30. Stephen Schwartz's Update Winter 2008

[PHOTO - The photo of Stephen (center) with his parents at the Oscars is from 1996, but it conveys that red carpet feeling for Stephen's report below.]

February 25, 2008

I'm sitting on the plane back to New York from last night's Oscar show in LA. Strangely enough, being certain going into the show that Alan and I weren't going to win made it the first awards show I think I've ever actually enjoyed attending. Without the nervousness of wondering what the outcome would be and trying to remember a speech, I could just relax and be amused and bemused by the glitz and over-the-topness of it all. I would have had a complete blast if the show had been better (it seemed oddly flat to me, as if the Oscars were echoing the continuing depressed mood of the country.)

But inching down the red carpet, answering the same mindless questions over and over and hearing fans in the bleachers scream for movie stars in identical gowns while the neon of the El Capitan marquee shone across the street, I found myself marveling at the completely unexpected turn my life had taken. When I was a kid, I'll admit I fantasized about being a Broadway composer, doing things like inventing long-run statistics for my imaginary musicals (such as "Hi, Dog! … 873 performances"). But never did I imagine working in the movies. So last night, I stood there wondering: How did I end up here, on my way to the Oscars (again!) to watch three (three!) songs I co-wrote be performed on the show?

You know, writing this, I realize it didn't matter that the Oscar show itself was flat this year — I had a complete blast.

My plane is landing (sorry… I took time out to watch Dan in Real Life – and then they switched it off before the ending), so this is going to be a very short Quarterly Update. Next time I'll report on progress on the opera of Seance on a Wet Afternoon, and My Antonia at the Rubicon Theatre this coming spring. Today I'm still feeling the surprising afterglow of an absurd, improbable, and really fun Oscar evening.

Thanks for reading as always, Stephen Schwartz

PHOTO—Stephen Schwartz and Kellie Dickerson, music director for the Australian production.

NO SPRING ISSUE for 2008

31. Stephen Schwartz's Update Summer 2008

Note from Carol de Giere: I waited to send this issue until I had met a deadline for my book Defying Gravity: The Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz from GODSPELL to WICKED. This authorized book has been eight years in the making. I have been fortunate to receive comments from four of Stephen's associates for use on the backcover: Gregory Maguire, Winnie Holzman, Lynn Ahrens, and Stephen Flaherty. You'll find their praise for the book and many more details, including the table of contents, and ordering information on www.defyinggravitythebook.com. I have "tested" the book with about 10 fans of musicals, ages 15 through 75, and they all enjoyed looking through the photos and reading the chapters.

From Stephen Schwartz

July 27, 2008

A lot has been happening since I last checked in with all of you.

The big news, at least from my point of view, is that I have finished a first draft of the opera I'm writing, an adaptation of the psychological thriller " Séance on a Wet Afternoon." Just in time, too, as next month in Santa Barbara I will be doing a workshop of the second (and final) act. I'm sure this will lead to revisions, and I still have revisions of the first act to write, but as I am fond of saying, revisions are a lot easier than visions. The premiere of the opera will be with Opera Santa Barbara in September of 2009, so much work lies ahead. But the fact that I have gotten all the way through a complete draft feels like an enormous accomplishment to me ... and comes as a great relief!

In addition, I have been doing a little work for the upcoming Broadway revival of "Godspell," which begins performances on September 29th at the Barrymore Theatre. This will be the first time "Godspell" has been back on Broadway since the original production ended its run thirty years ago.  At the request of the director, the smart and skillful Danny Goldstein, I've written a new musical section to connect the two halves of "Learn Your Lessons Well," so that it will now all be one number. We've also done a bit of replacement and rewriting of the philosophers in the "Prologue," which of course has involved some new lyrics as well.

I went to a day of the "Godspell-y" theatre games workshop Danny did with the cast last week. I showed up for the talent show, in which the cast showed off many of their more obscure talents, which ranged from imitations, playing instruments and gymnastics to baton twirling, burping on cue, and making farting noises with their armpits. After wiping the tears of laughter from my eyes, I was happy to feel that, as "Godspell" productions tend to do, this cast features ten of the most talented (and funniest) performers around.

Meanwhile, "Wicked" has recently opened in Melbourne, Australia, to great acclaim. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get back Down Under for the premiere, but I heard from our producer Marc Platt that it is a terrific production and the performers are great. I'm glad it will give me an excuse to revisit Australia, which I loved when I was there last January. 

Closer to home, "Wicked" recently achieved a personal milestone for me, becoming my longest-running Broadway show (although it still has a couple of years to go to catch "Godspell," which ran 2600+ performances in its combined off-Broadway and Broadway run). An Emailer recently pointed out to me that only two other composers in Broadway history have had three shows run more than 1500 performances on Broadway, Jerry Herman and Andrew Lloyd Webber.  In doing some research after receiving this information, I discovered an interesting bit of trivia with which I stumped my statistical Emailer:  While I am now the only songwriter in Broadway history to have three shows run more than 1900 performances ("The Magic Show" 1920, "Pippin" 1944, and now "Wicked" 1950+), there is one other writer who can claim this distinction.  My Emailer couldn't guess the answer -- can you? The answer is at the end of this update.

And while I'm reporting accomplishments, I have one more to talk about, albeit it's not mine. Many of you may know that Carol de Giere, the woman responsible for this Website, has been writing a book about my career, which she has been working on for a loooooong time.  Well, it's done! Applause Books is releasing it this coming September. It's entitled "Defying Gravity" (natch), and it tells you as much as anyone could possibly want to know about the writing of "Wicked" and "Godspell" (in sections detailed enough practically to be books in themselves), plus "Pippin" and my other shows and the Disney and DreamWorks movies.  It charts the roller-coaster ups and downs of my career and includes creative ideas and process suggestions from myself and others, reprints of lyrics and original music manuscript, plus a ton of photos.  Having read it, I can tell you I like it very much, and I'm very impressed with what Carol has achieved with this book.

So yes, all in all, it's been a period of accomplishment all around.  With any luck, there'll be more to report next update.  Enjoy the rest of your summer!

Stephen Schwartz

(Answer to trivia question: Thomas Meehan, author or co-author of "Annie" 2377, "The Producers" 2502, and "Hairspray" 2449+)

32. Fall 2008

This issue included event listings, etc. Stephen didn't have time to write an update.

33. Winter 2009

No Schwartz update

34. Spring 2009

Stephen Schwartz, Alice and Scott So (fans of Stephen's music), and Carol de Giere pose for a photo during the book autographing session at the Museum of Performance and Design book signing, January 2009.

Editor's note: In late January, 2009, Stephen Schwartz traveled to San Francisco to meet with media and attend the opening of Wicked there. He also appeared for an event featuring my new book Defying Gravity. I interviewed him in front of a crowd of 120 fans at the San Franicisco Museum of Performance and Design. The Museum recorded the talk for its archives. Anyone may make a reservation with their library to enjoy the video that includes Schwartz playing piano and singing four of his songs.

Other Schwartz news: On March 19, 2009, it was announced that Stephen Schwartz has become the president of the Dramatists Guild of America, the national association of playwrights, composers and lyricists. Schwartz commented: "I'm extremely honored my fellow dramatists have chosen me to be the president of their Guild. On behalf of all of my fellow Guild members, I would like to thank John Weidman [former president] and Marsha Norman [former vice president] and the other officers for their amazingly productive work and the dedication that they've shown over the last ten years. I hope to continue to move the Guild forward in the direction they have led and to try to live up to their very high standards."

He received the Richard Rodgers award in Pittsburgh on May 9th in reconition of his lifetime of contributions of outstanding talents in musical theater.

San Diego's Old Globe Theatre has mounted a "re-envisioned" version of the 1978 musical Working with a score by Stephen Schwartz and others. The show opened recently and received much praise. Working Reworked.

The recent Pippin Revival in Los Angeles stirred audiences and critics with its fresh approach. www.musicalschwartz.com/pippin-deaf-west.htm

35. Summer 2009

No Schwartz Update. Schwartz was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

36. Stephen Schwartz's Update Fall 2009

Photo: The Séance cast, Stephen Schwartz (center), and maestro Valery Ryvkyn bow after the opening night performance. Photo by Terence de Giere

It has been a little over a month since the premiere of my opera, Séance on a Wet Afternoon, in Santa Barbara, California. I am now officially "post-op". This was probably the most challenging project I've ever undertaken and the greatest learning experience I've ever had.

As one example, writing for "legit" voices, I became aware of issues such as the passagio - the couple of notes in an opera singer's voice between their chest and head voices where it is uncomfortable for them to stay for any length of time. Therefore one wants to write mostly above or below that point. It's different for each voice type (soprano, mezzo, tenor, etc.) and to some extent slightly different for each individual singer. This is not something that comes up at all in writing for Broadway or pop singers. Opera singers know their own voices extremely well and what they can or can't do with their instrument. I had a fascinating moment when I was going over an aria with our brilliant leading lady, the soprano Lauren Flanigan. At one point on a big high note, I said to Lauren that I wanted a very warm sound because of the emotional content of the moment. Lauren replied instantly, "Oh, well, then you don't want me on the high A where you have me; I can give you power on the A but for the warmest sound you probably want me on the G#." So of course I rewrote that section of the aria so it was a half-step lower.

In addition, of course, opera is performed unamplified, so one can't rely on miking to lift the singers above the orchestra. I felt that one of the things I could bring to contemporary opera was a strong sense of musical story-telling, but therefore the words needed to be comprehensible and thus clearly heard. So there was always a balance to consider - keeping the music light enough under the singing but swelling up in the moments between sung lines. I thought of it as a kind of "vertical" writing, with carefully worked out peaks and valleys, whereas for theatre or recording, the miking allows a more "horizontal" accompaniment that flows along under the amplified voice. And in order to make sure that these unmiked voices were comprehensible, I had to consider when to take them up to high notes, particularly for the female singers, since in order to produce the sound up there, all the vowels have to be essentially the same and therefore far more difficult to understand. If all this sounds very technical, it is, and yet of course the music has to sound natural and flowing and emotionally true; the audience mustn't be aware of the technique, just the story and what it makes them feel.

But by far the biggest challenge for me was the orchestration. Séance is scored for a 46-piece orchestra, and I had never done anything even approaching such a thing. I was very fortunate to be able to enlist the help of my orchestrator for Wicked, William David Brohn. In addition to his impressive Broadway credits, Bill has done extensive classical and opera orchestrating, so his vast knowledge was enormously valuable. We wound up splitting the orchestration chores about 50/50 - to oversimplify the process: I basically did the "set pieces" and Bill did much of the "scene" sections. But we went over everything together, truly collaborating, and for me it was like having a private orchestration tutor or mentor for a year. I can't believe how much I learned, and I will always be grateful to Bill for his generosity. After years of watching Broadway orchestrators knock out an arrangement in what seemed like no time, orchestrating myself and discovering how difficult it can be has given me even greater admiration for the Bill Brohns, Michael Starobins and Jonathan Tunicks of the world.

One of the things I most enjoyed in the composition of Séance was the chance to use the kind of motific writing I have been exploring in scores like Children of Eden and Wicked, but far more extensively and with greater complexity. So much of the emotional story of an opera is told by the orchestra, and the use of themes and motifs in various subtle and interrelated ways to illuminate the subtext and illustrate what the characters are feeling is one of the pleasures of composing for this form.

Séance is a psychological thriller, adapted from a novel by Mark McShane but relying far more on the screenplay for the 1964 movie by Bryan Forbes, which starred Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough. Bryan was generous enough to provide me with a copy of the screenplay as well as earlier drafts to draw upon if I wished. I would estimate that at least 75% of the libretto was taken directly from Bryan's screenplay(s). But of course, as one does when adapting something and making it one's own, I changed things - the setting (from London to San Francisco), the ending, several important story elements, and perhaps most significantly bringing onstage a character who is only talked about in the movie and doesn't exist in the novel at all, the ghost of the main characters' eleven-year-old son. So when Bryan and his wife, Nanette Newman (who appeared in the film) flew out from London for the opening, I of course felt trepidation as to how they would react to the liberties I had taken. Fortunately, Bryan was extremely enthusiastic (or at least he was kind enough to say so to me.)

Another interesting and ultimately very happy aspect of the experience was that the opera was directed by my son, Scott. This was our first time working together on a new piece of mine, and I suppose that choice might seem fraught, but I never doubted for a moment that he would do an amazing job and that we would have a great time collaborating, and that turned out to be the case. Scott was very helpful to me dramaturgically as I was writing the opera, which was particularly valuable because I didn't have a book writer as I always do with a musical. With his first-rate design team (Heidi Ettinger, David Lander, and Alejo Vietti), he came up with a stunning look for the show, including a "rain curtain" of chains that surrounded the set and a house that turned as characters moved from room to room - it was really wonderful to look at.

Since we were blessed with a cast that not only sang beautifully but were highly skilled actors, Scott was able to get superb performances and to stage it far more like a play than the typical opera "park and bark". Best of all for me as the writer, he not only realized my goals for the piece, but took it beyond what I could imagine, finding in it far more emotion than I knew was there.

So ultimately doing the opera was a very positive experience for me, particularly because what I learned vastly exceeded my expectations.

But though I spent most of the year sojourning in the world of contemporary classical music, I do have a bit of news to report from the pop world: The terrific pop singer John Ondrasik, better known as the group Five For Fighting, has just released an excellent new CD entitled Slice, which includes two songs on which he and I collaborated, the title song and another song called Above the Timberline. John has become a good friend, and of course he's a great singer and songwriter. I'm especially proud of the song Slice; if you're interested in checking it out, the album is on Columbia Records.

Slice - MP3s

As always, thanks for your interest in my work. The rest of 2009 is going to be a lot quieter for me (thank goodness), and then I will have more adventures to report in 2010. I wish everyone a wonderful holiday season.

Stephen Schwartz

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• Stephen Schwartz Archive - Wicked Years 1 (2000 - 2001)
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• Schwartz career interview 2003
• Schwartz career updates 2004 - 2005
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Stephen Schwartz's complete career story is covered in the biography Defying Gravity: the Creative Career of Stephen Schwartz, from Godspell to Wicked. DefyingGravityTheBook.com