Adapted from Carol de Giere’s Defying Gravity Second Edition
Songs for Musicals – Starting with Abundance
It is generally easier to cut than invent, and therefore, for early drafts, writers often develop significantly more material than will be needed once the piece is refined.
For The Prince of Egypt stage production, bookwriter Philip LaZebnik explains, “When writing scenes that might be musicalized, I overwrite them. So there will be a ten-page scene even though it will become a page or two at most. Stephen Schwartz likes to have a lot of material that he can take and make into the songs.”
For Schwartz, it means he’s not starting from scratch. “As you can imagine, it’s enormously valuable when the book writer provides me with a lot of raw material, often giving me ideas for lyrics and helping me to figure out where to begin and end the song.”
PHOTO: Stephen Schwartz, left, and Philip LaZebnik, right, while working on The Prince of Egypt development production in Utah, 2018. Photo by DeAnna Anderson.
Writing lyrics is a puzzle-working art form involving whittling down of ideas and feelings while also providing rhymes. In a good collaboration between bookwriter and songwriter, musical making is eased by a shared sense of abundance in terms of the story ideas. It also helps if the writers agree on each song’s job for advancing the story or exploring the character’s nature.