Craig Carnelia, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jason Robert Brown and Stephen Sondheim In 2007, I interviewed Stephen Sondheim for The Dramatist. The focus of the interview could be anything I chose and, since I had been teaching “acting through song” to the Broadway community for fifteen years at that point, I decided to focus on the unique actability of S ondheim’s songs. In 2024, when planning the second edition of my book The Reason to Sing: A Guide to Acting While Singing, I decid

More than two decades after its brief and turbulent Broadway run, Sweet Smell of Success remains one of musical theater’s most intriguing near-misses. It had a dream creative team in writers Marvin Hamlisch (score), John Guare (book), and Craig Carnelia (lyrics); a knockout cast led by John Lithgow and rising stars Brian d’Arcy James and Kelli O’Hara; and behind-the-scenes drama that was as intriguing a s the Ernest Lehman story and Alexander Mackendrick film that inspired it

In 2017, I was exploring the idea of doing a book of interviews with theatre composers and lyricists. Working chronologically and having already interviewed Stephen Sondheim in depth several years earlier for The Dramatist, I began with other living greats of that generation. I ultimately abandoned the project to write a different book, The Reason to Sing about acting while singing (published by Routledge in 2021), and to work on a musical. But one of those early interviews w

Working was conceived to be different from most “mainstream” musicals, in that it was both a kind of topical revue and non-fiction. It was very important to me and my collaborators that it remain as true as possible—no invented words or situations. But how to organize it so that it felt as if it had a throughline, gained momentum, and ultimately delivered an emotional punch? That was the main problem we struggled with as we put the show together. We discovered that the transi

So much has been written and will be written about my friend and collaborator, Marvin Hamlisch, that I have decided to write a piece that focuses on those recollections that are private, moments when we were alone, or if with others, situations in which we were a team of songwriters or a pair of friends. The Way We Worked I met Marvin in the summer of 1997. We were introduced by producer Marty Bell who was assembling talent to create a musical version of Sweet Smell of Su

You know Marvin, the composer of A Chorus Line — Marvin, the brash boy who won three Oscars one night in 1974 — Marvin, the resident Pops conductor of the National Symphony (and many others) — Marvin, the great film composer (two of his songs, “Nobody Does It Better” and “The Way We Were” are among the Top 10 film songs of all time) — Marvin, Barbra Streisand’s conductor — Marvin, the showman (on “The Tonight Show”, at the White House, or any house he happened to be in). But

Q: Once you have an idea, how do you proceed? Do you take notes? Do you outline? Do you plunge right in? A: When I have an idea for a show (as with Is There Life After High School?, Cowboys & Lawyers and my current project, Poster Boy), or when I have agreed to join someone else in their idea (as with Working, Three Postcards, Sweet Smell of Success, Imaginary Friends), I like to have a good amount of time with the material before starting to actually write music and/or l

In February, I met with Stephen Sondheim at his East Side townhouse to talk about the craft of writing songs for the theater. The following edited transcript of our conversation was first printed in the May/June issue of The Dramatist, The Journal of The Dramatists Guild. It is reprinted here in celebration of Mr. Sondheim's 50th year with ASCAP. CRAIG CARNELIA: I want to begin by talking about the actability of songs. From a perspective of being both a writer and a teache

BY CRAIG CARNELIA I bought a chubby little paperback in '77 at the Coliseum Bookstore and started reading it on the bus home to the Upper West Side. My first Terkel. I had met Stephen Schwartz the night before when Craig Zadan, a mutual friend, had brought him to a SoHo club where I was performing my own songs. Steve was putting together a musical based on Studs Terkel's bestselling book Working and was looking for one more songwriter to fill out a group that already in

Had dinner with Craig Carnelia, the talented composer-lyricist who will be doing his cabaret show at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark on Saturday, January 10. Some may be surprised to hear that Carnelia will perform for they may only know him as the composer-lyricist of some of the songs in Working (1978) and all of the songs in Is There Life after High School? (1982), Three Postcards (1987), and Actor, Lawyer, Indian Chief (2002), and/or as the lyricist who se

Craig Carnelia grew up in Floral Park, Long Island, and, like so many other kids in metropolitan New York, was exposed to Broadway at a formative time in his life. He would become an actor and play The Boy in Off Broadway’s legendary The Fantasticks, and, stretching himself, would pursue cabaret songwriting and then musical theatre composing. His songs were heard (side by side with the work of other writers) in the conceptual revue, Working, and he would graduate to a full sc

Craig Carnelia is a composer/lyricist who has been working on and off-Broadway for over twenty-five years. His work has appeared in such revues as Working and Diamonds, and his shows include Is There Life After High School, Three Postcards, and the forthcoming Sweet Smell of Success, for which he’s writing lyrics to Marvin Hamlisch’s music and John Guare’s book. His songs appear on Lost in Boston IV, Jason Graae’s Evening of Self-Indulgence, and of course, our forthcoming rei