Q. You've been working on "Play It by Heart" for years, is that typical?
A. Very typical. Musicals take a long time."Next to Normal" took us 10 years to write. David Spangler has been working on "Play It by Heart" for 30 years. I'm a dogged person, I get very little right the first time. I tell them my gift is to keep going — I am definitely the tortoise and not the hare.
Q. So what's your favorite part of what you do?
A. I love being in rehearsal with actors and directors and working with people. There is something sacred about rehearsals. I also like to be alone, just writing and I like the collaboration too. I like the mix.
Q. What's special about musicals?
A. Music can take us places emotionally that words alone can't. It can make the spirit soar. Musicals are tricky, people burst into song on stage and it's sort of ridiculous. But we know when it works because it's the most amazing transcendent experience you can have in the theater.
The first musical I wrote was when I was 18 and we wanted to do “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” but it wasn’t available. We wrote to (author) Roald Dahl and said a group of kids wanted to make a musical and he said “fine” so that’s what I did.
Q. What are you working on now?
A. I'm overloaded at the moment, actively working on five or six things. I don't get bored, I like the variety. I'm working on a musical called "Jesus in my Bedroom" about a character who is visited by Jesus and has to figure out what that means. It's about young people trying to figure out what they believe and how to live their lives by what they believe.
Q. How do you handle it when a play you care about isn't well received?
A. Part of what we do is to put the work out there for people to judge. That's fine. In the case of "If/Then," I wish more of them had gotten what we were trying to do. We were trying to look at the ways our lives are shaped by the choices we make and by the things that happen to us by chance through the lens of a specific woman's life and friends in New York City. We found that idea compelling.
When I wrote a musical it’s possible that all I will ever have is the joy of writing it. You never know what will happen with it, so I pick the projects I can find great joy in working on.
Q. It's amazing that you came up with the idea of making a musical about a woman with mental illness and amazing that it got to Broadway.
A. That's because rather than take his millions and hide out, the producer of "Wicked" committed to producing musicals that were adventurous and tried to break new ground. The success of "Next to Normal" continues to surprise me — we all thought it would be a little Off-Broadway musical.
Winning a Pulitzer was the thing that finally got certain people in my life to stop encouraging me to go to law school or to go into politics.
Q. Tell us a little about your childhood and early life.
A. I grew up in Seattle — I was a nerd and identified with the nerds but I had lots of friends. My parents encouraged us to do the things we found fulfilling.For most of junior high and high school, I wanted to be president of the United States.
On the first day of seventh grade I sat behind a pretty girl and I made her laugh, and she turned to me and said, “You’re funny, you should come to my dad’s theater.’”So I walked into the Village Theatre in seventh grade and never looked back and that girl and I became best friends. She’s now a playwright and does voice-overs in L.A. Our Village Theatre was a lot like the Human Race and it’s one of the reasons I love the Human Race and its spirit.
Q. How about college?
A. I majored in religion and English, the least practical majors. Working in theater is a bit of both. I did theater on campus and at the Village Theatre and when I was up on stage and I saw people in the audience telling us what to do I realized I really should be directing.
Q. Tell us about your involvement with "Play It by Heart." I understand you were asked to re-work the book.
A. My first response was that I don't really like country music. But at a certain point you realize that country music tells the truth and all other music lies to make things look good. I'm the prototype of someone who doesn't love country music and then falls in love with it. I fell in love with this score.
This show is about the fictional First Family of country music and you will recognize this family — it’s the story of three Jasper women and the men in their lives. It’s about what they have to fight through to hold themselves together and how they learn to forgive. It’s about family secrets and the things that can pull a family apart and then put them back together.
You will love these people and the songs they sing will speak to you. If you love country music, this show is for you. And if you don’t, you’ll be surprised. It’s the music of America about Americans and the lives we lead. Country music is honest songwriting, it’s not sugar-coated. They are true stories. If you go inside this world, you’ll find a human story.
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