into it. And I'm sure you've been working on the show for a long time and the last thing you want to hear is one more fucking person telling you, go back, rewrite the song. All right. But so, you know, without even getting into this one, there is a song that is better than this that is waiting to be written. And so, you know, you'll show it to me when you get it done. All right, good. So before we get into Alan, any questions on any of that, anything that I did not sufficiently expound upon, thusly? No? We're good? Yes? What if you physically can't perform your song? What are your recommendations for... I mean, obviously this is nothing, but you have just sang in terms of range and things. Can you physically not perform your song? Yeah, I mean, if it's maybe in a strange range, I mean, would you just recommend transposing it or changing octaves? I really think, you know, I did an interview with the dramatist like years ago in the paper and Marcy asked me, do you think that every songwriter should have to be able to sing their own songs? And I said, no, no, it's just a tool. And I now think, no, I'm wrong. You have to be able to put it out there. I mean, I've known plenty of composers who do terrible, terrible performances of their own work, but they are ready to defend their work. They are ready to step up there and defend it, which is important when an actor has to get up there and says, I don't know what this is. I mean, I'm sitting now every day directing the last five years. And part of why I can guide those actors and watch those actors when they get sort of stuck when they're up against the wall. I can say to them, well, what it means is this. When I do it, I feel it move this way. And I can then actually do it. I can go against into a corner with myself and just work through that beat and sing it and feel it and act it. And I'll go, all right, so this is how that works for me. And that doesn't have to be the way you do it. But there is a way around this. There is a thing that I can do. I play piano very well. I play my own stuff very well. And I'm aware of that. And I build that into the way I can't write worse. I'm not going to write easier. I wouldn't even know what that means. So I bring that to it. And the music then is a big part of it. But if you can't play piano all that well, you have musical ideas that you wish to express. And you have to be able to defend them. And so I think that does probably mean being able to perform them, being able to stand up in front of people and say, this is my song. I think that does count for something. But if there's some other way of defending it, I think that's fine too. I wouldn't know offhand what that is. But to be able to live in your own material, it is the reason I'm sure I'm good. The reason I know I do this well is because that material, I have lived in it. It comes out of my mouth, and I know I have to be able to defend whatever comes out of my mouth. And I throw stuff away all the time because I sing it and I'm like, oh, God, no. And when I'm writing it, it looks great. And then I sit there and I'm playing it and I say it and I'm like, blah. And it feels like ash in your mouth. You can feel yourself trying to work your way around something and it just doesn't land. So I think that's true, yeah. Is that because you write the music too? Yeah, but if I didn't write the music, I still have to be able to sing it. When there are things that I haven't written the music for when I just write the lyrics, I still have to be able to defend it. I still have to be able to sing it. To sing it? Yeah. I gotta be able to stand up and sing it. I think much more so if you're... The lyrics especially are the thing that has to feel right coming out of your mouth. But if you're trying to sing something and you sit there and you're like, I feel like the melody doesn't go anywhere. That's a valid thing. That counts. Even if I sing terribly and I still feel like the melody doesn't go anywhere. Fine, that's a valid comment. That's something you're feeling and you're getting as opposed to just, well, I heard you sing it and I don't know that it goes anywhere. That's less valuable. You understand the difference. Out of your mouth, I'm trying. I'm trying to make this make sense and I can't do it. I as whatever bad actor I am can't do this. I think that's valuable. I think that counts for something. All right, Alan, what do you got for us? I got a song for a new musical. All right, and do I get a copy or no? You don't. No, all right. Shit out of luck. Yeah. So this is a song from a new musical called The Perfect Wedding I'm working on. I'm writing museum lyrics for it. It's kind of inspired by a couple of plays by Charles and me, Playwright, kind of mushed together, but it's a new script, a new plot, whatever. This is the third song in the show. The show's about a girl named Tessa who translates old Greek and Latin texts for a living, who is about to get married and gets dumped in her, kind of a year in her life, journeying through finding love again, et cetera. So this song is sung by Arno, who is about to be fiancé. So there's an opening number, then there's a second song with Tessa's mom and Tessa's getting ready for wedding, she's in her wedding dress. And then Arno, the husband-to-be, stops by and says, hey, we've got a talk. And so Tessa kind of takes a breath and walks outside with Arno. And I'm going to read from some of the books. Gorgeous early fall afternoon, leaves our untrees in the distance or changing to red and gold. Arno says, Tessa, and Tessa says, you're nervous. I'm nervous too, but we've been through this before. And Arno says, I can't. I love you, but... Tessa says, no, no, no. Three times this has happened. Three times, since we've been engaged, you said you couldn't do it. And Arno says, I know. And Tessa says, three times I told you, I think you're just scared, but if you really don't want to, then don't. But I said, whatever you do, and Arno says, Tessa, whatever you do, and Tessa says, don't get all the way to our wedding day and back out. Don't leave me at the altar. So you can't do this. Arno says. I still love you. I'm so close to it to be able to answer that question. I just wanted to play it and get it out. But as you were playing it right now, were there points at which you thought, oh, he's going to say this, or oh, Jason's going to say that, or oh, the audience is thinking this thing? Not terribly, but I'm so curious to hear what you're saying. I'm going to tell you anyway. I've got a couple of questions, and they're really questions. What is she doing this whole time? Is she doing anything other than standing there and listening to him? Right now in this draft note, she's standing there. Okay, so that's the first problem. This is a very active moment going on where she's saying, don't you leave, don't you do it, you're going to do this thing and you better not do it. And he says, no, actually I am. I am doing the thing you were most afraid of doing. And then she's stuck there listening to him and not being able to react and not being able to leave and not being able to do anything until she does the fairly impossible act of taking off her wedding dress when all I could think of is what's under that wedding dress that she takes it off? So we've got a Tessa problem, first of all, and I think we need to know what's going on with her. My suggestion, what has not a lot to do with that because I don't think that's an easily solvable problem within the song that you've built now. My suggestion, sort of entirely to the side of that with this song, is that you get into the bridge and it starts going, someone whose thoughts are pure or whatever that thing goes, and then just as it was going, going, going, you pull away and you say, no, I'm not going to do it. And I was like, I was waiting for you. I was waiting for it to build, to build, to build. And instead it goes back and we go through the whole verse and chorus again and then one whole verse more. And I thought, you know, I got there already so that what I really felt like is follow through, ha ha, follow through on your bridge. Let him keep going, let him keep going so that it builds to that chorus. The bridge where there's someone whose thoughts are sure, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Really say something, as opposed to keep hinting, but actually just say it, declaim, say something about why I'm leaving. I have to leave you because I cannot a thing, whatever, you know, that we start to hint at it and I was waiting for it. And that leads us directly into but I keep falling, falling, that's your last chorus. And then at the end of that then we're allowed to have that little coda. But this time by the time you got to that last coda I had heard that thing one too many times and I was like, enough already. So you've got a, there's definitely that cut to be made. That feels like an easy cut to me to be made. I mean you've got to develop your bridge enough to make that cut worthwhile. But that, so that's certainly a thing. But I don't know that I would say this is a duet. I don't know that that's true. But you as the author have to be very clear on what Arno sees happening. Because he cannot, he's not reciting a speech. You know, he's not reading this off of a piece of paper. He is reacting. And if he's not reacting to her then I'm wondering what's going on. So that's why I ask that question first. When I am dealing with actors all the time even when I'm having them sing songs that are just soliloquies I make them put an actor in front of them put another character in front of them you want something from that person and then when you get to the end of the first chunk of that structure you check in and you find out if you've got what you wanted. And that's how we build a song. That is the basic tenet of how a song is built. I want a thing and I'm going to try and get it this way. And that's my first verse in chorus. And at the end of that first verse in chorus the answer has to be no. If the answer is yes the song is over. And she gives in too easily on this for me because I don't know what she's... You know, I don't hear her resistance. I don't feel him continuing to have something else to say. He's just ringing more changes on the same idea. So we've got the first verse in chorus is I want this thing from you and you say no. So now we get the second verse in chorus which is alright let me try this another way. I want this thing from you. It doesn't work. It can't work. So now we get to what I'll call the B section and it doesn't... I mean not every song is an A, A, B, A but let's think of them all that way for right now because why not. We get to that B section and that B section is going to be alright I'm going to recontextualize all of this. I'm going to go deeper I'm going to explain something that I haven't had the guts to say the first two stimes I said it. The B section is there musically for a really good reason. You know anybody who's a composer knows I can't say the same thing three times. And logically as people who speak words we can't say the same thing three times either because we sound like an idiot the third time. We can say it once. What? No, what I said was this. What? Alright let me try and do this another way and that's what the B section is. We're going to contextualize it and that transition out of the B section into the final A that is the most important point of the song. That is the joint on which the whole song rests because that is the point at which a character opens in some way. Either they grow they learn something they move forward in some plot moments something like that but it's right there. You can delay that point for a fairly long time but if you don't deliver it then the song doesn't really happen. I'm waiting for the moment when the song opens and that leads me into this last beautiful chorus where I say now for the last time please can I have what I want? And whether the answer to that is yes or no is really up to the demands of the play and the demands of the characters in front of you but it is important that the answer be no up until then. And that to me is a nice basic architecture to sit on so that the musical ideas you've got are gorgeous they're beautiful beautiful ideas and understand that none of this is diminishing them nor making them impossible but the dramatic idea that makes that music go is not there yet and that to me seems like an important thing to hang on you know there's a song in the last five years called I can do better than that and I can do better than that I hang on to what that song is about I withhold that from the audience for you know four and a half minutes I'm sitting and waiting for her to say what this song is about and finally four lines from the end of the song she says say you'll move in with me and we all collectively go oh that's what she wanted the whole time and because she hasn't been able to say it she's telling this other story in the hopes that he'll just sort of volunteer and he doesn't so she has to come up with another thing that she has to say and she keeps going towards that but it is a release and we feel the release when we say it of the suspense and I think that's just what's missing right now not on a musical level though again that cut I said I think speaks to the fact that there is not enough musical suspense either that I feel like you keep dropping the thread too soon but the dramatic suspense of this that's still in your bullcourt so I think that's for you to still solve cool good thank you alright any questions on that any questions yes I just wanted to say as a singer I would find having to repeat that note so many times so hard to do interestingly enough that I wanted before you got to I think the third verse is when you let that unfallen unfallen go somewhere else or maybe it was the fourth I'm not sure but I wanted it to do something a little different earlier just just I kept feeling like oh my god if I had to sing that I just don't know that I could make if I were Josh Groban maybe you know because you could just listen to him sing that note for 24 hours straight but I well I think that actually well I think it's valid in another respect I mean I think what's valid about it is because dramatically that moment doesn't build he keeps sort of hitting the same note you know both literally and sort of emotionally he's hitting the same note and that's I think why you say I wouldn't know what to keep doing with it because I feel like I already did it so what else am I supposed to say to it does that feel right to I mean I think that's another way of putting that there's a validity to that argument you know music again it wants to move forward you know we're looking for it to do that thoughts, ideas controversies anything well I didn't quite hear the lyrics again what I did hear struck me as to head on might be and there's a value to that but I but it's a question of how I mean again be whether it's expositional or emotional well I what I wasn't sure of is how much more we're going to see of R&O in the show so I didn't know whether he has to get out all of this information now because I'm never going to see him again or he becomes this constant player over the course of the piece and therefore he can withhold a little bit more because I've got to learn something music itself is so wonderful and has sort of a dreamy quality to it that when you have the head on lyrics with that the expositional lyrics it just seems to see what it seems to work for I don't know I'm not willing to go all the way with that but we'll see it's open I present it to you it's there you can think of it or not yes I'm wondering if you have any specific models for collaboration in terms of collaborations with as the brevis to composer and then when something's in rehearsal with the people who are actually putting it up and general structural recommendations in those models of collaboration I mean I guess I would say I could ask you to be a little more specific I will say I mean every one of the shows I've done has spun out differently in that respect you know and there are collaborators who are very vocal and very involved and there are collaborators who really sit back and just let me do my thing and the work really does end up reflecting that collaboration you know both the collaborations where it's all right you write it and I'll stage it and the collaborations are like I couldn't possibly let's get in there I gotta do this it's not what it is you know Hal Prince was very hands on and he was hands on about every moment as a director of the show and what we learned it took us a couple of a couple of months to figure this out but what Alfred Yuri and I figured out was Hal was always right if he said the song wasn't doing what it was supposed to do but he was almost always wrong about how to fix it and that turns out to make all the sense in the world because he's not a writer he's a director and so what he feels is flow and then when the flow gets interrupted he starts trying to dig his way around and it's like no no wait wait wait that's my job I figure out how to solve it you just tell me there's a problem and it took a while to get that where Marcia and I had bumped into this huge problem at the end of the show and Bart Shearer who's directing said I know this is a problem and we were like you're right it's definitely a problem he said what if and we should have just started running out of the room but we were like oh what if huh what and we were so grateful for any and then we followed some suggestion down the craziest garden path in the entire world for like two days and after two days we sort of were like what the fuck are we doing and we you know we were like it's not that this is a problem but now let's try and solve it the way that this show has asked us to solve it because we know what the blueprints are we know why we wrote everything so far so given that it's told us this much what is it going to tell us now you know my I got my first real book writer I worked with was Alfred Urie so Alfred first of all had been a lyricist for many years and second of all was a guy you know I was out matched there was not you know if he said why don't we do this I sort of was like I am there try it but I can only write what I can write and so we had a beautiful collaboration because what I asked of Alfred was you know we talked through what any scene was going to be and then I'd say you write it write the scene and where the song is supposed to be write the monologue because Alfred really knew who these characters was to be and I that wasn't like every single number but a lot of times it would be that and sometimes I would say don't write anything I know what it is and you know I would go off and do it but whatever it was we'd do that we'd share it with each other then we'd go show it to Hal and then Hal would say I mean yes but I don't know about this and you know and then we'd go off and we'd fix and we'd keep working and we'd build and we'd build and out of that came a draft together so once we were in rehearsal it was very much that Alfred and I were there to do Hal's show and that is not standard operating procedure you know that's what you get when you have you know the 10,000 pound gorilla is the director and I had been a music director for Hal before that so I knew that it was a bad idea to try and write a show different than I had watched that happen twice and I said you know what I get this and I would say to Alfred often I know this is what we want to do but that's not the show he's going to stage let's do the show he because he had hired me you know Hal had come to me with this so really if he wanted to do that show it was my job to do that show and that's ultimately what we did and then you cut 10 years later when we did the revival I now had to reckon with this thing that we had created at Hal's request sort of under Hal's aegis and what in the absence of Hal did we need to defend and preserve and what in the absence of Hal no longer made sense and so much of what we did at the Donmar all of which I think is wonderful and I'm much happier with that version of the show just because it is much more condensed I mean it feels tighter and the only thing I didn't like about the Lincoln Center version of the show was that it felt diffuse and I feel like we tightened it up a lot for the Donmar which was all good news and a lot of that a lot of those decisions we made were just about well we don't have this particular magician telling us I need to do this trick it was instead now we as writers have to reckon with this I haven't gotten in that particular situation again I probably will you know some other time because if you want to work with the best people occasionally the best people have working methods that you just sort of adapt to whether you know you're doing it or not with the Bridges of Madison County Marcia wrote a treatment for the entire thing I mean we had discussed I said all I wanted is to be eight people I said if we know the show is eight people then as a musical piece of structure that's what I know I know I want to deal with a musical piece of structure that's eight people because an octet is what I knew and I like having a limitation if it's a totally arbitrary limitation I like having something that forces me to create theater as opposed to forces me to try and make something real happy you know the minute I say eight people and we have to tell a whole story with that there's already some theater that's built into it you know what I mean there's a limitation that I built into the piece that's going to force me to come up with things it's going to whereas if you say to me you've got all the money in the world you can have all the people you want you can have everything I'm sort of stuck and I have eight people you know so I knew it was an octet and then Marcia wanted to write a treatment of the whole thing and I said great and she did and I wasn't as dogmatic with her about write a whole monologue you know sometimes I would say just you write it and Marcia also was a lyricist but you know I would say you just write it and I'll take it and I'll see where it goes and so she got through the first act and sent it to me and I just started pushing my way through it you know aggressively and I would just rip up whole scenes of hers and I would take things and I would rewrite whole things and you know again that's a Pulitzer Prize when I'm playwright but at this point I was older and I was like yeah I'm going to do it so you know I go in there and write dialogue and she rewrites lyrics and you know and she says this doesn't sing right can we cut this and I'll say no but we can cut this I mean we really get into it but we have a wonderful wonderful time working together and then it was written and partly that was me having gone through a parade saying I want to know what this is before I turn it over to a director to put their stamp on it I wanted to make sure that what the director was doing was interpreting what I wrote as opposed to me interpreting what the director wanted which you know again that's fair it's either of those is valid parade is perfectly valid and British Madison County is perfectly valid so those were those were two very different processes um with 13 I wrote most of it myself you know I had Dan Ellish was a wonderful children's book writer and also a very good theatrical writer and he would write I would we'd say what's the scene's going to be about is it great I'd say go off and write it he would send it to me and he's very laid back so he didn't mind but I would generally rewrite the entire scene just because I needed to get to a song in a certain way and I felt like it was faster for me to do it to him and we eventually developed the shorthand with that and then we brought another writer in on the process later Robert Lorn and Robert's job was to sort of punch up the jokes and keep everything alive which was important because over the years of Dan and I working on Dan and me working on the piece there had gotten to be flat stretches where you know because he had gotten so used to me just throwing everything out rewrite everything and do all of that and it was chaos it was total chaos and I hope I never write a show that has that process again because it was it was a situation where when you get into trouble and every show gets into trouble and hope if you're lucky that you don't get into trouble when you're you know about to start previews in New York which is when we started really getting in trouble but when you get into trouble everyone's a leader who says stop I got it you solved the problem and with 13 there was a producer who was asking for all of these changes and then each change would send something else sort of flying off to the side and things got very sloppy and nobody was able to say stop I mean I would occasionally because I'm me and you know you can gather by now I'm fairly assertive and I would say stop everyone stop I'm going to solve the problem and jump in our chairs and there was no way to get forward so we you know Robert and Dan and I would sort of hold hands through opening night and you know they posted the closing notice shortly thereafter and after the show closed I went you know to Robert and Dan and I said alright great let's go rewrite the show the way we wanted it to be and that's what we went and did and the version that is now licensed is far different from what was there's a lot of models of collaboration and I'm sort of open to all of them I'm I'm never great about the I'm not great about working with people who I don't think are as good as I am how about that I mean I think I'm awfully good I don't know why you would do this gig if you didn't think you were really good at it that seems like a crazy thing to do it's really hard it's really lonely and you make no money for a very long time so you might as well have the option of eventually writing some show that's going to make a lot of money then what are you doing you're driving your family insane what you want to be doing is I am in this because I am going to be successful at it and the reason I'm successful at it is because I'm really fucking good and if you don't believe that then this is going to be a rough road I mean it really is and some people are better at hiding the I think I'm really fucking good than other people and I have trouble working with people who are not ready to play at my level that's easy sometimes you get stuck with those people I'm now at a point in my life where I don't have to I can sort of say you know what I'm not having any fun in this moment I can work with people who are better and I'll go off and I'll do that but it took me a long time to get there what happened with the legalities of people who had worked on 13 before and then you did we all worked on the rewrite together go back and do that again yeah, sure I started in theater and then I went to home to LA and I got into television a lot of it happens to the best of us some of it's pretty good and what I always heard was well in theater because I wasn't writing theater I was performing when I began in theater the writer is the writer composers are the ones that kind of grabbed the thing the director is really the interpreter unlike in Hollywood where the director is some sort of a god figure and what I'm hearing you say is oh my god it's the same musicals are not plays plays are not plays are really it's the author's vision and then the director is there to sort of bring that vision to life musicals are musicals are supposed to be the producers gig musicals are and that's what the best musical award does not go to the writers the best musical Tony producers and that's that reflects I think a certain reality about how that goes it is the producers gig those of us who write very idiosyncratically do not like that piece of information but it is none the less true and when you are in that crucible you need a strong producer who's going to say this is the right director this is the right scene designer this is you know the producer's going to be able to and what you're hoping is that the producer is defending the author's vision but sometimes you have to be hired to write a musical I have been a couple of times it's awesome you know and so then that producer has a very strong vision I'm there to just write the music and the lyrics for that vision great that's what I'm there to do and then it all comes through and the person who's got to go raised 11 million dollars is the person who's you know we're all going to look to that person to have our backs so that's all fine you know if I really wanted it to just be about me you know first of all the lyrics and I'm now directing it so clearly I don't want anyone else to get involved in that and that's you know that's fine but that is not a that's not a position that most musical theater writers either want to find themselves in or are capable of finding themselves in so on most shows I have to defer to where the money comes in I'm in the commercial theater you know I'm not naive about that and the the reason I'm in the commercial theater to be honest it would be much better for me if I could go to Phoenix you know and just do a show at a community theater I could get them up all the time people would be like how cool is this there's a new Jason Robert Brown show and we're doing it at our community theater but the singers aren't going to be as good the musicians aren't going to be as good the director's not going to be as good the set's not going to cost anything it's going to fall down on opening night the stage managers aren't as good nobody's as good and the audience all came to New York where they can make a living doing theater a living a living in quotation marks but I mean you know they can do that so you know I could stand there and say I'm only going to do it in a situation where I'm truly the king but the only reason Andrew Lloyd Webber gets to be the king is because he produces the shows himself now too you know everyone follows the money that's a commercial art form it sucks but it's true I mean you know it's really good it's a shame you missed that I was trying to be subtle it's alright yes when will we when will we see Bridges excuse me Bridges of Madison County starts performances in I think beginning of August at Williamstown Theater Festival and then you know knock on metal it it comes in shortly thereafter is that the castervate? yes though I think the director talked to me into having more people but that didn't it doesn't really matter I knew I was able to write it because I knew what I it's that and I don't it does if there's 12 people on stage I'm not going to kill myself you know it doesn't it does but you know it was it was something I could it was it was a foundation I could build on get small get small small people I have a kind of a specific question but I'm I'm writing a musical with I guess he's a lousy friend no or more somebody that you went to camp with or something is that I went to camp with a lot of people but yeah anyway I wrote a lot of television movies and I'm thinking to myself oh my god see I'm doing a family dramedy it's human comedy and pathos as well and I'm thinking but it's not a television movie and I certainly if we get it produced I don't want that to be the first critical comment as though you know she's doing another TV movie so I'm thinking okay so now I have to impose some sort of theatricality on it so I was thinking about next to normal and I thought well that's a family drama really there is there is the device of the kid who turns out not to be real this imagination pigment of hers but other than that it wasn't terribly out there theatrically it wasn't angels in America or something that was just so hugely theatrical and I'm just wondering is there room for family drama that doesn't get kind of off the wall theatrical or am I thinking right well no you're answering your own question you know what you're saying if there's no reason for it to be on stage then why is it on stage there's a lot of writing would work just as well on television it's just they happen to sing then it's not really good enough reason for it to be musical there has to be some kind of not just theatrical engine but a musical engine for the piece again in the world I come from in my perfect planet there is a musical engine there is a reason why this thing has a musical life to it there is one end to the other I'm trying to solve a musical problem and that's what I do with all of my pieces even 13 which may seem sort of a little bit like oh it's whatever it's not that is a very specifically worked out and structured piece of music from one end to the other and you know if I'm the guy who's going to put up a lot of money or have to go raise a lot of money which I think is even more embarrassing you know if I have to go ask people to give me a lot of money they gave me something unless you said no it has to be on stage and the reason it works on stage is this next to normal is working out a very clear musical problem from one end to the other you know that's part of what it does it works out a musical problem and a lot of that comes through the daughter's character we understand through the daughter's character what you know and I saw next to normal through a variety of different iterations and it actually started as a much more aggressively theatrical piece than it ended up it actually started as a whole thing about electroshock therapy and we you know she would have these hallucinations while she was in therapy and that was the engine of the piece and it was 10 minutes long and so then as they kept building it and expanding on it an amount of theatricality and then sort of built out from it but I see plenty of musicals where I say what are we doing exactly what you know why are we here and I think Rob's musical has a little danger in that there's something about what do you do when it's just people and in place feeling a thing the music man is like it's a perfect show I love it but it is working out serious musical problems and it is working out serious theatrical problems along the way it was able to do that we can't do anymore is it was able to draw on a very specific vocabulary of musical theatre that everyone who walked into that theatre wanted to see and that's gone now there is not a common musical vocabulary that everyone in that audience is looking for everyone who went to the music man said I know when I see a good musical and by gosh there it is because they knew what the tropes were they knew what the whole deal was and you can see why West Side Story did not get raves and did not get people jumping up and down the halls in the music man West Side Story was like why are they doing this why would they do this to me I know what I want I know what I want to see and it's not this I'm much more value that those people who wrote West Side Story were willing to take that risk I mean I infinitely value the music man it is one of my touchdowns but without West Side Story I wouldn't be a writer because they said right here's the vocabulary and now here's us pushing it one step forward and I think there are six this season maybe on Broadway I think with so few musicals you don't have the luxury of a common vocabulary everything has to push it forward push it forward there was that whole thing that Book of Mormon is just one example of a show like You're in Town or like the producers that was just kind of like well let's take the language of musicals and just screw around with them so we'll just sort of say ha ha it's a musical and that comes from that same impulse everyone knows what a musical is so now I can build on that thing I don't take for granted that a musical vocabulary exists commonly within the audience does that make sense when I say it? Does this make you feel hopeless? You know what I'm missing from what you're saying is I understand why the music man is working out a musical problem because it's a story that has music in the story 1776 is about writing the declaration it's not about music but they use music to tell it and I think beautifully that's one of my favorite shows so what do you mean when you say working on a musical problem? I don't know I don't know that I would use 1776 as an example for any of those I think 1776 is the sort of exception that proves the rule I mean you know 1776 is a weird piece that's got a 40-minute chunk of dialogue in the middle of the show and that doesn't play by the rules of musical theater that I know it's not you know everyone says I don't think it's the best book for a musical I think it's a pretty good play and then it's got some songs in it and they often feel to me a little bit like everybody stop let's go do a song great now let's go back to this great play that Peter was writing that's sort of where I am on 1776 but I like it it's a perfectly entertaining evening but it's weird to me excuse me I didn't feel you fit I was going to ask that same question I still didn't get the answer what do you mean working out a musical problem what does that mean? what does that mean to work out a musical problem? what is a musical problem I've never heard that phrase before I love it but I don't understand what it is it seems very important to what you're how you view musical process I it's easy to take this too far so I'm trying not to sort of you know back myself into some sort of stylistic corner that you could then turn on me later if I'm writing if I'm writing a symphony I start with this is a simple thematic idea I have a theme and I'm going to develop it and I'm going to turn it around and that whole symphony feels of a piece musically and what I'm trying to do from that very beginning is to build that piece of music into some inevitable thing so that when I'm done you say I have had enough of that I am satisfied musically by that piece of information it has gone everywhere nobody does it better than Bach and of course what are you supposed to do about the guy did it best 400 years ago but that is true to me and when you see Sweeney Todd it starts out by positing a very small theme there's a little piece of thematic information that comes there and it spins the whole rest of the show spinning out that information musically which is sorry, what's the theme? well it starts on the organ doing the D.S. Erie and then the minute the D.S. Erie gets broken up it gets broken up and lyrically already with a 10 the tale of Sweeney Todd he's telling us something about the theatrical language of the piece he's telling us something about where we are and who we are and all of that and now he has set the problem in front of us how am I going to tell this story with all of these pieces of information and we then work it out that way there is inherently he has already by the time they sing by the time they finish singing the first line of the play he has set an enormous number of limitations in front of himself he has set a lot of theatrical limitations it's only going to be this and if he breaks any of those rules later we'd all know it we'd all sort of feel the rules break and like in light in the piazz at the beginning of the second act of the light in the piazz everyone finally the one the mother character turns around and she says you know I don't speak English but I have to tell you what's going on and she breaks a rule and the first time I saw the show everyone laughs at that moment and I was like alright I guess they had to do it that way and I understand that they did sort of have to do it that way that the piece was building and building and building but if you didn't give me the relief of letting somebody speak in a language I understood at this moment we were all going to be lost for the rest of the night but there's no question that the audience feels the rules break and when we feel the rules break you then have to do a whole lot of sewing to get back into your rules and that's I think when I talk about a musical problem without getting to I don't know how to get more specific than that but I think there are certain things you say at the beginning of a show that say this is the show I wanted to write I wanted to write a show that sounds like this and feels like this and if it doesn't sound like something then what is it? and so when I say a musical problem there is a certain amount of vocabulary that you're setting yourself that a show should sound like it's very hard to write contemporary musicals it's very hard to write shows that sound like today because what does that sound like? you know what is certainly some of the housewife in Kansas City is going to sound very different from you know a gangbanger you know in Bed-Stuy what am I saying so you know so I've got a musical problem I've got to deal with right there because everybody listens to everything now and what is that? I could write something based in 1975 I could write something based in 1985 it's very hard to write something that's based in now I try but it's tricky and the heights works beautifully because that musical language is so compressed a specific population that lives in a very specific musical world and it even seems exotic to most of us and they don't you know they don't introduce you know a lot of other musics we know what the musical problem is right at the beginning this is the world sorry yeah thank you please listen my fair lady man of La Mancha in the same category as a music man how would you compare them compare them as far as effectiveness oh listen it's not my place to sit and compare my fair lady man of La Mancha and the music man classics are classics for a reason if we could create one of those every year I'd be very happy they work better than Donnie Brooke you know I think there's a clear dividing line and all three of those shows live healthily and happily above the dividing line and then there's lots of shows that fall below it I'm not sure what it is you're looking for well all of those shows you walk out of the theater and you're whistling some tune nowadays it's very rarely that you walk out of the theater and whistle a tune that was yeah well I mean but you have the hindsight of you know of talking about my fair lady I mean sure you whistle my fair lady it's my fair lady I mean you know it was there in 1954 it's been there a long time there were a lot of shows that season that were terrible you know lots and lots of them and most of them haven't survived because they were pretty lousy and some of those shows you could whistle all the tunes you wanted to they still sucked it didn't matter a whole lot whistling doesn't make a show good my fair lady isn't good because you can whistle the tunes I can whistle the tunes to you know three wishes for Jamie it's got beautiful songs and it's a terrible fucking show it doesn't matter what matters is how the storytelling and the music telling all go together and I get very defensive about the whole I can't whistle the tune thing because I think well just because you're a shitty musician doesn't mean the song will you know differently but I understand that the structure of a piece of music is going to lend itself if it's done right there should be enough repetition in the structure of a song that an audience can grab onto it and that's true and I miss that in most shows as well but I would always miss that in most shows because most shows are bad you can't just pick the three good ones and say well these shows do it well how come nobody else does they do it well oh well gee I guess that's why because he wrote The Impossible Dream it turns out that was a good song you know there's lots of there's lots of not great songs in Man of Le Mans also but you know you picked the good ones alright sorry let me wait no I have to ask pick somebody who hasn't asked me something yes go ahead can you talk about a source of inspiration you go to when you find you're at the road block or even just when you were first coming to musical theater what your inspirations were either in musical theater or outside of it you know I just feel like a lot of especially out of contemporary theater music is very insular it sort of writes itself over and over again and everything sort of sounds the same and that was never all that interesting to me so I mean you know I grew up on certain kinds of music and I thought I was going to be a rock star anyway you know so I grew up on Billy Joel and Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell and Carol King and you know and then at the same time I went to a very highfalutin music school and I fell in love with Steve Reisch and the drums and you know I was doing all of that and then there's Bernstein over there and then there's Sondheim over there and they all just sort of come in and you know when I get stuck I you know I take the dog for a walk for me getting stuck is about not I have to just get away from the piano I get stuck really easily I get stuck you know in like two measures and so I'll get two measures there are times when you're just on the train but most of the time I'm not on the train most of the time I'm sort of getting hit by the train is what it feels like you know and so in those moments you know good stuff is good and bad stuff does not inspire me bad stuff it shuts me down you know when I have to see a bad musical when I see a bad movie if I watch a TV show that's bad it doesn't make me go like I can show those guys I really I just sort of slump and I shut down but when I see something good I go ooh I want to be in that world that's the thing I want to see and I want to do and you know it's been nice living in Los Angeles for the last couple of years because I don't have to see a lot of bad theater you know I mean there's plenty of bad theater in Los Angeles I just I don't go out in Los Angeles very often but you know when I was in New York I was constantly expected to be out and in the world and sort of seeing and doing all that and I found it very innervating you know it got exhausting so I found that one of the best things I can do not to get stuck is not to go see things that I think are going to be a drag you know that's a little thing for me I feel like I haven't answered your question that's right I took a shot anybody else yeah you were talking about how a setting has a certain or a time period has a certain sound and feeling and I was just wondering what was the role of kind of pastiche or the musical style of that period or location how does that play out in your music I think it plays out pretty substantially I mean there's just a difference between well I'll say it this way there's a fine line between pastiche and bad writing and you have to just sort of know when to play that but you know I think customers have the same issue you know if I set a piece in 1871 there's a whole bunch of things that everybody there on this day in this place at that time because the audience is going to see it and they're going to get a lot of information from that so when I use pastiche when I use a musical style from an earlier thing I'm asking the audience to jump on you know this thing you've already know all these things once I start playing something that sounds like that piece of music you all know what that is oh alright fine if I haven't been very careful about my choices well I'm going to get in trouble and then the real question about pastiches am I using style why am I why am I going there why am I writing something that sounds exactly like a song from 1923 why would I do that am I doing it because there's a song on the radio and I want everyone to hear the song on the radio sometimes the answer is yes at parade there's a you know there's the John Philip Susan Marsh everybody would you know sing in the streets at the Confederate Memorial Day Parade I could have used an actual march that they did but that wouldn't have helped me with the musical stuff I needed to do later I wanted something I could bring changes on that was mine so that's where that came from but then when I get to the picture show which is the next song in the in the piece which is Frankie and Mary Fagan and they're on Hello My Baby because I thought well that's their young it's ragtime it's that energy but I knew that if I did direct pastiche if I just wrote Hello My Baby why would Frankie sing that Frankie has to sing something that's Frankie's Frankie has to live in his own world and he has to do that so I'm not going to write a pastiche song for that moment because it wouldn't it wouldn't be right for those characters to sing a song in a style it's just I'm trying to give the audience some sense of a little bit about these characters through style style will tell me something about these characters and so that's I think that's the use of it was that helpful I think that was a good answer I think we got one more and then I'm going back to rehearsal yes this is a very general question I can give you specifics if you want what advice would you give to a librettist writer with a early draft trying to be as useful as I can and as a compact a time as I can I think that if you have a piece and you think this is a musical and so you don't know a composer you don't know a lyricist whatever it's going to be but you're a book writer and you say this is a musical and you go ahead and you write it what you have to know for me and what I think your ideal should be is what you have to I'm going to look at that as something that I am now going to rip up, tear apart and start from page one none of what you wrote matters anymore you showed it to me to get me involved in the project I may have responded to it and now we are writing this show together and we write every line of it together and every note of it is something we write together clearly I'm going to be handling the music and I'm going to be handling the lyrics and you're going to be handling the dialogue but everything about how this show moves has to go through both of us because giving it a musical momentum a musical energy has to come from me and only I know when I feel like a character should sing that's a thing that I've got I get up I'm working through the scene and I say wait ah there's the song and a different composer is going to find that in a different place and every composer's individual voice comes out because they respond to a certain moment musically and it goes up it does I read something and all of a sudden I hear something and it goes and whenever that happens that's when I want to go with it and then the minute that I have set something to music I have changed the molecules in the room so substantially that everything that came after is going to be affected by it and so it's awfully good to have an outline it's awfully good to know what we want to accomplish and then you just have to write six songs and then we're done well then you don't need me there's lots of people who can write songs so that's what I as a as a composer want from you know if someone comes to me with a libretto is the knowledge that this is something I've written so that we can start tearing it apart and finding the music in it and understanding all of that and honestly I prefer to work from less I prefer to have a two page outline then to have a 45 page treatment and I can't even get started until I know what the music is that I need the music to have a certain energy to it so that I know how this goes that's my preference not every writer is the same and I think you have to be able to find a writer who's going to be sympatico with the kind of process you want to have you know as we get older right we're all much more rigid about our process whether we want to be or not we've all just tried a whole bunch of things and they didn't work and it gets hard to we want to be able to assert certain things we don't want to be entirely passive but it's very hard coming from all that I write television and now I'm trying to write a musical and it feels like a whole bunch of things but I have expertise I know what I'm doing I shouldn't know and yet I feel like I don't know anything that's just tricky it's hard and I don't know whether to tell you find a very young writer who you know put together or to say if you can't write it with an experienced writer you're really just sort of going to be spinning around in circles for a long time so make sure you find a writer who really is going to kick your ass and you know lift it up to the next level how you're going to find that person they're all busy they're all committed and also I'm not anybody so what am I going to do I mean I hear all of it and all I can say is what attracts people to an idea is that they know when I see it and I go oh we're all going to make a lot of money oh we're all going to get a lot of awards for this this is going to be something I see success here and I may see it in a piece and so you know I was asked to audition for Shrek and I said it's not me I can't do it and I didn't you know and I'm fine with it it's really it's you know it's okay I've gotten over it but I know that had I written it I would have gotten happy this isn't my kind of thing I don't feel like I can do this well now and there are certainly plenty of other people in the world who have said to them go write a show about a bunch of 13-year-olds they would have said this is going I'm going to be able to do this for about two months and if we haven't gotten it produced by then I may have to kill myself you know and I didn't feel like I wanted to write for a bunch of teenagers that was really there was so much theatrical excitement and that idea and I said fine Honeymoon in Vegas is so me it is entirely me but it's not there are plenty of other writers who would be like I don't feel like I want to write a whole swing show and a big brassy thing and a wacky comedy I don't that's not but I wanted to I saw success when I did it I said I can do this well and that's you know you're going to find the writer who responds to that but I think an equally important question for you is is this piece that you're trying to really nail because again this musical theater thing we're only really talking about some world in which people pay $120 $150 $170 a ticket are you really going to write something that's worth that that's an awfully good question and it really does shut down a lot of conversations pretty fast I believe I'm really fucking good kids yeah well and precisely and you should you say that is where I'm going I have to fit into that theater or I'm going to do this show and it's going to be a playwright's horizons and this is the kind of show that gets done at playwright's horizons and this is the show that's successful there and I care about this and I can do this well and it's going to get there and people are going to want to do it for the rest of my life great this is the fantastic whatever it is but it's going to land that hard and I think that's a good you specifically composer because you have the musical language that turns me on you have the musical language that sounds like this I didn't just pick you because you're famous I didn't just pick you because you're available I picked you because you're the right person to work on this with me that felt good all right so I will leave on that note and thank you all for your questions thank you thank you