I worked as a weekend nanny for Wendy Wasserstein When she generously arrived at a tinderbox fled and infested with a theater in the Lower East Side to see a show that I created with friends called friends Crib. (The theater was so romantic at that time.) Subsequently, I remember that she said: “This show is great – but you cannot end it with a recording of” Luck Be a Dame “. I am in touch with my friend Bill, who teaches Nyu, and he can connect you with a student who could be interested in writing a score. “”
I did not know at the time that she spoke of the emblematic and awarded composer Tony Bill Finn.
We met Bill and showed him the band of our program. He may be asleep. But while the clicked video recorder, Bill looked up and said: “I will write the music.” That was it. No fanfare, no second meeting. And from this moment, my life has changed forever.
Create what was going to become The 25th annual bee of Putnam County Bill was an absolutely magical period. It is difficult to say how exciting it was. Despite all his remarkable achievements, Bill was never intimidating – he could be stubborn and grumpy, but more often, he was warm, fun and collaborative. He also deeply understood the mission. Bill has not only seen our characters – the leader, clumsy and over -defective of unsuitables trying to find their place – he saw himself in them. He recognized their whims and their calm hopes. And when he wrote their songs, I think he woven pieces of himself in everyone.
The first workshop of Spelling bee was in February 2004 at the Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires. It was freezing and was black at 3:30 am, and after the rehearsals, we cooked together and played the Charades. It was very fun. Bill would bring songs throughout the week, and each actor would be fired in a side room to learn it. Past days. Jesse I have “I'm not so smart” Deborah I have “six languages”, And I have a “magic foot”.
Finally, it was my turn. I was inaugurated in the mysterious side room and I presented “Mishent à moi”. Bill barked the whole song in a low gravelly note. It was chaotic and wonderful, and I cried afterwards. (Later, our vocal arranger, Carmel Dean, sang it and I made: Oh, there is a melody!)
To hear each of these songs day after day, as he wrote them and revived them, it was a seat in the forefront for the greatness of the musical theater. At the time, none of us really had the prospect of understanding what was going on, but we knew it was special. It was not only that a legendary composer wrote songs for us, but we created a new theater together. Retrospectively, in development Bee was a singular and trainer experience that has shaped a large part of who we have all become as interior and as people.
It was not a sun and spontaneous harmonies. The creation of a show is difficult. We fought, we sobbed, there were several small nervous starts. Each of us felt passionately by the show and had a shared obsession to make it a success – but we do not always agree on what it looked like. The scenes were constantly improvised, the script was constantly revised and we have often experienced alternative endings. (One day, our writer Rachel Shenkein asked my character to win the bee – which was exciting for me, but was not good.) Several wonderful songs that Bill wrote never was part of the series. There have been a lot of joyful moments, and many heartbreaking too. Through all this, we hung on for expensive life while we were going through the series of presentations that made us move, without knowing it, to Broadway.
I was still Nanner for Wendy on weekends before starting rehearsals in our first New York house, the second stage in Broadway. Wendy often talked about her “chosen family” and I imagine that she counted Bill as one of her brothers and sisters. He came for the shabbat dinner, and would command Shun Lee and we sit at the table of the fantasy dining room which overlooked Central Park. There were a lot, several nights I said to myself What is the life you live? As I passed, another spare coast and listened to it and Wendy talk about their week, their mothers, the last opening of Broadway and how much they did not like it. Their connection was deep and lived. I thought then, and I still think now, how Spelling bee came into the world because of their friendship and their desire to share as many of themselves.
Once the show evolved in winter 2005 in the second stage, Bill's relationship with his longtime friend and collaborator, director James Lapine, has become a mirror for the friendships we establish during this process. Wendy said it was a group of older friends and artists – Herself, Bill and James – who have been the subject of the next generation of friends and artists. As we started overviews on Broadway in April 2005 (one month after our race in the second stage, and a little more than a year from our first workshop), we had become a family, forged through the intense, euphoric and terrifying process to create a whole new musical.
With hindsight 20 years later, which I most dear – beyond the joy that the spectacle brought to the public around the world – the relationships that were born. There is a particular intimacy that has just done something nothing together. It binds and changes you. The process was transformer, and that gave us something lasting. We celebrated the weddings, the babies welcomed, we applauded in new projects and adventures. And we kept ourselves through deep sorrow and loss.
When the news came that Bill had died, the first people I turned to were these friends, my Bee family. It was a soft-meter comfort, and I was reminded how lucky we were all to know. I will be forever grateful to bring us together and stay in admiration in front of the way he made our show sing. I like to imagine it and Wendy now, sharing a plate of spare ribs, catching up and laughing at all like no time has passed. Two friends, in their own corner of the universe, picking up the conversation where they had stopped – full of mind, warmth and the kind of connection that has shaped us all who had the chance to be on their orbit.
I love you, bill. Thank you for everything. Good bee.
Sarah Saltzberg is at the origin of the role of Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre in the original Crib and in The 25th annual bee of Putnam County.
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