David Ives Talks Collaborating With Stephen Sondheim: 'It was Like Going Over to Mozart's House'

David Ives, who wrote the book for Stephen Sondheim's final show, Here We Are, is sharing what it was like to collaborate with the late musical theatre icon. 

In a feature in the Observer, Ives shared how in December of 2009 Sondheim asked Ives to meet. It wasn't until Ives was at Sondheim's house that Sondheim said "Well, I’ve got this idea for a musical, and I wondered if you wanted to work on it with me."

The show was not Here We Are, but another original idea for a show called All Together Now. The pair worked on All Together Now for four years before letting go of the idea, and starting up He We Are. 

“The way Sondheim and I worked—I was over at his house a lot, about once a week early on. We’d talk about the show, and I‘d write up the notes from our meeting and send them to him. Then we’d talk on the phone about the notes and I’d come back the next week and we would continue that process. A lot of it, at the beginning, was up close and personal in his study.

“Even when he slowed down, it was fun—partly because I was hanging out in a room with Sondheim. That, automatically, was fun. It was like going over to Mozart’s house. Mozart says, ‘I had this idea. Let me play you this,’ and he plays it and sings what he has come up with. We got to become good friends over the course of all of this. That made it more than a collaboration.”

Ives said Sondheim was down to earth, and shared that the title of Here We Are describes how the creative team had reached the end of the road with the musical. 

Here We Are is running at The Shed through January 21. 

Directed by two-time Tony Award winner Joe Mantello, the cast of Here We Are features Francois Battiste, Tracie Bennett, Bobby Cannavale, Micaela Diamond, Amber Gray, Jin Ha, Rachel Bay Jones, Denis O’Hare, Steven Pasquale, David Hyde Pierce, and Jeremy Shamos. The understudies for Here We Are are Adante Carter, Lindsay Nicole Chambers, Bradley Dean, Mehry Eslaminia, Adam Harrington, and Bligh Voth.

The musical features a book by Tony Award nominee David Ives, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, and is inspired by two films, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and The Exterminating Angel, by Luis Buñuel.  

Read the full article HERE.