'Ragtime' Composer, Lyricist Talk Shop, Life

“Rewrites are the essence of life. No matter what you do, it’s hard to get it right the first time,” Tony Award-winning lyricist Lynn Ahrens advised an attentive crowd of about 60 thespians and musicians yesterday.

Speaking in the Winthrop House Junior Common Room, Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, her professional partner of 20 years, engaged the audience of student and community artists in 90 minutes of discussion. The event was the first workshop in this year’s Learning From Performers series.

Ahrens and Flaherty are best known for composing the Tony award winning-musical Ragtime. But rather than bask in the glow of their crowning achievement, the two focused on their collaborative history and mutual frustrations.

Michael C. Mitnick ’05, who interned for Ahrens and Flaherty for two summers, led the duo through its two decade-long history.

Ahrens and Flaherty first met at a conference in New York City 20 years ago. “We were writing together within five minutes,” remembered Flaherty.

The chance meeting was a fortuitous one.

“I do write music, and he does write lyrics, but it’s comforting to know that he’s 1000 times better at composing, and I’m somewhat better at writing lyrics at this point,” Ahrens said.

“My way of writing was secluding myself in a room and waiting for inspiration to hit,” said Flaherty. “Lynn, her method is much more improvisational. Our strengths were very complementary, but our ways of working were very different. It took a while for us to mesh.”

Their collaboration began with an ill-fated musical adaptation of the movie Bedazzled. Flaherty would go to various city venues to play songs from the show.

“I always had an image of myself playing in a nightclub and some small, bearded man in the back saying, ‘Hey, that’s a great song. Got any more?’” Flaherty said. “Sure enough, one night we were playing a number from Bedazzled, and there was a small, bearded man in the back saying, ‘Hey, that’s a great song. Got any more?’” Flaherty said. “Sure enough, one night we were playing a number from Bedazzled, and there was a small, bearded man that literally said, ‘Hey, that’s a great song. Got anymore?’”

The bearded man turned out to be Ira Weitzman, a hot-shot Off-Broadway producer.

Although Bedazzled was never produced, Weitzman proved an invaluable contact, eventually helping Ahrens and Flaherty with their first success in 1988, called Lucky Stiff.

In the interim, Ahrens and Flaherty struggled to make ends meet. Ahrens worked as a jingle writer in the 1980s.

“I was writing ‘What would you do for a Klondike bar?’ by day and writing musicals by night,” Ahrens said to the amusement of the crowd. “I didn’t have a dream to get produced or anything. I just enjoyed writing so much that I didn’t want to stop.”

Flaherty worked in the pit of other shows, even two nights after Lucky Stiff opened. “It was a very humbling way to make money at that time, let me tell you,” Flaherty said.

After Lucky Stiff, Ahrens and Flaherty composed Once on this Island, which won eight Tonys.

Having made a name for themselves, the pair was hired to write the soundtrack of 20th Century Fox’s animated film Anastasia in 1997.

“In theater, you work for years and earn nothing. In Hollywood, they pay you, but they own your work” Ahrens advised aspiring artists. “If the daughter of the producer says, ‘Daddy, I think she should be sitting right there when she sings that song,’ then you have to rewrite the song.”

The pair also addressed some of the flaws of Seussical, the Musical, which they composed.

Despite being named one of Time’s “Top 10 Theater Events” of 2000, the show received mixed reviews.

While the two do not usually view the set as vital to a show’s success—Ragtime is now playing in the West End with virtually no set beyond “simple black chairs,” Flaherty said—the problems of Seussical in their eyes stemmed from problems with setting.

“Seussical, more than any other show we’ve worked on, depended on design,” said Flaherty.

“Somehow, the minute you got the sets, the costumes, the lights, you were distanced from the material,” Ahrens said. While both recognized flaws in their show, once it entered production, few adjustments could be made they said.

“Our lead male took seven weeks just to learn one song,” Ahrens said. “You can’t just change.”

Following the moderated portion of the program, the audience quizzed the pair on matters ranging from inspiration to script development.

Ahrens told Beth Deveney, who has run a children’s theater program in Cohasset, Mass. for 15 years, that musicals resemble Amish quilts. “The Amish used to make their quilts green or blue and then put in one red patch because only god can create something perfect,” she said.

Although Ragtime was first performed on Broadway in 1998, Ahrens said she is “only now” happy with the musical because of the changes she made before the recent West End production of the show.

Ahrens and Flaherty will critique the original songs of 12 College students today at 3:00 p.m., again in the Winthrop House Junior Common Room.

The Learning From Performers program, organized by the Office of the Arts at Harvard, has brought several hundred artists to Harvard in the last decade.

Leon Gruenbaum, the inventor of the first strap-on keyboard that he calls the “Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee,” will come to Cambridge later this month, and composer Quincy Jones will visit in February.

Thespians lauded yesterday’s discussion and the series more generally.

“The Learning From Performers program is useful and important to those continuing in the arts, which are somewhat neglected here,” said Johanna S. “Jo Jo” Karlin ’05, a board member of the Harvard Radcliffe Drama Club. “We don’t have faculty that can teach you what these people can.”

Ahrens said that from her perspective, Harvard students are receiving ideal preparation for the art world, as well as the world more generally. “I know of a lot people that go to conservatories and then do great in their auditions in New York, but I’m not so sure that they’re well-rounded. What I see here is that students are getting a fantastic education and also immersing themselves in the arts on a volunteer basis,” Ahrens said.