Interview: Stephen Schwartz Reflects on the Success of GODSPELL

Richard Ridge of "Backstage with Richard Ridge" recently sat down with the 2015 Isabelle Stevenson Award recipient and renowned composer Stephen Schwartz, to discuss receiving this prestigious award, his work on numerous classic Broadway musicals, and so much more!

Check out a sneak peek of the interview in which Schwartz discusses his early success and the history behind writing GODSPELL. Check back on Saturday morning for the full interview.

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GODSPELL. Memories of the original production and the brilliant recent revival.

That sort of came out of the blue. I had auditioned the score for Pippin, which is what I came to New York with, for these producers who were not interested in Pippin but about six months later after the audition kind of out of the blue I got a call from them and they said 'There is this show at the Café La Mama that we think has potential as a commercial off-Broadway show but we think it needs a score. Would you go see it?' And of course they've denied it ever since but I assume they called every other composer in New York that anyone had ever heard of, and they all said no and finally in desperation they said, 'Well, what about that kid with that Charlemaine musical?' So anyway, I went to see it and it turned out that there were all these people from Carnegie Mellon University in it, which is where I went to school. It had started there after I had left school but I knew some of the people involved so it was sort of like old-home week. We did the show quick, the whole score got written in about five weeks and you know, we didn't really think beyond putting it up opening night and when it opened and it was this phenomenon we were all a bit taken by surprise by it but, it was a really joyous experience.

You wrote it that fast?

Yeah. I was too stupid when I was 23 to know you couldn't do that so that's how much time we had so that's when it got written. The show existed in fairness and also a lot of the lyrics are derived from the episcopal hymnal so it's not like I had to write so many lyrics. Tunes you can write pretty fast actually.

And I'm sure once you have to get something done you just go down that road really quick.

I'm a big believer in, and creator for myself, of deadlines. Deadlines are your friend.

I remember looking at Theatre World Awards, there were like 9 productions, besides the one in New York, traveling around the country.

It became a phenomenon. I think there were, in this country, there were 10 productions running at the same time and they were like sit down in various cities. So, I spent about a year of my life traveling around the country working on productions of Godspell.

And there were so many great names when I looked in the Theatre World Awards. All of these big stars that were doing this.

And that's the amazing thing about Godspell because it tends to be everybody's first job, but they're really talented people. For instance the Toronto company was pretty much the entire cast of SCTV [Second City Television] and a little bit of Saturday Night Live. I mean Victor Garber and Gilda Radner and Andrea Martin and Martin Short and Gene Levy. And that was just Toronto. So I think Donna Summer was in Godspell and I think Madonna was in a production of Godspell so a lot of people sort of, that was their start.

And the revival. What a beautiful job that revival was.

I thought so. I really did. I thought it was so creative and again some amazing performers in it, some of whom have already gone on. I mean Uzo Aduba, who is now the star on Orange is the New Black and of course Lindsay Mendez and I mean the whole company was just great. And again it's always a lot of fun to work on that show because again, it's improvisational so you never know exactly what it's going to be. So, it's funny to always see what they're going to come up with.

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Schwartz's Credits Include: Pippin (Music and Lyrics), The Magic Show (Music and Lyrics), Godspell (Music and Lyrics), The Bakers Wife (Lyrics), Working (Adaptor and Director), Rags (Lyrics), Wicked (Music and Lyrics) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Lyrcis). http://www.stephenschwartz.com/