Irene Sankoff and David Hein are a Canadian librettist and composer-lyricist couple, best known for co-writing the Broadway musical Come From Away. After spending several years studying and working in New York the couple returned to Toronto where Hein wrote a song, "My Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding", about his mother and her later life partner. Sankoff and Hein expanded the song into a play that became a hit at the Toronto Fringe Festival in 2009 and then picked up by Mirvish Productions for a run at Toronto's Panasonic Theatre before touring Canada. As a result of My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding's success, theatre producer Michael Rubinoff approached Hein and Sankoff with his idea about a show based on Operation Yellow Ribbon in which residents of Gander, Newfoundland, housed 7,000 airline passengers who had been stranded at Gander Airport as a result of the grounding of all North American air flights following the September 11 attacks. The couple visited Gander in 2011 during the 10-year reunion of passengers and locals, and subsequently wrote Come from Away based on the stories they learned there.
Listen in to hear them talk about…
- Why they became musical theater writers solely to spend more time together.
- The Rules they have as a writing team to make sure they stay married…and stay writing together (these are worth the price of this podcast alone!).
- How to stand up for your script against big time Broadway veterans when you’re a rookie, and its importance to your show’s success.
- Why they never thought that Come From Away would play Broadway, and how that attitude helped get the show here.
- The importance of a day job as you’re on your way to write for the theater… or do anything in the theater!
Keep up with me: @KenDavenportBway