That Gaby Roslin Podcast: Reasons To Be Joyful - Stephen Schwartz

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

Legendary composer, Stephen Schwartz, joins Gaby for a chat about The Prince Of Egypt, Wicked, Godspell and much more. Gaby tries to keep her cool as she speaks to one of her all time heroes, and learns about how he writes and why. They chat about the brilliant musicals he has made in his career, the Wicked film which is currently in production and what might be being revived next! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm completely and utterly. It doesn't happen often because I never stopped talking. I'm slightly lost for words. And I'm, thank you. I salute you. Thank you for being such a big part of my life. Well,

thank you very much for telling me that. And you know, happy to be talking with you today. So, Stephen, I don't know where to begin. Let's begin now. And then can we go backwards? Is that okay if we do it that way around?

Sure, whatever you want to talk about. Fabulous. Prince of Egypt is when you believe is one of those songs that congratulations for all the awards and the Oscar everything that you got for this but that song seems to resonate with everybody and I feel that now more than ever we need that song it's powerful tough times right now so yeah yeah the the song was written in a I think a very cool

way, actually, because it was when we were working on the original animated feature of Prince of Egypt, DreamWorks sent us a bunch of the creative team on a trip to Egypt. And we were in the Sinai Desert, and one of our director, Stephen Hickner, was talking about wanting a kind of anthemic musical moment for when the Hebrew tribes finally secure their freedom and are able to escape from the bondage. in Egypt and the following day we were able to climb, actually climb Mount Sinai. We woke up before dawn so that we were up at the summit of Mount Sinai watching the sunrise and I was thinking about what Steve had asked and I kind of had a tune in my head. And so that was the beginning of, you know, how when you believe came to be written. And so I think it always had this kind of expansive view and perspective from above maybe built into it. And as you say, it seems to contain relevance beyond the specific story of Prince of Egypt.

That's quite remarkable. How many mountains have you climbed to find those big hits of yours? Well, I have done a bit of – I have climbed a few. But I think that's the only one where I actually wrote a song. I think we need to get you up another mountain, quite frankly, Stephen. Find a mountain quick. So how does it work then? You have the tune and they said, right, we need something.

I mean, it was literally like that, that you came up with it? Yeah. Well, you know, there's a story to be told, obviously, about what the character of Moses is going through at that particular point. He's at an extremely low point in his life and things have happened that have really made him want to give up. And then his sister, Miriam, and his wife, Sappora, basically sing this song to him to help revive his spirits. And during the course of the story, he comes to see that despite all it has cost him and everybody, he has managed to set his people free. And so it ends on a very positive note.

I also, as part of the research for the song, was given contact with a rabbi who spoke Hebrew and who let me know about something called the song at the sea that the Hebrew tribes were supposed to have sung when they passed over out of Egypt. And he gave me the Hebrew and the translation of it, and I did a kind of edit of it and used it as the center section of the song that the tribes sing when they sing the little Ashira section. That's obviously not in the pop version that Whitney and Mariah did, but it is in the version that people will see when they see the video.

No, but that's the version I'm talking about. I'm not talking about the pop. Yeah, well, it's a shira. I mean, it's fabulous. You know, Whitney and Mariah, as you call them. I'd give them their full names, but you know them very well. But it's about the musicals. I think that's what we're obviously we're talking about today

and the release that it's coming out so everyone can see it, digital release. I saw it in the theatre, I've seen it twice. I find it more magical than the cartoon. I love the cartoon, but there's something, I love live theatre. I agree. And it's a great way to get young people into live theatre when the cartoon that they've seen, it's there. They think, oh, I can see it in real life.

And live theatre is so important. Yeah, I agree. There's really nothing like the experience of seeing actors in the moment and having the audience around you. I mean, to some extent, a video obviously is different, but I think that experience is still there in the video, because you can hear the audience and you can sense the actors in contact with the audience. The nice thing that the video adds, of course, is that you see it from. different perspectives than just wherever your seat in the theater would be. You know, you have close-ups and different angles, et cetera.

So it's like being able to be in the theater but run all over by yourself. So do you think that Stephen Schwartz, who was the record producer, all those years ago, would think, I love, what are you eating, Stephen? Please share, I want to know. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, what are you eating? I'm just a little teeny bit of breakfast here. Okay, what have you gone for your breakfast? What's for your breakfast, please? Well, it's actually a little bit of like a kish that I heated up.

That's very good. That's very smart breakfast you're having. I'm impressed. Okay, you please. It was easy to nuke. So that's what I did. I was trying to sneak about while you weren't looking. No, no.

You don't let me get away with anything. Nothing, Stephen. No, go. Keep eating your kish while I ask you this question. I'll make it a long question. Eat your kish. Enjoy. No, no, actually, I'm actually done now.

Oh, okay. I wanted to finish it while it was still warm. No, about, I was talking about the you, the record producer, and then you were writing songs and lyrics when you were studying. Did you ever think that all these years later, Grammys, Oscars, you know, Numerable awards, did you ever think that you'd be talking about, a cartoon that you'd done the music to and the lyrics to that would be in theatres that was now coming out on DVD. I just, it's an extraordinary, it's an incredible arc that you've been through. Yeah, well, you know, when I started animation,

we're supposed to call them animated features and not cartoons. Oh, sorry, okay, I'll call it animation. That's Disney strictly instructed me that I'm just, you know, Of course, DreamWorks is, Prince of Egypt's DreamWorks, so maybe they're okay with the word cartoon. This is very strict about it. But, yeah, the phenomenon of those animated works being turned into live productions, other than, you know, ice shows and theme park shows, had not happened yet. That was something that was pioneered by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner when they were at Disney, you know, with Beauty and the Beast. And then, of course, Lion King and the amazing transformation that that took place with the brilliance of Julie Tamer, et cetera.

So, yeah, this is an entirely new phenomenon, and it's been really exciting and a privilege to be a part of it. And as you say, I feel with Prince of Egypt, the transformation of it into a stage piece where the audience's imagination is engaged so much. So instead of seeing actual chariots, you see the bodies of actors used to create chariots. You see dancers become the Nile River carrying the baby in the basket. And a lot of imaginative theatrical devices that are just different from what you would do on film and what they did do in animation. I'm sure everybody will thoroughly enjoy it. And obviously with Wicked, and I don't know if we're allowed to talk about it, but I'm going to because I love the show. Wicked is the other way around

I mean the phenomenal I think probably as a family we've seen just about 10 times my girls know every single word of Wicked could not believe I was speaking to you today but that's obviously going to be turned into a movie so it's the other way around

and you've seen what we all haven't which we're all dying for how's it looking Stephen Well to be honest I haven't actually seen much of the film in terms of on film because the director, our fantastic director, John Chu,

is working on it. I have been involved, obviously, with the recording of the soundtrack. And so what I, and I've seen the sets, which are kind of mind-boggling. The sets and costumes are absolutely astonishing. So,

I can tell you that it will look beautiful and it will sound great, but yeah, I'm waiting, obviously I'll see film before other people because I have to work on the score and the recordings, etc. But yeah, the truth is I haven't really seen anything yet. Okay, so I think you're just keeping it quiet because of Cynthia Reamer. No, no, it's absolutely true.

I haven't. Okay, I believe you. John is editing away and I haven't seen any of it. Well, we can't wait for part one and part two, of course, of that. If I may, like to take you back to, for me, if I may, choose Godspell. Sure. There is a reason, and just briefly, I grew up loving musicals, always love musicals. My very first music, I might cry, so I'm going to tell you this story.

But my dad used to listen to this show called Godspell. And I then decided that I wanted to be a TV presenter, but I wanted to one day do a musical, and I was going to learn how to belt, and I learned how to sing to prepare from Godspell and day by day. So I have so much to thank you for. You have no idea, Stephen. That musical... Thank you for telling me that. Prepity is tricky because it has all those intervals.

So if you learn to sing to that, it means you must be able to sing a bit. Yeah, I'm lucky that I've done it. So yes, I can thank goodness. But when I took it to school and I said to my teacher, please can we sing this in class? What? What? Everyone else was doing whatever. And I'm like, no, we've got to do prepare ye.

But so where do you start? You're going, okay, I'm going to write a musical. Lots of people want to do that. How do you start? How did you start? Where did it all begin? Are you talking about this specific show or just my interest in musical theater? Your whole everything.

Tell me everything. Okay, well, you know, I grew up in a suburb of New York City. And my parents, neither of whom are remotely in the arts, were very avid theater goers, and they loved musicals. And so they took me to musicals when I was very young, and they had cast albums that I used to listen to. And so as I was becoming, you know, realizing that I wanted to be a composer and a songwriter,

my interest, you know, went towards musical theater. And, you know, I studied theater at Carnegie Mellon University here in America studying music at Juilliard. And yeah, I've always really been interested in storytelling as an aspect of songs. So that's where I always start with any song, even if it's an individual song that's not for a show, which I've written a few of but not that many.

Because to me, it's always about what is the story? And I also really enjoy collaborating and musical theater is maybe the most collaborative of all art forms. And I really like that everybody kind of gets in the trenches together and has different ideas and fights and argues and makes discoveries and then a work emerges from that.

And I feel like the songs that I write are part of that process. So with Godspell, that was the idea of its original director, an adapter man named John Michael Teblack. And he had actually started the show at its school, and then it went to an off-off Broadway, what you would call a fringe production.

And I came into it at that point. So writing, prepare ye, or day by day or whatever, was always about, how is this going to fit within the show itself? How is it going to advance the story we're trying to tell in the show? That's very interesting because people, I mean, I never understand when somebody says, I don't get musical theater or I don't like musical theater or something. And I have lengthy conversations with them about it because I'm so passionate about it. To somebody who's not sure about musical theater, can you explain why it's so important? I'm going to use that word, actually, if I may.

Well, I mean, for me, when musicals work and there are difficult, art form because partly because they're so collaborative, you know, but when they work, and so they're functioning as a play, as storytelling, but also as music, because music, you know, gets into your heart and into your soul. It's sort of not, it's under your consciousness, if you will. Then I find that that experience kind of the most, the most, complete and the most thrilling and the most moving. And I find maybe because, again, music is sort of not, it's pre-conscious or below-conscious. It's almost like a dream that you had. It stays inside you in a way that plays, of course, a great play will, can stay with you or a great movie

can stay with you. But there's something about the addition of the music that I think really can become part of you. And I think that's why musicals that speak to people such as Prince of Egypt has or Wicked has become kind of personally important to them. I'm going to clip that, and I'm going to play that to anybody that ever asks me again why I love musicals so much because that was perfect.

You know, I think like, and I've talked to a lot of theatre-going friends about this, a play, even a kind of mediocre play, can be really, you can come out of it and say like, okay, well, that play wasn't really that good? But wasn't this idea interesting and wasn't this character interesting? A musical, if it's not good, can be a pretty bleak experience, I have to say. But when it is good, when, you know, when it works, then I think, you know, I would just encourage people who don't get musical theater to try to see a good musical. One of yours.

One of yours. They need to see one of yours. Do you know when a song or a musical or a lyric? Do you have that moment, that flash now because you've been doing it for a few years? Do you get that moment to you? Ah, that's the one. That works. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it's all instinct. And, you know, nothing is ever. perfect. So one is always just striving to really find the best possible way musically or lyrically to communicate an idea. And over the course of a whole show, it's impossible to, you know, to succeed completely with that. But yeah, I do have an instinct for where I feel I've been able to achieve what I've been trying to set out to do. And even though I'm constantly fussing around, with my shows and trying to make them better. And, you know, a new production might have a change in it of a word or, you know, something

musical. The parts of it that I feel really work, I do have a sense of that. So are there any now that you go back on? I mean, I wish that somebody would bring Pippin back and God's Bell back. I'd love to see them now. I think they still stand up so brilliantly. that are there moments that you look at it and think, ah, I wish I'd done it like that,

or now let's bring it back, but I'm going to change this. Sure, of course. That always happens. I mean, Pippin has been being done pretty successfully now in the UK a bit, and there's a whole new ending to Pippin that wasn't in the show when it was first done. I think next summer at the Chocolate Factory, you know, the wonderful small theatre in London. factory. They're doing Baker's

wife next year in the summer and that's a show that has been revisited and revised and now seems to have a version that has started to work quite well and so our wonderful David Babani at the chocolate factory is going to be bringing it there.

So yes, the story is I'm always tinkering with things and trying to improve them and also the times change and so sometimes something can be refreshed to more contemporarily reflect

what, you know, sort of what is going on right now. See, in my eyes, I don't change anything from any of them because I think they're all perfect, but I know you won't like me for saying that because you think, you just said, no, nothing's ever perfect. But so when you, I mean, I know with Wicked that it

came from the book and you thought, I know this should be a musical. But do you, how does it work? Because I'm so fascinated by by lyricists and composers, by your minds, that do you just suddenly, will you be lying in bed at night and suddenly go, la la, la? Oh, I know what that's going to be. Does it work like? Please tell me that's how it works.

Well, it kind of does, but it's always, as I say, based on the story. So it starts with what is this really about? Okay, so if I'm going to interrupt you in there, say, let's go to Wicked. Because there was the book, Wicked. So talk me through that, then, please. Okay, so I first heard about Wicked in a very random way. I was on a holiday and a friend of mine, whose name is Holly Neer, she's a wonderful folk singer, just said, you know, kind of casually, oh, I'm reading this really interesting book,

and it's called Wicked, and it's kind of the Oz story from the Wicked Witch's point of view. And immediately, I thought that's such a great idea, and it's kind of right, it's right, in my wheelhouse in terms of the kind of things that I'm interested in, the kind of characters I'm interested in. So when I, and I knew I had to try and get the rights, which was its own journey, but when I then went and got the book, I read the book by Gregory McGuire in terms of how, what can I use from this book to make a musical and kind of tell the story that I see contained within it. So it always starts with that. It starts with kind of an outline that one works out with one's collaborators, the rest of the creative team. And then you do what's called song spotting

and say, well, this part of the story is probably told as a song. This is probably music. Wow. And in the meantime, like, since you're asking about Wicked, you know, I may just be thinking of what what musically would sound like the witch's power and then a little bit of defying gravity would get written and then you know and put aside for later and then so it all kind of gets assembled in that way you know with prince of egypt it began that dreamworks wanted to make an animated feature and stephen spielberg and jeffrey katsenberg talked to me about it and stephen said i see this as a brother's story. I see this as the story between these two brothers who love each other, but are forced by their destiny to be in conflict with one another. And it was that personal relationship between these two men caught up in these gigantic events that seemed very exciting. And so all the sort of music got triggered by that story. Then I did a lot of research for Prince of Egypt where I would listen to Middle Eastern songs and instrumentation and lullabies,

and I got a recording that purported to be music of the ancient Egyptian court, though, how they could possibly know what that was, I don't know, and then just try to assimilate it and use that as the palette, you know, with which the music would be created or from which the music would be created. So it's a whole process, is what I'm saying. just blown my mind. That was extraordinary hearing you saying about you notice that thing and then you can feel them. Where does the music come from in you? Is it from your soul? Is it from your heart? Is it from your head? Or is it all of them? You know what? The truth is Gabby, I have no idea. I don't know how this works. It's such a mysterious process. I work at the keyboard or

occasionally at a guitar or with a drum track, but almost always at the keyboard. And just I'm trying to be almost like an actor, become the character. What do I as this character want? What am I seeing when I look out of my eyes and, you know, as the character? And then what does that sound like? What is what music conveys that feeling? And then I play around. And it's sort of what you said.

You know, I'll be playing the piano and then suddenly stumble upon something and think, oh no wait that's it and then build from there it's very distinctive that i mean that is when do you when do people know they have that i was a you know music is um genetically the musical ability is is genetically inherited you know it's not something we can really take credit for any more than we can for our the color of our eyes you just born with it you know like there are people who can just draw, they can look at something and draw something and make it look like that.

I can't do that at all. I can barely draw a circle. Oh, it doesn't matter. You write the greatest musicals. It doesn't matter. I'll draw the circle for you. Don't worry. There you go.

But my point being like, different people are born with different abilities and different traits. And people who are musical, it's inborn. It's why there are so many, why there are musical prodigies, And we're always amazed when, you know, someone can play the violin brilliantly at age seven.

But it's partly because musical ability presents early. It's a trait that presents early. This is all by way of saying that I was just a musical kid. I was told by my parents that I used to, when I was in my playpen, I'd want them to play music. And they had apparently a recording by an operatic soprano that I used to call the High Lady. I'd want to hear the high lady. And I was always listening to music and always singing. You know, and then early on started to take piano lessons and started to just write things.

It just came naturally like, you know, like you hear with great tennis players that they picked up a racket when they were three and could hit a tennis ball. You know, it's just a, it's something that you're born with. And I was, I've been very, very lucky in that I was born at a place in time where I was a love. allowed to make use of this ability to become a profession for me. Well, thank you from all of us that you came into our lives. And you're so important. I was with a friend of mine yesterday who's played Madame Morrible. And she said she wanted me to thank you because she loved it so much.

And I said to her, I was asking her about wicked. And I said, what do you think it is about wicked that everybody loves? She said, because everybody's green. Yeah, we all have that green girl. side of. That's what our producer David Stone says. Yeah. And it's so true. And with all the other shows, and as I said, with Prince of Egypt, but with God's Bell, something, and I can't go on about it too much because I will cry. I cannot believe I'm actually speaking to you. This is like a childhood dream come true. So thank you for that. Thank you so much, Stephen. You have a lovely afternoon for you, and I'll see you in London.

Take good care. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you, God. It's so much fun.