Whenever someone wants to say something to a whole mass of people by breaking into song, there's probably something wrong with them.
— Robert Lopez
People are born with the ability to make judgments. And they can't help but use the information they have to divine something about the world they're in. Making categorical judgments, in large, helps our society.
People try not to think about what's going on in sub-Saharan Africa. They edit it out of their daily lives. Especially Americans. We prefer a fantasy version of Africa.
I don't think I met an actual Mormon until college, and by that time, I was wary of them. I knew about the church through school and, secondhand, through non-Mormon friends.
When you're trying to do a traditional book musical like 'Book of Mormon,' it's always nice to have characters that could very naturally break into song, and its good to pick a subject matter that allows that to happen in a way that doesn't disarm the audience.
This is one of my lesser moments, and one I'm not proud to admit to, but there's always a time I feel the need to have control over the process and try to defend the song from the person I'm writing with. It never, ever helps and always causes problems.
I'm not an advocate of true rhymes, I don't think. I think that everyone who writes musical theater needs to know how to do true rhymes, because that's the tradition of it, but I do think that in order for the art form to grow, it's important to not let tradition get in the way of innovation.
You can never assume that something is going to do well.
I admire 'Urinetown.'
I don't know if I have good habits, but I'm very devoted to writing. I'm very compulsive about having a project, at least one, and trying to follow the business as much as I can. I keep on top of all the entertainment business news.
I think one of my favorite productions ever was Sondheim's 'Assassins' at the Roundabout in 2004. Beyond brilliant.
I like to think my sense of humor is sort of smart and dumb at the same time. I like to work on multiple levels - smart and dumb, funny and sad, profound and mundane, cynical and hopeful.
The temptation to quit and start over infects every creative process I've ever been in. Frustration and boredom always fuel this self-doubt.
If all you have is satire, your show will close. Even if all you have is comedy, your show will close. The hardest thing is not making people laugh: the hardest thing is building an emotional story. Any child can make a group of adults laugh.
In 'Winnie the Pooh,' a lot of the characters have serious flaws: Pooh is sort of a food addict. Rabbit is OCD, and Owl is a compulsive liar.
I don't know any Mormon that doesn't have warm memories of their family.
We love the great Disney songs - they have always inspired us in our work and in our lives! But for 'Let It Go,' we looked elsewhere - to powerful female singer-songwriters like Tori Amos, Aimee Mann, Sara Bareilles, Adele.
When we wrote 'Avenue Q,' we worked hard to create something that could be funny and satirical but also had some surprise moments of heart, moments when the music itself could become a central player and create something sweet and moving.
I always have to re-learn the important lesson that the work is always stronger when I listen and take input from others.
If you're doing a musical, you should be out to give the audience something special, emotional, an uplifting feeling, something that stays with them. And you're not going to do that by bumming them out.
I thought it would be really cool to show the world the inner life of someone like me, who doesn't have a huge personality, who deals with some personal demons and is a little bit shy and a little awkward when you first get to know me.
It's wonderful to be able to have such wildly different projects in your body of work. They don't feel different to me as I'm working on them. It feels like they all share this element of subversiveness and finding the joy in subversiveness.
My first writing job was with a company called TheatreworksUSA.
I only like to write shows that I feel like no one has seen before.
Whenever Disney asks if you want to do a fairy tale musical, you say yes.
I am never excited to play through a song all the way, because it can reveal more flaws that mean more work. For some reason, I always have an irrational fear that the song will never be finished.
There's been a lot of Catholic parody - 'Nunsense,' 'Sister Mary Ignatius' - I think they've almost been done to death, actually.
I'm sort of agnostic. I grew up Catholic and switched to Episcopalian in college because I sang in churches to have money to buy pizza and french fries.
I try to turn off the TV and play with my kids as much as I can, and I always hope they're having as good a time as Mormon kids.
I did a musical episode of 'Scrubs.'
When a good idea sparks, it's usually because of some subversive angle that means the song we're writing will be fresh.
It's so important, after a song is finished, to go to sleep and listen to the song with fresh ears the next day. It's sometimes a traumatic event. And playing it for someone else for the first time - that is the most nerve-wracking thing of all. But we learn so much.
On Broadway, there is no censoring, just self-censorship and doing what makes sense.
Our kids come first, and we really put them at the top of our priority list.
Every time I see a film or TV show, I think about how that composer made those choices and how that director envisioned music and how that could work onstage or in a film and how you could support that even further by putting lyrics to it.
The things that I have done that haven't been as successful have been things that have been largely out of the public view, which is great. It's terrible, when you're a theater writer, to have a big flop publicly.
I'm not really a 'puppet' person in particular; I think they are very theatrical, and I've found different uses for them in shows, but my true interest is in writing Broadway musicals.
With comedy, the jokes will come out, and people will see them coming. Changes in daily life or current events can change the consciousness of audiences and can make the show less funny or feel more stale.
I basically never feel like writing. I am a happy-go-lucky, relaxed, fun-seeking kind of person. And working disturbs that, because it puts me in a state of anxiety.
