Forces of Nature: Kate Diaz & Tina Landau Break Down the Music of REDWOOD

What goes into making the music of our favorite Broadway shows? How do Broadway composers make our favorite characters sing and our favorite scenes come alive? BroadwayWorld is finding out with Notes on a Score.

Today we continue the series with the creators of one of Broadway's beautiful new ode to nature, Redwood- Kate Diaz and Tina Landau. They recently sat down with BroadwayWorld at A.R.T./New York to unpack two of the show's songs, "The Stars" and "In the Leaves."

The former, Landau explained, was called 'Dear Everyone' when the musical premiered at La Jolla Playhouse in 2024. "In the chorus of that song were the lyrics, 'Now underneath a canopy of stars that flicker with ancient light.' This song really came out of those two lines and us trying to rewrite a song that wasn't so story-based but allowed us to get inside Jesse in a very simple, accessible, emotional way. And after a lot of big stuff going on at the beginning of the show, this is the first moment we really get to sit with that character and Idina and experience her vulnerability and her fragility."

"'In the Leaves' is another song that had a entirely different identity," added Landau. "At La Jolla it was a song called 'Stella'. This is a song that is about Jesse's relationship to the tree that she is in. And that foremost is the idea- that it's a kind of love song to and with the tree that she ultimately dances with."

In your arms I feel joy again.
In your leaves I'm a kid again.
In the green I can now begin
Laughing, laughing in the leaves.

"I think also because of Jesse's journey it had to feel kind of like a deep joy not like a surface level happiness," added Diaz. "So it's like a deep euphoria is kind of what we wanted the song to feel like so it's like a rock song but it has a lot of emotionality in it too."

Redwood is running on Broadway at the Nederlander Theatre. View the full 2025 Spring Preview!