Stephen Sondheim has not joined FLAPSS and has not endorsed it. This page is a reference record assembled from published interviews and public remarks. Every answer below is a direct quotation with the source and date shown next to it.
Composer and lyricist for the musical theatre
United States · 1930–2021
American composer and lyricist whose musicals include Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd and Sunday in the Park with George, and who wrote the lyrics for West Side Story and Gypsy.
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No. Although I have to qualify that. Though he was, by jazz standards, a very square composer, he was, by musical theater standards, a not square composer, and he taught me to be less square. I tend to be square.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Los Angeles, California, 5 July 2005 source ↗
But that’s part of the process, isn’t it? Something might not fit in the show. Musicals are — particularly musicals — plays also, but musicals particularly are… the last collaborator is your audience, and so you’ve got to wait ’til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration. And when the audience comes in, it changes the temperature of what you’ve written. Things that seem to work well — work in a sense of carry the story forward and be integral to the piece — suddenly become a little less relevant or a little less functional or a little overlong or a little overweight or a little whatever. And so you start reshaping from an audience.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 2005 source ↗
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