I enjoy the kind of characters that allow you to write the dark stuff. I love Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, and when I'm writing for Dracula or Jekyll & Hyde, I get a chance to use that vocabulary.

Writing for the theater is a whole different can of fish. The music now has the responsibility of so many things. The plot could be giving you different views of the character; the emotional highlights of a moment.

When you are writing for an artist you are trying to get into that artist's point of view. What does that artist want to say? What do they care about? And musically, you want to show off that artist.

I feel my work is a success in so far as I get to wake up every morning and do what I love to do more than anything in the world.

When the theater is gothic it matches the sensibility of the show. It's also very intimate. The audience is very close to the performers. The show is scary and the scary stuff always works best with an intimacy with the audience. And the show is erotic, and I think erotic always works best when it's close to the audience, as well.

There's a tendency for people in New York to think the world exists between the East and the Hudson Rivers, and I don't share that opinion. To me the world is a big place and I try to reach people everywhere. Listen, if I'm nothing else, I feel I've been a man of the people. I'm not going to pretend to be one of those snobby New York theater people.

The music takes on all different jobs and hopefully is part of telling the story. Each song has to be a story unto itself. It's a very different set of muscles.