Stephen Schwartz Is So Popular
by Chad Jones

Few Broadway composers have the ability to blend show tune and pop sensibilities as seamlessly as Stephen Schwartz. From his earliest shows--Godspell, Pippin--to his most recent--Wicked--Schwartz writes about the specific and makes it universal.

That's one reasons Scott Coulter loves singing a Schwartz song.

"Stephen writes about the only green girl in Oz, and yet everybody in the world can identify with her," Coulter says. "We all recognize the searching, the wanting, the dreaming, the looking for that place to fit in. Stephen taps into the outcast feeling we've all felt at some point, then he takes those emotions and makes them soar."

Coulter will be soaring with Schwartz songs this month in Broadway by the Bay's Defying Gravity: Stephen Schwartz and Friends at the San Mateo Performing Arts Center. Coulter, alongside the composer himself and Debbie Gravitte and Liz Callaway, is performing songs from Schwartz's nearly 40-year career in film and musical theatre.

The Bay Area has been especially Schwartz-friendly lately. Last summer, the composer was at TheatreWorks in Mountain View to work on the long-gestating hybrid book-musical/revue Snapshots. And in January, Wicked returns to San Francisco--where the green-tinted show had its world premiere in 2003--as part of the SHN/Best of Broadway season for what producers hope will be a long run.

"The Bay Area has always been one of my favorite places," says Schwartz, 60, from his Connecticut home. "I'm always delighted to work there."

The Snapshots experience was a good one, Schwartz says, especially working with TheatreWorks artistic director Robert Kelley. "I've always liked him. He's insightful and intelligent, but that piece is tricky to solve. Because it uses existing songs in new ways, it's unique in its conception. I haven't ever seen that entirely successfully pulled off. But I think we're gaining on it. Now there's a lot of interest from other places, so we're trying to balance what's best for the show's developmental process with who's clamoring to do it."

Someone, somewhere is always clamoring for a Schwartz show. Between July and August of this year, there were more than 60 licensed productions of Godspell and about 40 of the Schwartz-approved Godspell, Jr. for children. Pippin received nearly two dozen productions, and even a lesser-known Schwartz show, the 1991 Children of Eden (loosely based on the Book of Genesis), received dozens of productions.

Though a proposed Broadway revival of Godspell was scrapped when backers buckled from fears of the current economy, more Schwartz revivals are on the way. A major production of Pippin is happening at Los Angeles' Mark Taper Forum in January courtesy of Deaf West Theatre, the troupe that produced the hit Big River revival.

"Deaf West's Big River was one of the best things I've ever seen," Schwartz says. "And we have the same director, Jeff Calhoun. I'm very excited about this."

Then, in March, the Old Globe is reviving Working, the 1978 musical adaptation of Studs Terkel's book, which Schwartz co-adapted and directed, and to which he contributed four songs (along with James Taylor, Craig Carnelia, Mary Rodgers, Micki Grant and others). The new production, which actually got its start in Sarasota, Florida, features two new songs by Tony winner Lin-Manuel Miranda, of In the Heights fame.

"The show has other updates as well," Schwartz says. "It's a documentary about working, and things have changed in the workplace in the last 30 years. It's thrilling to have that show back, revised and updated."

Though his award shelf boasts three Grammys and three Academy Awards among dozens of others, Schwartz has never won a Tony, though he's received four nominations. If Schwartz is bitter about that, he doesn't show it. In fact, he's a Tony voter.

"I'm happy to get free tickets to Broadway shows," he says. "Who wouldn't be? I'm a big fan of the usual suspects. This year it was In the Heights; last year it was Spring Awakening. I thought much of Grey Gardens was very skilled."

Though Wicked continues to sell briskly and has spawned a legion of witch-loving young fans and green-themed merchandise, Schwartz is in no hurry to return to Broadway.

"Broadway, I've done it," he says. "I enjoy seeing other people's work on Broadway. There are a lot of other challenges out there that are more musically interesting to me—like opera. I haven't done much orchestral writing, haven't done stuff for dance or ballet. There are a lot of interesting things yet to explore. That being said, I wasn't planning a Broadway show when someone told me about the book Wicked. Then I read it and thought it was one of the best ideas I'd heard for a musical, and it felt like a fit for me."

Schwartz is currently immersed in one of the new challenges he craves. He's writing an opera on commission from Opera Santa Barbara based on the 1964 British film Séance on a Wet Afternoon about a phony psychic who kidnaps a girl and gives so-called psychic information to the detective trying to find her. Schwartz has decided to relocate the action of the film to San Francisco.

"I scouted locations about a year ago," he says. "I found two houses where I imagine events to be taking place and other specific areas around the city featured in the plot. This is an enormously challenging experience, a huge learning curve, which is why I took it on. I didn't know many of the specifics. I just knew it would be different. I didn't imagine how different. I enjoy the challenge, but the clock is ticking."

The opera is set to premiere in September of 2009.

Séance was originally suggested to Schwartz as a piece of musical theatre, but the composer couldn't see it working. When he began talking about creating an opera, the film immediately popped back into his head.

"It's a very dark story, and I'm making it darker," he says. "I knew it wasn't musical theatre because of the nature of how I heard the voices for the characters and the kind of music. It was opera. That begs the question: What's the difference between opera and musical theatre? Are there distinctions? Yes and no. To me it's like the Supreme Court on pornography: You know it when you see it."

There won't be any Séance tunes in Schwartz's six Broadway by the Bay concerts, but there will be plenty of hits--from the musicals and from the animated movies, including Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Prince of Egypt.

Broadway and cabaret performer Liz Callaway has been singing Schwartz songs for years, and "Meadowlark" from The Baker's Wife is not only her favorite Schwartz song, but also her favorite song to sing.

"Stephen really understands singers," Callaway says. "And he's such an authentic voice. In terms of contemporary Broadway, he's a master. The thing I love about 'Meadowlark' is something you find in a lot of his work. It tells a whole story, a whole journey. It's so satisfying as a singer to be a musical storyteller with all kinds of hidden colors to the song. It doesn't hurt that 'Meadowlark' has a few great money notes. I love the build of it, the emotion of it."

Schwartz has charted his own evolution as a composer and says his essential voice has remained the same, but his ambitions have grown.

"How I hear music and what I put out there for others remains similar enough to be identifiable," he says. "But my use of motific writing--not to sound pretentious--and how themes are developed and the use of dissonance and all of that--with Children of Eden, Wicked and now the opera--has grown. My overall sense of musical structure has changed. I wasn't as aware of structure when I was writing Pippin or Godspell, which are scores that are essentially collections of songs. I'm neither knocking that work nor people who work in that way. More recently I've become more interested in the big picture point of view."

Points of pride are many in Schwartz's long career. One involves demanding that a South African production of Godspell be performed with an integrated cast before an integrated audience. Another is more recent.

"I take a lot of satisfaction in anecdotes from people who have been given courage to make positive change in their lives from Elphaba in Wicked," Schwartz says. "They quote 'Defying Gravity' and say they have been able to make change in their lives. You don't write shows to change the world or change lives. Those kinds of hopes or expectations would be extremely naïve. But every now and again you get an opportunity to make positive change."

Broadway by the Bay's Defying Gravity: Stephen Schwartz and Friends runs November 6 through 9. Visit broadwaybythebay.org for information.

Chad Jones is a Bay Area theatre writer for TheaterDogs.net and Examiner.com/san_francisco. Reach him at chiatovich@gmail.com.