In not-for-profit theater, you don't worry so much about how the audience is going to react. You want to make them absorb the piece.

You're so nice. You're not good, you're not bad, You're just nice. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm just right. I'm the witch. You're the world.

In not-for-profit theater, you don't worry so much about how the audience is going to react. You want to make them absorb the piece.

A song is such a short form ... that 'the slightest flaw seems like a mountain.' And so every song needs to be revised 'til it's close to perfection... But achieving perfection takes a lot of energy.

I read to see myself in other people's lives.

I liked my father a lot, but I didn't see him very often because my mother was bitter about him. He remarried, and I used to have to sneak off to see him.

Deciding what is to be sung and what is not to be sung is really what writing a musical is about.