Imagine you have been working on a William & Mary student production of “Godspell” as part of a capstone course for upperclass students. There’s one performance only, on May 2, which is sold out, and the day before there is a master class, scheduled to add one last coat of polish to a show cast and crew have been working on all semester.
The guest lecturer? Stephen Schwartz, a Tony, Oscar and Grammy Award–winning composer and lyricist whose credits include “Pippin,” “Wicked,” a string of Disney’s animated movie musicals and, of course, “Godspell.”
“Part of the class is about working on the professional development process so we always want to invite someone notable,” said Phaedra McNorton, associate teaching professor of musical theatre. The show’s director, Tiffany Haas, instructor of musical theatre voice, reached out to Schwartz, whom she knew well from the decade she spent playing Glinda in his Broadway production of “Wicked.”
“Who better to have than the writer himself?” she said. She sent him an email asking if he would lead a master class at W&M. The answer was yes.
Schwartz met with students on the last day of classes and told them the “Godspell” backstory, coincidentally also a student production, created in 1970 by John-Michael Tebelak as his master’s thesis at Carnegie Mellon University. Tebelak wrote the show, based on parables from the gospel according to Matthew, in reaction to an Easter church service he had attended in Pittsburgh, where he felt the joy he found in the gospels was missing.
Schwartz first saw Tebelak’s version at a small theatre in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village in 1971. There were some songs – mostly Episcopal hymns – but it wasn’t yet a musical. Producers interested in taking the play to a bigger off-Broadway venue hired Schwartz to rewrite the score.
“I saw the show on a Saturday night, March 7, met with the producers on Monday, March 9, and they said, ‘Rehearsals start April 11,’” Schwartz remembered. “It got written very fast because I was too young at the time to know that it can’t be done like that.”
Workshopping the show
William & Mary’s cast performed three songs from the show for Schwartz. “That was nerve-wracking, for sure,” said Conor Farah ’27, who played Jesus. “It was also my hardest song, but I think I got through it OK.”
Schwartz gave them notes but his major point was to encourage them to make the show their own. “It remains a show that needs to be created by every new cast,” he said. “Each production does its own thing.”
Cast member Ally Stump ’27 said Schwartz’s feedback was very helpful, especially since the situation had the potential to be intimidating.
“They told us we would do some of the numbers from the show but not which ones. It was, ‘We’ll just play it by ear,’ and then that morning it was, ‘Ally, why don’t we do your number?’”
Stump said it was easier to temper the nerves because Schwartz had explained that the message of the show was about kindness and community. “A lot of what he told us was less about the singing or the dancing and more about the story,” she said, “so that made it easier to perform in front of him because now I knew what the goal was.”
Schwartz also sprinkled in some behind-the-scenes lore from his most famous works – a story about how Jeff Goldblum approaches singing, what he thought when he finished writing “Popular,” Glinda’s showstopping number from “Wicked.” “We added the ‘toss, toss’ in rehearsal but otherwise, the way I wrote it is the way it’s performed,” he said.
“Beautiful City” didn’t appear in the original stage production of “Godspell.” It was an anthem written for the 1973 movie version. “It always felt like a song from a commercial – ‘I’d like to buy the world a Coke,’” Schwartz admitted, but Haas demurred. “I can’t imagine “Godspell” now without that song,” she said.
And that’s the thing about theatre, Schwartz told the students. “A movie or a record, once it’s done, it’s done,” he said. “Theatre is alive.”
The ‘Popular’ professor
Farah said he’s a bit starstruck by the whole experience – not just Schwartz’s master class, but having a professor with so much high-level experience. “It was a huge treat for us to have him come here, but having Tiffany as our professor is a treat, too. What you figure out is the world of theatre is so small. Everyone knows everyone. It’s so nice to hear all the stories of people being connected by theatre.”
Haas, who has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, was also the force behind “An Evening with Stephen Schwartz” held April 30 in Phi Beta Kappa Hall. The event included a conversation between Schwartz and Haas, who discussed his writing process, which he demonstrated by performing different versions of the song “Making Good” from “Wicked.” He also talked about how he ended up with rights to “Wicked,” which is based on the novel by Gregory Maguire. It started with a casual conversation on vacation and ended up with him convincing a studio executive to stop pursuing it as a movie so that he could make it a musical.
In addition to Haas, several guests performed throughout the evening, including Patrice Covington, an award-winning actress and Broadway performer who now co-hosts “The Hampton Roads Show.” A number of students also performed; they included Mia Cummings ’28, Kiran Behr ’27 and Chloe Gorla ’26. The cast of “Godspell” also took the stage to perform “All For the Best.”
The evening culminated with a performance of “For Good” from “Wicked” by Haas and Schwartz.
“It was really incredible to have him here for the show but especially to work with the class,” Haas said. “That was like the cherry on top.”
Susan Corbett, Communications Specialist