
In 2007, in my second year of grad school at NYU’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program, my class had a program with Stephen Sondheim at the Dramatists Guild. I don’t really remember much from this talk except Sondheim said the word “kerfuffle” and I found it amusing enough to write in my notes. But in preparation for the talk, the teacher organizing it had us submit questions that he would then combine to form the more general topic questions he asked at the talk.
I took this opportunity to write out every question I had for Sondheim thus far. They are very specific and I was annoyed that I couldn’t ask him each one directly, although I understand why things were done the way they were, I guess…. I don’t know why I never had the desire to try to ask him these questions myself, especially after learning that he responded to letters. I’ll have to go over this with my therapist next week. But here are the questions I wrote in 2007 and never directly asked Sondheim.