I feel like the point of being an artist is to have your own voice: to do it the way you would do it and not the way anyone else would do it. If you're a strong enough writer, then that voice is going to come out all the time, and I can't stop it from coming out, no matter what I do.
— Jason Robert Brown
Writing music and lyrics, you tend to become a control freak - sitting alone in your room with a bare light bulb over your head, writing communist manifestos.
I grew up in the '70s, and I hear in my own stuff a lot of what I grew up listening to, which is to say I hear a lot of Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Carole King, Joni Mitchell and Stevie Wonder.
I've never been particularly good at explaining or even understanding what this sort of rage is that is so accessible to me. I'm not an out-of-control person, but I can access in my work very easily a feeling of real fury. Thank goodness I've channeled it into my work, I guess.
You have to understand the medium you're writing for. People jump into writing musicals without realizing how complicated they are. Knowing one form doesn't necessarily mean you know the other. You have to be comfortable with it.
I'm not doubtful that I am doing what I should be doing - writing for theater - and that I'm doing it in a way no one else does it. Whether anyone else is paying attention or anyone else cares, I'm still ambivalent about that. It's still an open question.
I did musicals in high school, certainly. And then I just kept wanting to do them. I felt at home in the theater, in that way that, you know, you're supposed to if that's the kind of person you are.
I find I like the spotlight for a very brief period of time... and I sort of need it. But then, the minute that it's done, I have to sort of go hide. So I was never really meant, I think, to be a performer for a living.
It is scary to write - period - for me, but once you get past the idea that it's scary to write, I still can only be who I am. As a writer, my job, to me, is to expose myself - to really sort of dig in and find out who I am and then put it on the page.
I never wanted to write 'Mamma Mia!' or 'The Book of Mormon' - they're not my thing, I don't care about them. What I do is very different.
I think that when you write for stars, I think that you have to be very specific about what they do beautifully and let them bring it to life.
You're supposed to be a control freak when you're an artist. That's the whole point of having a vision: Why have one if you're not going to protect it?
I try to get underneath the skin of all kinds of music, and I never know what's going to inspire me and what makes me crazy.
What's great about collaborating is getting to work with wonderful people. That's what theatre is about: other people getting you to give your best, and getting everyone else's best out of them.
Actually, if you ask my really close friends, they would say that 'Honeymoon' is more me than anything else I've written.
Immediate, simultaneous connection between the audience and a performer is crucial to me. It's why I do what I do. Other things, like recording, are satisfying, but they're not the same. I love the connection I get with the audience when I'm sitting behind that piano.
Leonard Bernstein was probably the most significant formative influence on me - he was such an encompassing musician. I spent my teenage years absorbing him, and my other interests stemmed off of that. Bernstein led me to Sondheim and to Gershwin, and Sondheim led me to listening to Joni Mitchell.
The jury is still out on whether I'm a genius or not.
What I always wanted to do was to be a rock star.
I write about outsiders. I write about people who are outside and don't know quite how to get in because it's how I've always felt.
What I aspire to do, and what I try the hardest to do, is write stuff that's very personal in its way. I figure I can only say things the way I say them, so I'm trying to do something that is kind of anti-generic.
My work is very popular with performers, and there are theatre people who get what I'm doing and what tradition I'm working in. I'm very grateful to them - they're my people, who understand why I work the way I do.
When I started out, I wanted to be Billy Joel. The plan was to be a singer-songwriter of that ilk, and, then, I got waylaid - that's probably an unfair way to say it - from being a rock star by the musical theatre stuff, which I love doing.
Being a musician - and I like to think of myself as a musician with a capital M - you need to be an omnivore, and I think the best musicians will listen to anything and love everything, and I do.
There are actors I have very strong chemical responses to, and I strive always to figure out ways to work with them and get them to sing my stuff.
I know I'm really good at writing for the theater. I can deny it all I want. Other people can fight me on it. It doesn't really matter. It's the thing I happen to know is my gift.
I don't want costumes and makeup between me and the audience - I want more direct communication. There's something for me about being honest on stage, and I'm at my most honest when I'm behind a piano. So I prefer my concert performances.
In terms of my religious preference, if a year goes by and I don't have a Seder or I don't light the menorah, I feel a loss.
I don't come from a musical family at all, but I realized early on I was a musician. I started begging for a piano when I was 6 years old.
Comedy is drama. I think that if your characters are feeling something that is very real, then they have to respond in a way that feels real to them, and some situations, the only response you could possibly have is to respond in a way that's so extreme that people are going to laugh.
I love my stuff - you're not supposed to say that. But because I'm performer as well as a writer, I'm constantly interacting with my own work. I always get to find these little secrets that I left for myself, little notes - I find them all over the scores.
Personally, I've never been popular, so I'm not surprised that professionally I'm a bit out of step, too.
I am a muso, and I love doing it. I assumed that would be my career for a long time. I always wanted to be a writer, but I didn't think that anyone could actually be that full-time, so I always go back to conducting and arranging and playing. If you scratch me, I'm a musician.
As much as I can act, I don't have anything in me that yearns to be an actor - that sense of needing to be onstage, in costume, in character; that is utterly not interesting to me.
