After I write a sequence, I just open the script and then sit at the piano keyboard and "play" the script. (And because I also draw and paint, sometimes I sketch out the action as well.)

Who can I marry? Where can I live? What kind of career can I achieve? These are just some of the stories breaking with Anthem-like implications. And the ideas crushing the individual are all around us, chipping away at us constantly.

Most of Ayn Rand's major characters are already formed at the start of the stories.

Basically, I composed the musical structure in one pass. The rest was editing and small adjustments. And when the play was read by actors with the music, the sequence timed-out perfectly.

Typically, among the audience members joining the actors, the director, Ann Ciccolella and myself, about half of these theater goers have read the novel [Anthem], and half have not read it. That is interesting.

In the original novel [ Anthem], the story unfolds in the mind of a single character. Maybe that's why Ayn Rand called the work a poem.

After each performance of an Austin Shakespeare production, audiences are invited to stay for a ten-minute discussion of the work. And this tradition continues in our New York run.