Lin-Manuel Miranda Interviews Stephen Sondheim for New York Times

Theater lovers can rejoice: There’s finally a collaboration between legendary lyricist Stephen Sondheim and Broadway’s hottest talent, Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Only, it’s not a musical, but rather an interview for The New York Times Magazine.

Lin-Manuel Miranda of ‘Hamilton’ performs onstage during the 70th Annual Tony Awards at The Beacon Theatre on June 12, 2016, in New York City. (Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions)

Miranda was conscripted by the newspaper to interview one of his idols — the 87-year-old genius behind the lyrics to West Side Story and a protege of the even more legendary Rodgers and Hammerstein. And having the creator of Hamilton asking the questions led to all sorts of insights in exchanges like this one:

Miranda: Something that’s so essential about your work is that I think you have expanded the terrain of what musical theater can be. The notion of, “This is a musical, that’s not a musical,” is BS. It’s carried entirely by the passion of the creators.

Sondheim: Yeah, but Oscar (Hammerstein) invented that with ‘Oklahoma!’ He took a play that was about homosexuality in the West and turned it into a sunny musical. Because he saw something in it that was beyond what Lynn Riggs¹² had written, about the opening of territories, the promise of America. He saw that which anybody else reading that play would not have seen.

Miranda: O.K. But it gets back to the notion of, “If I can find myself in the work, others will see themselves.” So it’s about not being afraid of specificity.

Sondheim: Absolutely! That’s exactly what he taught me, when he criticized my poetic Hammerstein lyrics when I was starting out.¹³ He said, “That’s not what you feel. Don’t write what I feel. Write what you feel.” Oh! It had never occurred to me to write what I felt. And Oscar was the one who taught everyone to do that.

But the article proved as illuminating about the interviewer as the interviewee.

“Sondheim was one of the first people I told about my idea for a piece about Alexander Hamilton, back in 2008,” Miranda revealed. “It was in this townhouse, on the first floor. I’d been hired to write Spanish translations for a Broadway revival of ‘West Side Story,’ and during our first meeting he asked me what I was working on next.

“I told him ‘Alexander Hamilton,’ and he threw back his head in laughter and clapped his hands. ‘That is exactly what you should be doing. No one will expect that from you. How fantastic.’ That moment alone, the joy of surprising Sondheim, sustained me through many rough writing nights and missed deadlines.”