The musical "If/Then," which opens Tuesday at the Orpheum, has a novel plot: It imagines two potential life paths for a New Yorker based on the choices she makes — basically between career or marriage and family.
The show, which starred Idina Menzel on Broadway, is the latest work by lyricist/librettist Brian Yorkey and composer Tom Kitt, who won a Pulitzer Prize for their previous musical, "Next to Normal," about a mother with bipolar disorder. We spoke recently with Yorkey, 45, who was raised in suburban Seattle and now lives in New York, where he is juggling projects for Disney and other producers.
Q: Is this how you imagined your life would turn out?
A: Not exactly. From a young age, I loved writing. I had a suspicion that this is what I would be if I could, but you never know.
Q: Did you have some sort of eureka moment?
A: Well, the first play I wrote was in junior year of Issaquah High School. It's named after an Elvis Costello song, "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace Love and Understanding." I directed it as well. Sitting in the theater and hearing people laugh at jokes that I'd written was pretty intoxicating.
Q: Singers talk about hearing their songs on the radio for the first time.
A: I had that experience in the theater as well, after my senior year of high school. I wrote a musical version of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" at a Seattle theater with a composer named Susan Grant. It was pretty exciting.
Q: Your path was set pretty early, then.
A: Yes, I continued in college in New York. At Columbia, I worked on the [school's annual] "Varsity Show." That's how I met Tom Kitt. After graduation, we tried to find a way to make it in the world, all kinds of jobs, and we both sort of failed. We joined the BMI Musical Theater Workshop and wrote a 10-minute piece called "Feeling Electric." That became "Next to Normal," my first Broadway show.
Q: And with that, you became an overnight success, tongue planted firmly in cheek.
A: Very firmly. This lifestyle wasn't anything like a jump, cut or dissolve. It was a long slog to get here, a long journey. New York City in the '90s was a remarkable place to be struggling, young and poor.
Q: How did you and Tom meet?
A: We are both Columbia graduates. I'm class of '93, he's '96. He actually was dating my close friend, who's now his wife. I was just out of school. She said, "You have to meet my boyfriend. He's this amazing composer and piano player. You guys should write songs together." I had my eyebrow raised, thinking, "Sure."
Q: How do you work together?
A: He'll write music and I'll put lyrics to it. Or I'll write lyrics, then he'll follow. We tend to figure out who has the stronger impulse for a song. If the song is the most important sort of thing — if it's to rev the show up or calm it down — then Tom goes first. If there's a song with a lot of information, or dramatic complications, I take the lead on those.
Q: When I hear your music, it calls to mind emo and other rock styles as much as musical theater. How would you describe your aesthetic?
A: Other people are probably better suited to answer that. I can tell you what my concerns are. I'm not particularly interested in making musical theater that's precious or clever or charming. I like to write about the way we live in the world today, the things that move us, challenge us, ennoble us. I find myself writing about contemporary people, and that involves a certain measure of irony, self-awareness. Honest storytelling and earned emotion is important to what Tom and I write.
Q: You're sounding like Eugene O'Neill, August Wilson, Stephen Sondheim and Tony Kushner, all rolled into one.
A: It's funny you should say that. We talked about O'Neill a lot when we were working on "Next to Normal," especially since it's a family play. And in writing "If/Then," we must have re-read "Angels in America" a dozen times. Not that the two have anything in common. But the way all of these plays spoke deeply about the world we live in was pretty profound.
Q: Was it you or Tom who came up with the idea for "If/Then"
A: You know, "Next to Normal" was my idea, so it was Tom's turn. He wanted to write about the moment you look at your life and see the many choices that went into where you are today, even though so many of the choices didn't seem significant at the time. It's a conundrum about how we get to where we are, and it's a pretty tantalizing starting point.
Q: How much of you is in it?
A: The stuff I do may not be factually autobiographical, but emotionally it's all about my life and Tom's life. You always use elements of your life as a springboard for invention, but if characters are just extensions of me, that's terribly narcissistic and not all that interesting. There's a lesbian character in "If/Then," a principal in the show. I just adore her. And she's an amalgam of some of the women I know. She's an African-American lesbian kindergarten teacher. What's it like to be her in the world?
Q: Are you striving for sympathy or empathy with your characters?
A: There's a huge gap between sympathy and empathy. We're big on sympathy in the world as we repost sad pictures with sad comments on social media. But empathy drives people to do something meaningful with their lives. I tend to think that writing good dramatic characters with whom people can identify is an exercise in empathy. I want people to sympathize with my characters, but, more importantly, imagine themselves walking in my characters' shoes.
Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390
