From our Fall 2023 Issue
Pulitzer Prize-winning multi-hyphenate James Lapine is best known for his collaborations with composers Ste- phen Sondheim (Sunday in the Park with George, Into The Woods, Passion, etc.) and William Finn (Falsettos, A New Brain, 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, etc.) On Saturday, September 9, the three-time Tony Award®-winning Broadway playwright and director will be honored at The Millay Arts 50th Anniversary Gala at Steepletop in Austerlitz, New York. A New Brain also has been revived at Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield. The musical continues through Sunday, September 10. When speaking on their continued artistic collaboration, Finn praised Lapine for his integrity and creativity: “Unlike other people, I can always trust him. He’s full of ideas, and I find that very reassuring.” At a point when Lapine’s creative aspirations were beginning to take flight, his stay at the Millay Colony in 1978 played a critical role in his artistic development. Over the past several decades, Lapine has maintained a strong connection with the Berkshires’ theatrical scene, and he continues to find inspiration and enjoyment whenever he comes to visit. We spoke to Lapine about his collaborations, his beginnings as a playwright, and the impact that the time he spent at the Millay Colony in 1978 had on his career.
Thanks so much for joining us, James! It’s been 45 years since you were an artist in residence at Millay Arts (formerly The Millay Colony). How did you first hear about the opportunity, and what attracted you to it? A woman who organized one of the very first shows I had done with the Music Theater Performing Group in the Berkshires recommended me. She suggested that I apply, and that’s how I ended up there. Back in my salad days, the idea of a month of free time in the country sounded good to me.
Your career has been wide-ranging—from photography to historic restoration and design, to writing and directing. In 1978, when you came to Millay, were you specifically focused on writing? I hadn’t really written anything, but I had been segueing from being a purely visual artist to creating visual theater pieces that involved some writing. It was at the Millay Center that I decided to try my hand at writing. I went off to the Colony without any expectations, but I knew I had a month to do something. It sounds corny, but I literally just sat down at a typewriter and started typing, and that’s how it all began.
Can you share any favorite memories from your time at The Millay Colony? Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sister, Norma, lived there, and she was a hoot. There were only five of us in residence that summer, and two of the five were married to each other. Norma would come out first thing in the morning in her nightgown after a shot of whiskey, go into the garden, and spend hours gardening. She was well in her 80s at the time. In the evenings, we would go over to the main house where she lived, and we would drink whiskey together while she recited Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry. The experience was pretty magical. It was a pretty funky operation back then—more like a mom-and-pop setup, which was great. I remember it being thrilling to have that opportunity as a young person, and it was wonderful to have someone supporting what I wanted to do creatively. The experience was vital to me. I ended up going to more colonies after that, and I embraced the opportunity to be in such blessed places.
The Millay Colony has always been known for serving as a haven of multidisciplinary collaboration. Do you think that having a wide range of artists with different disciplines creates a positive environment for collaboration? Absolutely! I attended the California Institute of the Arts, which, like Millay, brought together artists from various disciplines. When I was at CalArts, I was studying photography, but I was exposed to theater, music, film, and dance. It’s a great gift not to be shoehorned into a specific profession or area of study. When you’re interacting with artists from different fields, it influences your work and provides a rich, extraordinary environment.
You’re one of the honorees at Millay’s 50th Anniversary Gala. Looking back, have any lessons or habits that you learned or developed from that time influenced your work moving forward? My experience there played a part in teaching me the value of dedicated time for creativity. It’s important to have days that aren’t filled with other activities, like calls or doctors appointments, where you have time to yourself to create. I didn’t learn how to maintain a strict routine at Millay, but the experience there reminded me to keep seeking out time and space for creative endeavors. I was also grateful to have the opportunity to be fed and housed in a beautiful place, because I love hiking and the outdoors.
The Berkshire region is certainly a beautiful and inspiring place. Do you have any other favorite memories or connections to the Berkshires? Bill (William) Finn, who lives in Williamstown and attended Williams College, is a close friend and collaborator of mine. Roberta Bernstein, who got me my first theater opportunity, also resides in the Berk- shires, and she will be attending the event with me. Over time, I have developed connections to the Berkshires. I used to live in Upstate New York near the border, so the Berkshires have been a place I’m drawn to and have connections with. It may not be a constant presence, but it holds a special significance in my life.
You wrote part of your breakout play, Table Settings while at Millay. What was the process for putting that together? After working on it at Millay and finishing it after my time there, I cobbled together something that resembled the first draft and sent it to André Bishop. I had met him through Wendy Wasserstein, a playwright and close friend. André agreed to do a little workshop of the play, and that’s how it started to grow. I kept working on it, even though I didn’t have a formal theater education. Unlike many others in the theater who major in it and focus solely on that path, I had various interests and no specific career plan for the theater. Table Settings, in all honesty, was an attempt to write something I thought could bring in some income. My previous works were quite experimental, and I knew they wouldn’t appeal to everyone. I decided to try my hand at writing something commercially viable. At that time, I mainly earned a living through teaching, but I have to admit I was a terrible teacher and didn’t find much enjoyment in it, and I suspect my students felt the same way.
You’ve collaborated with both Sondheim and Finn, two legendary Broadway composers. Can you talk about your approach to storytelling and how these collaborations came about? I’m more visually driven, and I find inspiration from visual elements. With Sondheim, the collaboration began with a painting by Seurat, which fascinated me. We started talking about the painting, and we realized that the image held exciting potential. I told him, “Art is about the artist,” and it became clear that it wasn’t about the painting as much as the painter. Those discussions sparked the idea for Sunday in the Park with George. Music, for me, is a visual art, so musicals allow me to merge the visual and the verbal in storytelling. Bill Finn and I both got our start at James Lapine & Playwrights Horizons. It was a special time. We were young, and we had nothing to lose. We were lucky to be in a little theater that André Bishop was involved in, and he has now gone on to run Lincoln Center. It was a magical time for us.
What is your approach to building a collaborative environment? Collaboration is like a marriage. It really depends on who you’re working with, and there’s bound to be a lot of back-and-forth. It requires mutual inspiration and respect, but it’s essential that there’s a central figure driving the project forward with a strong vision. Whether it’s the producer, the director, or the writer, the writing itself holds the key in the theater world. My two major partners, Bill and Steve, serve as both composers and lyricists, so I’ve been fortunate that it was just two of us in a room. It’s not common to find writer-directors like myself, but that allowed me to wear two hats and explore a unique artistic relationship with Sondheim and Finn, who also wore multiple hats as composers and lyricists.
What do you do when you encounter roadblocks or obstacles in the collaborative process? The most important thing in a collaboration is that you inspire each other. You don’t want to dictate to somebody what to do. You want to find people who come to you with the same kind of richness of ideas and thoughts about what you’re doing so that they can bring another point of view to it. At the beginning of any project, rather than give people what my sense of inspiration is, I just give them a piece of writing and ask what they get from it. It helps to open up a discussion and broaden the point of view, which I think is the goal.
What’s next? I’m currently working on a memoir with plays and librettos, reflecting on my creative journey. Also, I’m directing a musical based on the Nancy Drew books, and there are a couple of documentaries in the works. I also like to mix it up and keep the visual side of my artistic process alive by taking photographs regularly.
—Dr. Joshua Sherman and Benjamin Lerner
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