I certainly did my best to bring the story [Anthem] to life in another medium.

Sometimes, I stood at the front of the E train, watching the tunnel ahead, imagining what Anthem would look like on stage.

I think a successful adaptation rises or falls on the work presented. If people need to read the book to understand the play, I didn't complete the job.

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.

Ayn Rand called her novella Anthem a "hymn to man's ego." My approach to Anthem the play was to provide the story a further dimension through music and sound. The work is now larger than a hymn. It's really "spoken opera."

Music and text have several commonalities, and one is meter and rhythm. Both spoken word and music have certain regularities, and they can be sub-divided rhythmically.

The idea for Anthem the play began over twenty years ago. I was assisting in the production of another Ayn Rand work, Ideal. I moved to New York and began working on producing the play with my partners. And as a way to raise money to cover some venture debt, we decided to stage Anthem for a limited run at the Lex Theatre in Hollywood.