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[0:01] David West Read: Welcome to the & Juliet Podcast. On today's episode, & Juliet's book writer David West Read joins Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner James Lapine to discuss their approach to writing for musical theater. It's interesting the way musicals, particularly book musicals, particularly jukebox musicals, come to be. So, who was the driving force here, David? Was this your idea, and are you the one that drove & Juliet into being?

[0:26] David West Read: Well, the idea of doing a musical came from Max Martin's wife, who thought it would be an interesting challenge for him at this stage in his career to turn his incredible catalog of music into a stage musical, but they didn't have any ideas that they were stuck with. So, it was kind of an open canvas for me to propose something, and I pitched this idea of what if it was set in the world of Romeo & Juliet, if Juliet didn't die at the end, and if it was a new story with a new way of exploring his music.

[1:08] James Lapine: Forgive me for asking this question. Have you written many books for musicals?

[1:14] David West Read: I have never written a book for a musical before this one.

[1:17] James Lapine: Were you a fan of musicals before?

[1:24] David West Read: I was. I love musicals, and you know, I came to New York as a student and hadn't seen anything. I grew up in Canada. I'd seen one musical, Piney the Talking Christmas Tree, with my parents. A little shout-out to Piney the Talking Christmas Tree. But at NYU, they gave us all these free tickets to go see shows, and I saw hundreds of musicals and plays and immersed myself and fell in love with theater. I grew up with musical theater soundtracks in my house, but I was really new to all of it. I think the show has a feeling of somebody who's kind of new to the form, and I mean that as a compliment.

[2:05] David West Read: It's original in other ways that musicals that are based around existing scores, particularly pop scores, have a kind of formula to them. That's what I think is so unique and wonderful about the show. Did you write the book first and then choose the music? Did you winnow down your collaborators' great length of incredible songs to decide what you wanted in it before you wrote the book? How'd you approach it?

[2:28] David West Read: Well, I really tried to let the music drive the story and listen to all of the songs. The great thing about a jukebox musical is you're not hurting anyone's feelings if you throw out a song and swap in a different one. So at every stage of the workshop process and in all of our out-of-town tryouts, we kept trying different songs to see which would fit best in the end.

[3:06] James Lapine: Tell me a little bit about the process of how, once you got together and started writing this, with your collaborator who I assume weighed in on some of the music you were choosing, when did the director come in? When did the producer come in? This was new to you, so how did you end up doing a hit Broadway show? Or a hit world show, I should say, in London and all around the world. Did you find the director of your choice, or how did that work?

[3:36] David West Read: Yeah, I'd never worked with this director. He was British, I'm Canadian, our orchestrator is American, Max is Swedish. It was kind of an international collaboration. But I think what you're saying about working outside of the comfort zone is interesting because we were all somewhat outside of our comfort zone, whether it was our director, Luke Shepard, who knew musical theater but didn't know pop music. Or I had written stage plays and TV, but I'd never written a musical. But I think there's a pressure that comes with that, especially when someone like Max Martin is giving you his life's work. And he said from the beginning, if this wasn't something that he was excited about or proud of, or if it didn't feel like it was working, he might pull the plug at any moment.

And so that also put a lot of pressure, and I just felt this responsibility to try to get it right, that I feel like is special to making your first of a thing and making your first musical and feeling like you want to land it.

[4:35] David West Read: And then, you know, because there was no composer sitting in the room, it felt like my relationship with the director was even more important. And, you know, he was kind of the editor to the story, but also shaping the whole visual world, which is not something I thought about as much.

[4:54] James Lapine: Wonderful. It's beautifully directed and exciting. It's a very exciting theatrical experience. I think we tried to, in some ways, treat it as if it was, you know, had just been written by a composer and the director, Luke Shepard, would have the actors read through the lyrics, you know, without singing them. And it feels like, I know that's something you've talked about doing on your shows, but in a jukebox musical, it almost feels even more important because people have these existing ideas of these songs that they've heard on the radio, and you almost stop listening to the lyrics. So I think that process of just reading the lyrics and trying to find the meaning in them, just as, you know, you do with the dialogue, helped kind of break away from the traps of jukebox musicals.

[5:53] James Lapine: If I could turn it around for a second, since I have you here, and I may never get to speak with you again. I mean, it seems to me that you, not at all comparing, but that you came from a slightly outsider perspective to theater and musicals when you started out. And I know you had obviously a visual art background and photography. But I was curious, do you feel that there's something to starting as an outsider and collaborating with people who are more of the world, and how that worked with you at the early stages of your career?

[6:26] David West Read: I think there's a benefit to being the outsider of anything you do, in a way, because I'm kind of like you. I hadn't gone to very many musicals. I had never seen a musical, you know, other than like a movie, A West Side Story by Sondheim. I think Sweeney Todd was the first one I ever saw. And I think I saw it three times. So, I mean, when you come from a different perspective, from a different angle, I think it lends itself to some form of invention that maybe is new to the form. I find that now that I'm older and working, I have too much knowledge about everything, and in ways I'm critical of it. Whereas when I was lucky enough to start out, I wasn't even sure I wanted to work in the theater. So for me, it was just a lark. And I didn't have a lot writing on it, you know, as a Bill Finn, writing a few songs and humming a few tunes. That's how he'd come in with just music with no lyrics. And I had to kind of build the story around what he was doing.

[7:56] James Lapine: Well, I'd love to ask another question, because, you know, & Juliet just opened on Broadway, and I hope that it will have a long life. But I'm curious about what happens when you have musicals like yours that have been running for years and years, and have had productions all over the world, and you go back and revisit them. What is it like to watch one of your shows with distance and time? And do you ever feel that impulse to get back in there and change something?

[8:34] James Lapine: Well, I used to have that impulse, and I did do it. And now I've learned to just leave things alone. I mean, Steve Sondheim always, while we were working on shows, he'd get to a point and say, we're deproving it, instead of improving it, that we were, you know, wrestling with things that weren't perfect that we didn't like, and then we realized the changes we were making were not better. In fact, many times they were worse. I also discovered being a writer director, being also such a naive one, that if you leave things alone, actors can fix it for you. Erica, we did that in Into the Woods, and we had a song, Boom Crunch, and Bernadette was her 11 o'clock number, and, you know, had to rewrite it because she didn't like it.

It took Steve, you know, a couple of weeks to write a new song, The Last Midnight. By the time he had finished, Bernadette was bringing down the house with Boom Crunch, and then she got a song, in my estimation, that was no better, and she had to start all over.

[9:00] James Lapine: Last midnight, which is the end of the day. She also, you know brought home you do a lot of different things.

[9:06] David West Read: Do you have a preference or did you find doing the musical inspiring in a way?

[9:10] James Lapine: Yeah, I mean the biggest difference between TV and theater is you get to sit with people when they watch it. You know when the show goes on TV, you're not in the living room with your audience and you don't have a chance to change anything. So, you know, I loved we did this show in Manchester and then London, Toronto, now New York and every step of the way we've made changes. But it's also, you know, every night it's so different. I thought I wanted to be a film director is sort of how I ended up, you know, because I was a photographer and it's always my dream to make a movie and when I made my first movie, I realized I liked theater better for that very reason. You know, you've got a piece.

This was in the old days of, you know, film and getting one shot at a scene and then having to figure out, you know, unable to change it once you had it. And I love the fluidity of the theater and the fluidity that exists between actors, you know, who can bring things to it or can just change things till you know, so you have to freeze it essentially. But I find though I've made a few more films, I do like the theater better because it's more impositive.

[10:25] David West Read: And when you, you know, talking about freezing that point where you can't make changes anymore, do you think about when you're writing? Do you think about the longevity of the piece? Do you think about the fact that you hope it might run for years? And I guess with a musical, it's maybe more likely to be something that hopefully runs for a long time or do you just write in the moment and think about the present moment?

[10:48] James Lapine: I never think of that. I'm assuming everything I do will probably be a failure. So that way anything that good comes along is a lovely surprise. So no, I don't think of longevity or I'm always amazed. I'm still at this ripe old age shocked that people are sitting in a theater watching something of mine, you know? I know that sounds ridiculous, but I look around, there's a thousand people and I don't know any of them and they're watching and it just to me is such a kind of miraculous thing. Again, you do a movie or TV show, you're not sitting with your audience, you know, right?

[11:31] David West Read: I mean, that's what I find amazing too, that they're also not experiencing it as something that you wrote years ago. They're experiencing it as if it's happening live in front of them for the first time. And also when you're creating the theater, I mean the writers are the boss, you know? In film and television you've got producers and studios and all of that. It's very straight. That's a strange part of the process for me going from being the only person working on the thing to being the only person who's not there, you know? It started alone in a dark room and now I kind of see images and videos of people performing this in Australia or, you know, New York and I'm not there and it feels like I'm no longer even part of it. It's got its own life.

[12:19] James Lapine: Yeah, but it's real, right? There's no bigger thrill than knowing that something you made is being done somewhere by someone and you don't have to be there for it. You know, but your voice is there and, you know, people watch a movie, they watch it once, you know, they will watch TV series, maybe they watch it once or twice and they're on to something else. The theater is something that can continually be reinvented by people and it's thrilling to know that you've written something that 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now somebody in some high school in Iowa might be doing, you know?

[12:56] David West Read: Can I ask you a question about Sunday in the Park with George? Because, and again, I'm not comparing, but & Juliet is in some ways a show about making art and balancing the process of making art with your personal life. And obviously Sunday in the Park with George is a masterpiece in that regard. I wondered, you know, how do you, what do you think the key is to making a show about making art that is still accessible and relatable and compelling to an audience of, you know, mostly non-artists?

[13:33] James Lapine: Well, there's a mystery. There's a mystery, I think, to people who don't do what we do and I get that so often, like where do you come up with your ideas? You know, like, well, I, you know, I don't sit around going, okay, I got some ideas today. You know, it's just how people's brains are wired and I am a money dummy, you know? I can't even balance a checkbook. So, you know, I'm actually intrigued by people who have that gift and I don't know. I don't really think about it a lot. I have to tell you, I caught on my unconscious way and a lot, a lot of ways to come up with ideas and things. And also, you're a different writer at different stages in your life, you know?

[14:24] David West Read: We'll always be the writer of & Juliet, which is a huge success and you're going to be compared to that and expected to do that again and again or not. And I just think the best thing for any creative person is to work outside their comfort zone, you know? Don't do what you can do and though you can do, do something that offers a real challenge and choose material that is unusual and fascinates you for some reason and hope that it will fascinate others.

[14:51] James Lapine: Okay, so let's get down. What was the darkest moment? They came in & Juliet. Let's just sign. What was the hardest? When was the one moment you just thought you wanted to throw yourself in front of a train or did you never have that?

[15:03] David West Read: I have that at least three times a show. So I think, you know, in Manchester I probably had the most of those. What have I done? Because we started in an 1800 seat theater, the opera house and no one knew anything about the show and, you know, Max's name is not really well known as, because he takes such a backseat to the artist he writes for. So there were many nights in Manchester where we had 300 people in an 1800 seat theater. And even though it felt like we were creating something good, I didn't think the product was bad. I thought, but maybe we just will never lift off.

[15:46] James Lapine: Well, or you might not have an audience for 300 people in an 1800 seats. That's rough.

[15:52] David West Read: Yeah, I was relying on, there was no brand, you know, there's no franchise or movie adaptation or whatever. It was the brand was Shakespeare, which is potentially alienating. It taken a story everybody knows, people know which is and turned it on its ear, which I think was what makes it great. That's the surprise of it. When did the producing team come on?

[16:18] James Lapine: Well, they were on from the beginning.

[16:20] David West Read: Yeah, how did you get a producer? I mean, or how did that work? It was your idea, right, the whole show?

[16:23] James Lapine: Well, the producers had worked with Max before in the music industry and then they wanted to make this stage musical. And so they found me. They had been looking for a writer for a while and I came in and I pitched the whole concept to them and they embraced it.

[16:41] David West Read: Well, it's really exciting. When is the last time you've seen the show?

[16:47] James Lapine: At this point I've seen it hundreds of times in all of its iterations and I, you know, I needed to get a little distance from it, but I read the reports. I know it's happening and I can't wait to go back.

[17:05] David West Read: Well, the thrill of it for you is it's never gonna go away. It's gonna always be playing somewhere, which is the height of success in the theater to know that your work is speaking to people and it will do so for the rest of your life. So, and you're a young man, so that's like congratulations, man. Here I am speaking to you, which is a tremendous honor. So I really appreciate you taking the time.

[17:34] James Lapine: Thank you for listening to the & Juliet podcast. Be sure to listen to our next episode when Max Martin talks to Sara Bareilles about the intersection of pop and musical theater.