A life in musicals

Band of Thebes directed me to this Guardian article "A life in musicals: Arthur Laurents." Two snippets:

The vicissitudes of Hollywood defy analysis, he says, but Broadway shows go wrong for the same reasons. When the script for the musical Wicked was in development, the producers came to Laurents for advice. He told them they didn't know what the show was about. "They said, yes, it's about Oz. I said no it isn't. I said it's about the friendship of two girls. I said start tracking that. That whole thing made the show an enormous success."

*

He wrote a play a week for army radio, where he learned economy and banished the notion that "length equals importance". His single greatest discovery was that "emotions precede thought, emotions determine thought; plays are emotions".


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