(00:00:24) Good afternoon. Welcome back to midday in Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Gary eichten. You could join us composer Lyricist and playwrights. Stephen Sondheim is one of the most important influential and popular artists of our time. He has won virtually every major award in the entertainment industry. And for the last 40 years since he wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy the last 40 years Stephen Stephen Sondheim has been one of the major figures in nurturing the Broadway musical two weeks ago. Mr. Sondheim was in Minneapolis to appear at the Guthrie theaters annual Global voices series the series Showcases world-renowned artists talking about their art their ideas and issues that affect our lives evening featured a lively conversation about Stephen sondheim's career his approach to his art and the health of the theater conversation was moderated by Joe Dowling the artistic director of the Guthrie Theater. (00:01:55) That's what we call a real Minnesota. Welcome. (00:01:58) Ha ha ha. (00:01:59) It's a real pleasure. Stephen to have you here an opportunity to talk to you both about your life your work and on so many other things that have been part of the theater scene in America people years, but tell us how did you start composing because I know it wasn't in the family was it (00:02:15) would know my father played piano by ear. And when I was a tiny kid, he used to put my hand on the his pinky as he would pick out Broadway Tunes. He picked up Broadway tunes on the piano. And so I got used to the piano and then I come from an upper middle class family and like many upper-middle-class boys. I was giving piano lessons to keep me busy and to entertain my parents friends (00:02:42) and I used to play Flight of the (00:02:43) Bumblebee at (00:02:45) the drop of a cocktail glass. And (00:02:49) so for two years when I was six and seven years old. I took piano lessons and and then Um, when I got to High School prep school the George School a Quaker School in Pennsylvania. I took some piano lessons there and I used to give recitals around Pennsylvania until one day. I rather enjoyed it. But then one day I was playing the Chopin Polonaise fantasy and I was on automatic pilot and I it's a large ABA form and I played the A and I completely forgot where I was going. So I played the a again and nobody noticed the (00:03:28) different and when I realize I thought this is the end. That's the last time I played in public recital, but what had (00:03:35) happened as I think many people in the audience know is that when my parents got divorced when I was 10 and my mother who had custody of me bought a place in Pennsylvania Doylestown, and she was working woman dress designer and so in order to sort of keep me If I get me off her hands, she also she was very attracted to celebrities and a couple of miles away lived the Oscar Hammerstein family whom she knew slightly and they had a son my age and so we became great friends Jimmy Hammerstein II and I sort of us most into the Hammerstein family and I Oscar was sort of surrogate father for me. And so I became what he became namely a songwriter. (00:04:25) It's interesting you you talk at an early age your parents were divorced and we had Frank Rich here last week who also talk to being he and I have talked about the result of a theater was for him a refuge. And was that the same for you as a Cho? (00:04:40) No, no, I wasn't particularly interested in theater. I was a movie buff and now it would simply because of what Oscar did I just wanted to be Oscar? I've said glibly but not entirely falsely that if Oscar had been a geologist. Would have been a (00:04:55) geologist, you know, we just wanted to (00:04:59) identify and do what he (00:05:01) did and obviously I had a talent for (00:05:03) it and he nurtured that talent and he was looking to pass his knowledge on and his own children though. They were interest in the theater were not particularly interested in songwriting. So so I became his (00:05:15) surrogate son and he became your Mentor quite (00:05:18) right to the day dot I played everything I wrote for (00:05:21) him. What was the first opening night you ever (00:05:22) attended? When I was 15 Oscar took took I was during the spring vacation. It happened to Carousel opened in New Haven. And as a treaty took me and Jimmy who also went to the George School to New Haven for an OB night. It's one of the memorable nights of my life of oscars Oscars wife. Dorothy. Had a good luck mink stole that you War (00:05:51) looming and at the end of the First (00:05:53) Act I was so moved and I cried so heavily into it. She was never able to wear it (00:05:57) again. That's true as those of you who don't first. I mean, there's some first that stain irrevocably and that was a 20 million dollar cry, I think. But I (00:06:11) was terribly moved by that by that show and what particularly (00:06:15) moved you in Carousel. What was it that (00:06:17) I don't don't I think it was I think it was the totality of the story which I didn't know and the music which you know is I think Rogers finest score and I'm sure it was part of the excitement of the evening, but the story got to me, in fact that show moved me so much that I was never able to see it again. I never went to it in New York when it opened in New York. And then the only other time I went was when it was done in London a couple of years ago and went again and was able to see it pretty dry odd that may have been because I disapproved of some of the production, you know, I (00:06:50) think so. I was a little less vulnerable like that and it was lucky that mink stoles have gone out of fashion. That's right. Talk to us about (00:07:05) Allegro you were apprenticed to an Oscar Hammerstein show. Yes. There's the third show. (00:07:10) The third show that Oscar wrote after Oklahoman Carousel was a show called Allegro and it was a highly experimental show and I was 17 and it happened that the show went into rehearsal at the end of the end of spring beginning of Summer and was to open in Boston in the early fall and that coincided with my summer holiday from college. And so I asked me if I'd like to for $25 a week be his sort of gopher and and I typed script and I got coffee and that sort of thing and he wanted me to learn something about the professional end of the theater instead of just the writing end and it was actually I think a very lucky thing because it was an experimental show that did not work and I was able to first of all see firsthand how people how professionals could make mistakes and the kind of mistakes they made not that I was aware of the mistakes as they were being made. I wasn't that smart, but I In retrospect was able to see what they had miscalculated and also because Oscar was inventing a new form and I think it's because of that that I got interested in writing shows that are sort of off center and off the Beaten Track. It was that there were numerous things about that show that were fascinating for one thing it attempted to tell the story of a man's life from his birth to the age of 45 through a sort of a sort of a Chinese technique though. That's not what Oscar had in mind but the kind of technique that's used in our town in which everything is minimalized and it does not depend on scenery or specific plotting but on a kind of General epic feeling he also used for chorus. He actually used the function of the Greek chorus. It had not ever occurred to anybody. I think before that certainly non-commercial Musical To combine the functions of a Greek chorus and a musical comedy chorus. So the chorus became commentators on the action as it occurred that became part of the heroes mind when he would be going through crises in his life and it utilized very utilize. I think the first time on Broadway a cinematic dissolve as a set designer Joe Mills Unix is a did the sets but was asked his idea prior to that time musicals you would you know perform in one which means that the Forefront of the stage and meanwhile and we curtain behind you and then be a big set behind the curtain would go up you could big set then the curtain would drop and then while people were singing in front, they would change the set backstage and you went back and forth that way and that was a technique that existed as late as my fair lady and 56 use that technique was traditional technique and Oscar wanted to do something that had more fluidity since he was constantly going from Era to era and setting to setting and so he devised a with Mill Xena of an s-shaped curtain which would wipe across the state so that there would be a set here and then the curtain would clear that set but when it or cover that said clear that said they'll come back and they'll be another set here. So it was a completely fluid evening. And as you all know that's why musicals are now done all the time the show that in fact that promulgated that most successfully or utilize that technique was the one he wrote afterwards which was South Pacific which used wipes and dissolves with curtains, but it was first tried an Allegro. So I had an opportunity to be in on a lot of innovative ideas with Allegra and and interesting even though the show was a failure I've read that (00:10:58) someone said to you that your whole life has been trying to fix Allegro does that line (00:11:04) resignate? Yeah, it does, you know (00:11:06) is Cameron Mackintosh? You said that and I think he's absolutely right. I've been trying to fix Allegro. I absolutely That (00:11:11) was what was wrong with the Lego (00:11:12) which was very interesting. Was that the audience never understood? Why what the point of the piece was and that was a very valuable lesson for me to learn and Oscar told me he wiped it to the day. He died. He always wanted to rewrite the second article active Allegro, which is the story of a young doctor who goes to the big city from the small town and ends up getting Awards and laying cornerstones and instead of tending to sick people and eventually goes back to his roots and why he became a doctor in the first place and what it was was a sort of parable of oscars life Oscar because his success was so enormous with Oklahoman Carousel. He found himself spending most of his time being the spokesman for various writers organizations. He was had World federalism. So he got into sort of political political speaking and political doing because his clout was so great and he got less and less time to write and Driving him crazy but to an audience because of the sentimental way. He wrote the piece and it is unfortunately heavily sentimentalized. It just seemed to be that old story about the the boy from the sticks who gets corrupted by the big city and then has to go back but he really meant it to be about what success can do to you and how it can in very subtle ways corrupt and pervert what you're doing and that's exactly what Merrily We Roll Along is about theme that you used him. So but constant and hard written about it, but in a different way (00:12:41) did Oscar Hammerstein see any of your work did he live long enough? But he only lived long enough to (00:12:46) see West Side Story in Gypsy. He never saw any of the shows that I wrote music 402 pretty Sensational. I know but I would like to have seen first of all I would like to have had him see the experimental stuff and also the funny stuff. (00:13:00) And when you wrote the lyrics for both of those, yes, but not the music know the music. The first time that you want were represented on Broadway with both music and lyrics was funny funny thing happened happened. And what was for (00:13:16) you the I'd written a show before that call Saturday night that never that during why we're raising money for it the producer died and the show also died with it until four years ago when it was finally done in London and then in New York, (00:13:31) but the first time that you were actually on Broadway and so it was before him. Yeah (00:13:35) and (00:13:36) having sort of worked with other people on the previous two. How did it feel to be there on your own with your own work? (00:13:43) Well, I I was again many people in the audience know this I was reluctant. I know that sounds foolish now, but I was reluctant to do West Side Story because I wanted to write music music for me was fun. Lyric writing was something that you know, I still to this day find extremely difficult and And very heavy sweat work and it doesn't come out the way you wanted to so often but music is fun to ride it's hard but it's fun and pounding away at a piano is quite different than looking up lists of words and rhyming dictionary which is (00:14:14) which is what you do to write lyrics you make lists of words is all about lists. But (00:14:21) did you have any sense though in when working on West Side Story that it was to become such an iconic musical a musical that he's going to (00:14:28) change. I think that's a that's a touchy question Leonard Bernstein kept thinking of it in Grand terms how it was going to change the course of not only American Theater, but probably American history (00:14:40) and whereas (00:14:44) Jerry Robbins North Lawrence and I were writing a show (00:14:51) we I think (00:14:52) no, I don't think we had any real conscious awareness of we knew that it was different in the sense that it was dealing with a tragic subject in an era when most musicals were extremely happy and that it was an attempt at what Lenny likes to call it the some Koontz work with vogner's term for, you know, the totality of work. We're in which all the elements of the Are come together and make one in the soluble whole and indeed as those of you who've seen West Side Story know it is very much driven by a kind of choreographed movement. It's not so much of my choreography but the idea of movement and blended into that is music lyrics and and libretto and I think in fact my opinion is the West Side Story is not about racial Prejudice at all. It's about the theater. I think that's what it's about. And I think that's that was its Triumph was was its theatrical blending (00:15:56) and about the theater in sense of its (00:15:59) form in terms of technique in terms of technique and form to but particularly technique Hammerstein, you know had was the was the sort of the pioneer of the integrated musical in that other people had tried perhaps integrated musicals, but his were successful and always and for anything to be truly Innovative. It has to be successful or else it doesn't have an infant. Fluent to can be the first time but then you you know, I'll show can be the first time that the heroin came on in a blue dress in the third scene. So yes, that's the first time and heroin came on in the third scene in a blue dress, but it doesn't mean anything unless it it it influences further (00:16:34) shows and you've worked a lot with collaborators you say with some shows you worked on your own rules collaborators. Which which do you prefer. Well. Well, no, I've never worked alone. Not a completely alone. Oh, no, (00:16:49) I would first of all. Well one of things I love about collaboration is well. I was an only child. So I think it's a (00:16:56) it's a substitution for a family and I like I like working with people. (00:17:00) I'm not somebody who I enjoy writing songs alone because I fewer arguments (00:17:06) with (00:17:08) but but I like to have somebody that I can call at 3:00 in the morning and saying it's not working out. I don't know what to do and I just had those nylons like this (00:17:17) is really good. I difficult don't you have any (00:17:19) Is (00:17:21) and you can't do that. If you're a playwright riding by yourself (00:17:25) and who among the collaborators have been the most receptive to the three o'clock phone (00:17:28) calls. Every single one of them everything what they like that. Well, there's (00:17:37) the librettist always gets the short end of the stick and musicals. It's always a little brat is to get the poorest of the reviews. It's always a little brats to gets blamed if the show doesn't work and if the show's successful it's little bit as to gets the least credit. I think the one exception to that. Well Hammerstein is an exception to that because but they were a team and and and a different a different texture but for just individual librettists Arthur laurents got the credit for Gypsy which he well deserves, but I think it may be the only time in musical comedy history. Anyway theater 3 where the guy who does not work as part of a team like Lerner and loewe or Rodgers and Hammerstein as a librettist gets get the proper credit. And so I think librettists enjoy the collaborative effort because they're being paid attention to which they don't they don't get paid attention to and when the piece is on (00:18:29) I must say I'm very attracted to that idea. You have the The people you work with in the collaboration is a substitute family. The sense of the theater being about family is something that obviously is what I just died. I've never been (00:18:41) to this theater before just going backstage and seeing people talk to each other you just think. Oh God. I wish I were part of them. I mean everybody's having a good time and they're having a good time making something together. No, it's absolutely a theater is a completely collaborative (00:18:53) effort what when you've used a lot of source material different ideas different films plays what immediately attracts you about Source material evidence for instance Smiles of a summer night becomes A Little Night Music Sweeney Todd or (00:19:09) how do you there's a different that each each show has a different reason most of the time that I work on shares I get dragged into them. Somebody comes to me and says, I'd like to ride this a like to write this room. When I worked with Hal Prince a lot. He would say, come on. Let's let's do a show about this or that it's rare that that a show starts with me. But in the case for example of A Little Night Music I wanted to do a piece that he wanted to do a romantic piece. And so and one that says that was sort of tight informant and and we talked about doing a what you know, the play called ring around the Moon. We wanted to get Jean and Louise place called invitation to Chateau and French and get the rest of it. They wouldn't give us the right. So we try to find something else that would take place in the Greek unities on a weekend and you know in a in a very specific tight timeframe and that was romantic and feeling and I'm not much of a reader and how is but I knew movies very well. So I suggested to movies and one of them was rules of the game, which is a Renoir film that is generally considered one of the ten great films of all time. It's one I don't particularly like but I could see why how might become a shell and then the other one will Smiles will Night and how and he will have the librettist were persuaded we screen both films and we chose Smiles of a summer night. That's that one Sweeney Todd came about because when I was in England in 1983 with 1973, I went to Stratford East and there was a production. I'd always want to see Grand guignol which I'd never seen and this was advertised as Grand guignol. And so I went to see it and I just thought I'd make a wonderful musical. It was just a play written by Mike Sweeney Todd was originally written in 1847 and has been Rewritten over the century and a half. And this was the latest version the Christopher Bond and written makes all the difference in the world because the other the other versions of Sweeney Todd were foolish but bonds version had real emotional motivation in it as well as some plotting that was (00:21:23) terrific. Well, as you know, we did it a couple of years ago at the lab, which is a smaller space than this and you say that it was (00:21:30) We conceived to be I want I always want it to be small. How did and I worked a howl and how (00:21:34) didn't like it and how hate the period he doesn't like the Victorian period that was number one and number two, how is is drawn to Big stagings? That's one of the reasons he does Opera and operatic staging like Phantom of the Opera in a video, you know, the he's drawn to that whole tradition of meyerbeer meyerhold in vakhtang go off and the notion of theater being much much bigger than life. And so he said to me that the only way he could see possibly doing it was to make it make it sort of Epic and he said I know I know that what you want us to scare people cause that's all I want to do. I wanted to write (00:22:11) a show that would that would terrify (00:22:13) people. I mean, I like scary movies and I thought gee this could be really (00:22:16) scary and charming and And how is very (00:22:24) socio-political in his work? And and so until he saw that there was some way of perhaps making a point about the Industrial Age and its effect in London. (00:22:38) I said, all right fine. I'll write a line and you know about I'll put the word Industrial in I (00:22:44) just wanted to go young dumb dumb dumb. (00:22:52) And and in fact when we were going to do it originally before how got that set (00:22:58) which is what what persuaded him to be able to do when he when he and Jean Lee the set designer Jean Lee found this Foundry and in Rhode Island and brought the hip virtually the whole Foundry onto the stage of the theater, but it was that and how said I know what you'll lose something in terms of you know scaring. But you'll gain something in size and I thought to myself it can always be done small, but why not since Hal wants to do it big and I want to do it with ow. Why not do it big first and then if it works great and if it doesn't we'll do it small and fact, it's been done small many times while yeah like here but I all I wanted to do was was I want to write a score like Bernard Herrmann and you know in Hitchcock's movies and also Bernard Herrmann wrote a score for a movie called hangover Square, which is favorite movie of my teens, which is a sort of scary movie about an insane composer. I wonder why I liked (00:23:57) it (00:23:59) and and it but it was the music that that that that brought the tension to the film as is true in Jaws. I remember sitting down at the beginning of Jaws and hearing those double basses and I was scared I did not nothing was going on. There was just (00:24:14) water and don't you don't remember that feeling at that? Oh my God, what's going to happen? And I thought (00:24:18) that's the way you can scare people is with the constant use of I thought let's try it for Sweeney Todd. So we were going to do it in how just on a production of candy to Broadway Theater in which he had completely reconfigured the theater and candida just closed and we try to persuade the Shubert organization which owns the theater to leave it alone for about six months or eight months till we could finish and get the show ready so that we could do it in the round so that we just we just wanted the entire theater to be fog and a street lights, you know from Victorian era and then you'd be sitting in your season and this soprano would run up behind you and said (00:24:59) go. Ohms (00:25:01) arms like that. You're not everybody we've got like that. Do you never knew where the action was going to occur? And it would have scared scared the hell out of the audience wouldn't want to but the (00:25:10) Schubert's wanted to rent the theater somebody else. (00:25:14) That that seems to me to be such an interesting tension between that you know, the musical as a big Broadway spectacle and the kind of work that we're you quite literally transformed it into something where it could be played in a small space or it could be played in a large way that that tension has been sort of a part of the growth of the musical hasn't it over the last number of years (00:25:35) well musicals never really were all that intimate except for reviews. Occasionally the first intimate musical I can remember curiously enough. I mean Successful Broadway musical that was truly intimate and told attempted to tell a story as opposed to the shows of the twenties and thirties was actually house and it was his first complete directorial job. It was she loves me which is truly intimate musical true chamber Musical and for somebody who then grew only to like large musicals. It's there's a certain irony there. Yeah. I know what you mean. It's the bread and circuses thing. You know, you want some surkhi want an aspect of circus, but you also want an aspect of bread. I Tend to lean towards the bread into and (00:26:17) looking at works. Like Pacific overtures are assassins. There's a very definite reflection on reps political events or and world events. Well, (00:26:28) that is something that's John Weidman as I say house very (00:26:32) into social political stuff and has to relate that's why he's attracted to shows like a Vita and Cabaret because they have political and social content. But John Wyman is particularly interested in that and John's 10 Pacific overtures and assassins. Yes, he then and he's very into that. I'm not I'm neither into it nor not into it I can get into it but it's not this kind of thing that attracts me immediately. I get attracted primarily by either character or plot (00:27:01) and yet assassins has once again you were saying recently been a casualty of the reasons. Yeah (00:27:09) assassins was going to be done. This season hasn't was only done for one month about 10 years ago. And I don't know if probably house and just before it opened the Gulf War opened and got the better notices. I think no, I don't mean to be entirely flip about that. But it was it was it was not a good idea to present a show the questioned sort of American. Political idea of the pursuit of happiness of the right the right the right to be happy and and about disenfranchised people which is what assassins it's partly about sparked the assassins in in the show are the people who tried to kill the president of states and some of them are crazy and some of them are not crazy. They're merely politically political dissidents. And so we try to do something that it was not a good time to expect an audience which was fueled by patriotism to listen to that kind of thing the same thing happened here and then after September 11th attack, we were going to go to rehearsal two weeks later, but the next day we just saw it through there's no way you can do that in that particular climate because an audience will not listen to what you're saying (00:28:29) you say that you're mostly influenced by character by the development of characters in The and sometimes By plot and By plot and Merrily We Roll Along, of course it is so Logically true and you draw and such depths in those characters was which I don't think is in the Kaufman and Hart original and you've added such a dimension to a but you were talking last night about the the difficulty of that main character because of his success at the beginning of the play. (00:28:57) Well again Merrily We Roll on which was in 1934 Kaufman and Hart where you know, very successful at that time, they'd written this huge hit go once a lifetime and it's show got quite good notices, but it was not a success and though merrily did not get good notices when we did it in 1981 it I think the problem with Marilee is very difficult for an audience to like somebody who is dis likeable to be interested in somebody who is dis likable and corrupt even though the story is then going to show how he was originally innocent and it's hard for them to get interested. Many audiences to get interested in that character and I will I'll tell tell the Herman mankiewicz Story after after Kaufman and Hart to play opened Herman mankiewicz. Writer and screenwriter Joe magwitch his brother. And in fact the man who wrote Citizen Kane with Orson Welles was asked about the new Kaufman and Hart blight and he said well, I'll tell you what, it's what what is it about? He said, well it begins in this lavish Long Island estate and the hero who's the most successful playwright on Broadway married to the most beautiful actress on Broadway is having an opening night party. She's just starting the play and they're waiting for the notices and the notices come in and they're better than any notices. He's ever gotten and the rest of the play is how the poor son of a bitch gotten such trouble. (00:30:33) So, you know, so it is sometimes difficult for an audience say so what's his (00:30:36) complaint. Yeah, (00:30:38) when you think back of sort of great composers composers of the past who stands out specifically for you Composers on Broadway. Oh, well Great American. My particular (00:30:51) favorites are everybody's favorite Arlen Porter Kern Rogers, you know Berlin, I mean I'm I don't have very unusual taste and compose except musical (00:31:04) theater, but George Gershwin I know I was a great would (00:31:06) certainly is our yeah. Well Porgy (00:31:08) and Bess has from my money the best score ever really written for the oh sure. Why do you would argue that? Why would you go because the most inventive it's the most passionate. It's the most original. It's the most it's partly because the lyrics Dubose Heyward to lyrics are I think the best lyrics ever written for the Broadway Theater and the combination of the two of them is just extraordinary. There are some Ira Gershwin and lyrics in it, but I think those are the are nowhere near up to Hayward stuff there that they tend to be the kind of show busy tunes and but the real work is all hayward's and and there was a they just brought something. Out of Gershwin that never happened either before or since just one of those men Miracles. I'm always moved by that score. (00:31:54) You've watched Broadway grow and change and develop over the 40 years that you've been involved. What are the largest changes and what do you see now is blood. Oh (00:32:03) goodness. I don't I can't take over views and I don't know. I mean, obviously the obvious changes are that the theater, you know is less and less popular as television and rock and pop. We've got more popular obviously musicals are still pretty popular plays are having more and more difficult time getting produced and getting on and getting audiences unless they're done in small venues. I'm talking about in the commercial theater. It's primarily music. It's also happening in London now, yeah, you know, you could download the list of the plays in London and they mostly musicals and a lot (00:32:38) of the musical's of course stay for a very long time. That's the other thing (00:32:41) too, but audiences want musicals and and so plays have suffered. That's the major changes when I grew up there were a lot of plays but (00:32:51) do you see I mean, obviously there are as you say they audiences do get smaller for plays but not for musicals. I mean, do you see new trends emerging in musicals or is it the tried-and-true always a (00:33:04) popular? Well, you know sure it but that's true of true that's been true popular are throughout history people resist change. And what is familiar is what is what what makes people want to see and people like the people like to be told something they already know and and they like to be told Pleasant stories. It's what Lillian Hellman called Pleasant people with Pleasant problems. (00:33:32) Of all the work that you've done. I'll have you a particular favorite. Is there something that you (00:33:36) know, I I've each I've (00:33:39) done I have a liking for for different reasons with there's a there's a show I don't I don't have a particular liking for it. But otherwise, otherwise, they generally I like (00:33:50) them. What's it when you don't (00:33:51) like it's do I hear a waltz which was a which it's not that it's a bad show, but it was a show that need not have been written (00:33:57) said (00:34:05) It was it was written instead of out of passion was written out of expedience on numerous levels. And therefore it doesn't it's perfectly respectable show. It just doesn't attract me but I but I like other shows for other reasons Island (00:34:19) when I know that a lot of people like a lot of the shows that needed to be written. I'm not (00:34:23) pussyfooting. It's I mean I can tell you the reason I like each show but there's a (00:34:27) vulnerable I'm going to open this up to our audience because I know there are a lot of people here tonight who who probably want to ask you questions and talk to you about can we get the house lights up (00:34:37) award-winning composer Lyricist and playwright Stephen Sondheim varying earlier this month at the Guthrie theaters annual Global voices series. Well, they'll house lights were turned up and the audience did have lots of questions for Stephen Sondheim as you might expect Guthrie artistic director Joe Dowling also moderated that part of the program. (00:34:57) This is a question about whether because this gentleman find Sweeney Todd the most operatic of all Stevens work has he ever had the ambition to write an opera for the math or grand (00:35:09) opera and and add the the extra Clause with all the resources that (00:35:14) because that's now that's that because my (00:35:17) answer involves that I have been asked to write operas when Beverly Sills was running New York City Opera. She asked me I have not particularly like Opera and the reason I don't is that I like a story to be told as swiftly as possible. I (00:35:42) Five minutes of singing good night or take out the garbage is just not and yet I understand exactly why Opera Buffs like Opera (00:35:51) if the glory of the human voice is your particular dish then Opera is it and and also there's spectacle and there's the there's the pleasure of attending the Opera, you know, you go to the Metropolitan Opera Your Entertainment starts the minute you go in the door, you know, and that's that's all part of it that you know, it's Grand in many many ways, but (00:36:14) I happen to like the (00:36:15) interplay of dialogue and and song it has occurred to me too because I could I could make Sweeney Todd I could sing all those passages that are now spoken. I almost all of them. I know how to solve and I almost tried to do it when when there was a Revival of it in London a few years ago, but then I thought I really like the tension. I always have between the spoken word and the song word but there's another thing too which is Of course fixing fixing an OP fixing a new piece when you write a musical you fix it in front of an audience who is your eventual collaborator and the old days used to be able to go out of town to fix your show you go to you know, Washington Boston Philadelphia occasionally, maybe even as far west as you know, Chicago but (00:37:04) essentially essentially was an East Coast (00:37:07) job and then shows got too expensive to take on the road. So often now, they are fixed in New York in a series of previews at last anywhere, you know from four to eight weeks and but still fixed in front of an audience and you change things you let things play for a bit you see and you decide is the problem with this scene or this song is that the writers problem is that the actors problem is the directors problem or it just doesn't need to lay in doesn't just need to play a few performances until the performers feel the audience and there is that back and Within this that wonderful thing that can only happen in the theater where you are making a direct dialogue with your audience with it's a two-way street going as opposed to movies and other forms of entertainment is only one way street. So I said to Beverly Sills if I want to do an opera I could I could conceivably do one I said, would you give me two weeks or three weeks of performances with the same cast every night? And there was a long silence because of course you can't do that in an Opera Company. You have to be in Repertory. You cannot and you can and on the other hand you cannot fix. That's why Opera that's why so many operas today. The new operas are not fixed there. Even if even if they're promising they're filled with you know things that don't work longer hours Etc climaxes that aren't climaxes because the composer doesn't get a chance to fix them except perhaps in a little workshop, you know in a room someplace but not in front of an audience in the house itself. And therefore there's no way to make the Opera good you can make it promising but you can't make it good and you know in the 19th century when Opera was the only game in town Puccini fixed them in front of audiences, he would cut in are you changing our Mozart and same thing and you have you have to be able to do that and you cannot in the in the way Opera Repertory is run these days. You get a performance on Tuesday, then you get a performance a week later with perhaps a different leading lighting. Then you get a performance three performances a week two weeks later. And that's the end of your new Opera any new Opera that gets done how many performances does it get and does it get any of them in succession know and it may have the same cast but not night after night after night. So by the time the performers get back into the show, there's no chance. It's like starting fresh again here. I've made my point. It's (00:39:41) just I don't mean to go on about it, but it does have to do with (00:39:44) resources. (00:39:45) This is a question about the makeup of the audience that most musicals that they seem to be over the age of 25 and therefore elderly (00:40:01) and The question to Stephen is (00:40:06) how young people might be encouraged in to the theater. I wish it were 25 here. It's (00:40:13) 45. I think you I think you're being kind. Well, there are two things the kind of music that is popular among young people does not lend itself. I think very well to the stage to telling stories that it's a pop and rock and rap, I think are very difficult. If you're going to tell a story they're fine for certain entertainments, but they're not very good for involving you with the characters so many musicals which are successful today are not interested in involving you with the characters. They're interested in spectacle and a certain kind of music. That's number one. Number two is there's the price of tickets unless you're taken by your parents or you are wealthy young person. You can't afford 75 bucks a ticket and or a hundred and fifty if you're going to take a day and so I think the combination of those two things there's always a great cry about (00:41:03) Why (00:41:03) can't we use the Contemporary sound in the theater? Well, you've all seen shows with contemporary sound in a theater and it doesn't make for the kind of show that some of us are interested in or that I'm interested in which has to do with involving involving one in character. And so I think there will always be rock music. Oh and I'm sure the average age of the of the audience of The Rocky Horror show is 25 to 40 or maybe even younger and but that's not true. The average age of the audience at Phantom of the Opera, (00:41:35) but you have been a mentor yourself to a lot of young composers. And I know that Jonathan Larson for instance before he died you had a do you see young composers who are using young? (00:41:44) Jonathan Larson was really trying to to make a an amalgam of and and in rent is a work in progress. As far as I'm concerned exactly that an amalgam of traditional musical theater and contemporary You music popular music. He actually was trying to do that. I Others are perhaps trying but I think not very successfully. (00:42:08) Yes, I see a lady up there. (00:42:13) Yeah, that's our (00:42:14) gentlemen. Sorry the gentleman and the lady behind someone take the gentleman first and then the lady behind ya. Sorry. This is a question about are there any of Steven's shows that he thinks would make it on the big screen? (00:42:30) Well a number of them and have been done and I fear not not very well. (00:42:35) I I think I think there (00:42:38) is such a Chasm of difference between the stage and the screen that my answer would be not just my own shows. I don't think any musicals that work. Well on the stage work well on a screen and that includes some that some of the audience may like a lot like West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof. I don't think they made the transition screen at all. Well, the theater is about the use of the imagination and movies are a rep Repertory oil medium and what you see is what you get and also movies you can do something in a movie and one second that it will often take three minutes to do on the stage, you know a duet that you know that develops on the stage you get impatient in the movies. Also, you're breaking a kind of reality. I mean, I got to tell you I looked at the opening of West Side Story and I saw this gang dancing down the street with color-coordinated wash and color-coordinated sneakers and I was supposed to be frightened of them as a street gang (00:43:42) and I wasn't on the stage. For example, (00:43:46) there was a moment in West Side Story. This is a paradigmatic mole. As far as I'm concerned in terms of your question, which was a sort of Leap Frog step it in which in the opening of prologue 33 Jets came out and three up stage, right and three sharks came out downstage left and they faced and then behind the actually with the verse that the Sharks were here. The Jets were there and behind behind the Sharks three more Jets came and leapfrogged over them and landed on the stage. Now that is you know, 450 pounds of dancers landing on a stage and that makes quite a sound you do that in the movies and it's three guys leapfrogging over three other guys (00:44:29) on a real street and that's not what gangs do but on the stage. It's felt violent (00:44:36) because the movement on the stage translated into the imagination as violence, even though it was nothing more than a lie fraud and That's just one example. I could give many others of why I don't think stage musicals translate. Well now if they're if they are if they're sort of polite state of you could take something like my fair lady in which if you like the movie, it's not about the musical. It's about the charm of the actors, but it's not about the musicality, you know, you still have to sit through the numbers which go on quite a long time. When you get the point on the (00:45:08) stage on the stage time is different you're willing (00:45:12) to listen to a song for three minutes that deals essentially with one subject on the screen because of cutting and because of the Repertory aspect of in the realistic aspects of the screen I get very impatient very quickly and I start to giggle (00:45:27) So my answer to you is I don't think I (00:45:30) don't think I don't think musicals transfer. I think you're going to do a musical movie. You have to write it for the movies and I think that can be done. You know, you take a something like oh, I don't know long Hard Day's Night that was you know that was (00:45:43) designed for the movie. So that's a real movie. (00:45:45) Google or you get Source musicals like the astaire-rogers musicals in which it's just you know, you stop the story and people sing and dance that's another kind of thing. But to tell a story through song which is the kind of musical that interest me. I don't I don't I think you have to write it directly for the screen find find cinematic techniques to do that. In Merrily We Roll (00:46:05) Along, they ask the question, you know, which comes first the words of the music and the answer is the contract but (00:46:12) which is a great line. (00:46:13) But but in reality which does come (00:46:15) first for you well for me, it's always it's a they work in tandem. I buy my method is to talk to the librettist a long time many weeks about what the show will be and how songs are to be used and why there should be songs one of the hardest things you to to determine when you're writing a musical at least for me is why should there be songs? Why not just do it as a play. Why should they be Sons? What does songs do that do more than just decorate or enhance enhance it on the surface. Why are they necessary to this story? Once that's the term then you can start figuring out. You know what the songs might be about then. I usually not usually always the librettist starts to write scenes so I can I can get the diction of the characters. We discussed the characters but you know the actual writing on the very good imitator and that's one of the reasons I'm a good collaborator. I can take a writers work and imitate the style and the tongue in the songs. And once that's determined and I get the style in the tone. Then I can start writing and then then it's a question of you may get a lyric idea and it suggests a melody or you may get a melodic idea. I usually do Tinker around a piano a bit just getting thematic ideas to try to get a harmonic language for the show because that's another thing that's sort of I think absolutely necessary to find is what is the harmonic language? I think Harmony is what makes Music Live and as opposed to melody or Rhythm and for me the harmonic color of a show of a score is is the same thing as the harmonic color getting pretentious now harmonic color the characters. (00:47:57) This question is about whether or not musicals are being written differently in the absence of such larger-than-life wonderful Broadway characters such as Ethel Merman (00:48:09) there haven't been any real major Stars created on the Broadway musical stage except Bernadette and perhaps Nathan shows don't get written for performers anymore. And I think it's probably a very smart idea because I remember for example Arthur laurents wrote a musical called Hallelujah, baby for Lena Horne and about three weeks for rehearsal. She decided she really would rather go to Hollywood or whatever it was and she just went and and that they you know, they got somebody else but the point was you can't count on an actor or an actress in the old days, you know in the twenties and thirties you could write for Ethel Merman or Mary Martin because the shows were done you wrote two shows a year and if they if Ethel Merman decided to take a vacation in October, she be back in March and you The show in March that's just not the way we can work anymore. And also there are very very very few people whose names the people whose names draw at the box office our television stars and occasional movie stars. So no musical but musicals have been written that way in a very very long time. I I'm not absolutely sure that Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote Sound of Music for Mary Martin. I don't think we did right Gypsy for Ethel Merman, but I don't know of many shows since then and that's 1959 that have been written for individual (00:49:31) players. This is a question about the length of the runs of various different shows and why some ran longer than others and whether in fact Stephen learnt anything from that (00:49:43) There are a lot of smart ass answers I could make but I'm not I'm afraid the answer is disappointing chose run as long as (00:49:52) audiences want to come to see them and who can explain why an audience will enjoy one show more than other quite often. They're affected by reviews, but not always sometimes you can get very mixed reviews and run quite a long time. And sometimes you can get wonderful reviews and not run along time. This is if anybody could answer your question, they would be trillionaires. (00:50:11) We want to thank you very sincerely for being with us here tonight as part of our Global voices series. (00:50:18) Thank you. My pleasure Broadway composer Lyricist and playwright Stephen Sondheim (00:50:23) appearing earlier this month at the Guthrie Theater is part of the Guthrie's Global voices series Joe Dowling the Guthrie's artistic director, of course moderated the program. If you missed part of the program, we're going to be rebroadcasting Stephen Sondheim at the Guthrie at nine o'clock tonight here on Minnesota Public Radio. You're so second chance to hear the program on the radio. And of course it along with all of our other. Midday programs are always available on our website, Minnesota Public Radio dot-org particularly good service, I think for if you have a friend who would enjoy one of these programs and no way they can hear the rebroadcast. For example, it's a great way for people to sit down and listen listen to the programs at their Leisure. So jot down the website address, Minnesota Public Radio dot-org now, we should talk about what we're having on the program tomorrow. The American radio works folks. So the documentary unit here at Minnesota Public Radio Works align conjunction with national public radio. They have come up with a new documentary called roots of resentment America Great Britain and the Arab world. The premise of the program is the response to September. Once and many Americans surprised at the world reaction to the attacks. You might recall President Bush wondering aloud. Why do they hate us? Well, American radio works is gone out to find out why so many people weren't all that upset with the September 11th attack and will have that program on the air at noon tomorrow Deborah Amos hosting from Pakistan. It's called roots of resentment America Great Britain and the Arab world taking a look at how the u.s. Is viewed elsewhere around the world and I do hope you'll be able to join us for that program. And we also are asking your participation a special project related to September 11th. We are working on a project called how we've changed discussing your reactions your responses to September 11th, and the effect its had on your life. I'd like to include your comments and our project. So check out our website, Minnesota Public Radio dot org or give us a call on the comment line. 651290 1080 Gary eichten here. Thanks for tuning into midday today. Minnesota's lawmakers are facing some tough choices how to whittle down a projected nearly two billion dollar budget deficit. How will it affect you find the information online at Minnesota Public Radio dot-org? You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio Sunny Sky 36 degrees at Kenner wfm 91.1 Minneapolis. And st. Paul Senator partly sunny through the afternoon with a high reaching the mid 40s partly cloudy skies are forecast for tonight with a low in the upper 20s, and then tomorrow essentially more of the city.