Johann Johannsson Quotes

I don't like the word rock opera, but I'm trying to write on that level that's reserved for plays still, or novels.

I've never been passionate about just music, I've never seen myself going into music in that sense. My love for music has always been connected to the stories told through music, which is why I was drawn to theater and why I think 'Glee' is so powerful.

My task is to tell a story with the music. I always like to have themes in terms of characters or plots, and things that can tell a story always interest me the most.

I started out writing music for theatre and contemporary dance, so there has always been a dramatic and narrative element in my music.

But I think musicals are going to have to deal with important subjects.

I saw 'Cats' on a school trip. I thought it was neat and a little weird. The set was cool.

If one wants to go on living, one must evolve. Before, when we composed, we would start by a series of music themes. Once created, we would hire writers and lyricists to make up the text and the story line. I was the first to do this backwards with 'Man of La Mancha.'

The thing about Sondheim is that it does get very cerebral. You do need a faculty with words and a love for the lyrics to not just pull it off, but to have an appreciation for it.

You have to realize that when I started to work on 'Aladdin', Disney Theatrical wasn't in existence. I suppose I had always hoped that 'Aladdin' would be somewhere on the runway.

If you're going to make a musical, don't cartoon it from the play. Make it better than the play. Have a reason for making it sing.

I don't want to put 12 singles on an album. I want to make a story, a little movie.

I've learned that in the theater the story is everything. Every lyric, every line and every musical gesture has to propel the journey of a given character or the overall plot.

I've tried to pitch 'Borgen - the Musical,' but they just won't listen to me!

But I'm not adverse to the idea of Torch Song as a musical. It would just be different. Because the play will always be there exactly as it was, and in a musical you could tell a lot of the story through songs.

I read a lot of autobiographical stories, and I write plays and prose. And I play piano and cello. A lot of my downtime is devoted to that.

I'm going to take the kids away over Christmas but I don't, I've written 14 musicals now, I don't want to rush into doing something just for the sake of doing it. I want to do it when I find a story.

I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it's going to be about a piano, but that's it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along.

All of my favourite albums have this incredible amount of conceptual glue to them, even if they are not telling a story.

I have such pride in furthering the American musical and using it as a way to tell story.

I must have written 15 lyrics for 'The Lion King,' and only five or six were used. Some were scenes that disappeared, some were earlier versions of songs that didn't work, or else the characters changed.

When I first heard 'A Christmas Story, the musical,' I thought, Oh, that could be really good. It just felt like it fit. Some films lend themselves well to other formats, some don't, but there are so many fantasy sequences in the film, and Ralphie's such a dreamer as a character, I thought they could really lend themselves to being set pieces.

When you're trying to do a traditional book musical like 'Book of Mormon,' it's always nice to have characters that could very naturally break into song, and its good to pick a subject matter that allows that to happen in a way that doesn't disarm the audience.

My parents would have their friends over - their friends who thought, 'How can you live without a TV?' By the time they left, they understood why, because I had done the second act of 'West Side Story' and the first act of 'Jesus Christ Superstar,' playing all the parts. In many ways, that's what I'm still doing. I'm just getting paid better.

You could do a 'Les Mis'-type musical about Hamilton, but it would have to be 12 hours long, because the amount of words on the bars when you're writing a typical song - that's maybe got 10 words per line.

I love it when people take contemporary songs and find a narrative or a theatrical way of telling it.