The Voice - The Official Linda Eder Newsletter

I was thrilled when Frank started writing with Nan. She beat out all the guys on the script for THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL for a reason. She’s really good. She has breathed life into Camille, and it’s wonderful to know that a woman is telling a woman’s story. Also, I am surrounded by men all the time in my work so it’s great to hang out with a broad, and Nan is a broad. She’s tiny, but she’s a broad and I love that.

Nan Knighton is best known for THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL book and lyrics, the stage adaptation of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and the eagerly anticipated CAMILLE CLAUDEL book and lyrics. The staff of THE VOICE visited with Nan as she was preparing to take CAMILLE to the stage, in order to learn more about the journey of her creative spirit. Her words spin beautiful dreams in the minds of theatre lovers everywhere. How does she weave this magic spell that captures our hearts?

VOICE: Let’s start at the beginning. Would you tell us where you were born and grew up?

NAN: Baltimore. I lived there until I was 18. We lived on a little country road called Hollins Lane, which was actually inside a bird sanctuary. Very isolated and pretty.

NAN: My mother was an art teacher and painter. She taught art for over 50 years to every age group from children to retirees. She was a great teacher. She always stressed the importance of imagination. Like she’d say to a child, “What other color might the sky be instead of blue? Could it be pink? Or lavender? And the grass doesn’t have to be green. It can be whatever color you want.”

NAN: No. I can’t draw a damned thing! Strictly stick figures. That particular talent skipped a generation. My oldest daughter, Eliza, can draw beautifully and also sculpt, and my younger daughter, Nola, also draws really well, though she insists she can’t.

NAN: Yeah. She’s now 88, and basically blind. She has macular degeneration, which means she has just a tiny little bit of peripheral vision left in one eye, but she’s still painting. Recently she gave me a painting of a winter storm, because she knows how much I love snow. She’s an amazing inspiration to me, kind of indomitable.

NAN: My father’s 90. He’s the cat with 9 lives. He’s a doctor and spent most of his career affiliated with Johns Hopkins. He has three full professorships and he’s also written a lot of medical textbooks and so forth. Actually he was going to be an opera singer. He studied at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore- he had a wonderful voice! But he also loved medicine. So what it came down to was deciding that he could be a doctor and sing on the side, but he couldn’t be a singer and practice medicine on the side!

VOICE: Do you think your interest in the arts is a result of your parents’ influence?

NAN: Sure. Mine was the ultimate artistic household, always brewing with an almost pressured creativity. We were just surrounded by music, painting, books, woodcarving.

NAN: Well, my father also loved to wood-carve. He’s just one of these multi-faceted, Renaissance men. And he could never keep still. Like me. All his spare time was spent reading, singing, woodcarving, doing double-crostics or jigsaw puzzles. That’s one of his woodcarvings over there in the corner, although that one’s an abstract. He usually does nude female torsos, all these beautiful naked women with no heads or legs.

VOICE: That is so great to be able to have your father’s art displayed in your house.

NAN: Yeah. I’m very proud of them both. Lots of Mother’s paintings are around the house, too.

NAN: I have one brother, three years older. He works in Baltimore for the city government. Environmental Control.

NAN: Yes. They live in a retirement community now. In fact, I just recently visited them to celebrate my father’s 90th birthday.

VOICE: How wonderful to celebrate such an occasion! What are your favorite memories of growing up in Baltimore?

NAN: God. Let’s see. Horse races in the spring in the Maryland countryside- it’s so amazingly green. Tulips and flowering dogwoods everywhere. In the fall, horse chestnuts that fell on the hill behind our house- I used to save them like little magic talismans, polish them and keep them under my pillow. In summer, cracking open hard-shell crabs spread out on newspaper-covered tables. As a child, I remember my mother playing the piano and I’d dance around the living room- once during a hurricane- Hurricane Hazel. The wind and rain were raging outside, and we only had candlelight inside, and mom played this Swedish waltz and I kept dancing. We always had tons of animals- primarily cats, but a few dogs, a guinea pig, hamsters, white mice, once a little chick. And outside the house were tons of box turtles who would wander into the garden, and rabbits, that the cats would unfortunately drag in, and I’d cry. So Daddy would open a penicillin capsule and sprinkle it on the wound, put a bandage on, and then we’d go set the baby rabbit loose in the forest again, and I had to hope he’d make it. Some of my earliest memories are of teaching myself to read. I remember very vividly how jealous I was of my older brother when he started school. He’d bring home these tantalizing papers and worksheets, and I was just so hungry to get into it all. So my parents bought me this little picture dictionary, which I still have. I can remember endlessly sitting there at the kitchen table, copying the words until I taught myself to read and write. I loved that.

(At this point, Gracie, Nan’s 3 year-old border-collie mix, came bounding into the living room. Nan had warned us that Gracie was a “party animal” and would want to be part of the interview also. You’ll see that she interjected a thought or two during the course of our conversation. T.J., her 14 year-old cocker spaniel, was much quieter. Since the time of this interview, T.J. has died, but Nan assures us that it was a “good death.” He was surrounded by her, her husband, both daughters and their boyfriends, and stroked with much love right up to the end.)

NAN: Absolutely. I wrote my first short story when I was 5 ½. I still have it, and all my early writings. In the beginning it was just short stories, though always with lots of dialogue. Usually there’d be an evil creature in the stories- witch, goblin, whatever- and then the good guys would win out in the end. Some of them are pretty phantasmagoric. Then I started writing poems when I was about 7 or 8 years old. All rhyming poems, and I wrote them constantly. Living in that forest- it was very isolated, no other kids around my age- so I’d lie out on the grass and write poems. In fact, the only prize I’ve ever won was the Fourth Grade Poetry Contest.

NAN: I went to Roland Park Public School through first grade, and then the Bryn Mawr School for Girls from second through twelfth grades. Back then it was a relatively conventional school. I always felt like I was bucking the tide. I remember once, when I was in eighth grade, our English teacher told us to go to the library and choose an extracurricular reading book. I adored going into the library, looking through all those books. So I found The Catcher in the Rye and was entranced. The next day we had to announce to the class what book we’d chosen. So I said The Catcher in the Rye, and the teacher stiffened up and asked me for the book, from which she then read aloud the first paragraph to the class- you know, it’s like “I’m not going to tell you all that David Copperfield crap about my life” and so forth. She closed the book, handed it back to me, and said, “I think a good Dickens would be a much better choice.” I mean, I had nothing against Dickens. In fact, he and John Irving are my favorite writers- but that’s what the atmosphere was like. I mean, Bryn Mawr was pretty conservative back then, but I did receive a wonderful education. Read all the classics, learned Ancient Greek, you name it. The school existed in sort of an ivory tower when I was there, but it’s an amazingly innovative place today.

NAN: I actually began to fall in love with acting and the theatre at about the age of 11 or 12. Then, when I was 14, it really struck like lightning. Across the way from Bryn Mawr was a boys’ school called Gilman, and the two schools would coordinate on plays. Doing a play at Gilman was one of the most exciting things that could happen to you because it meant you went over there to play practice three days a week. God, what fun. Anyway, I overcame the first hurdle when I auditioned to get into the Dramatic Club and I made it. I tried out for my first play when I was a freshman, and I was the only freshman to be cast- that was such a great day, seeing my name posted on that list- Wow. The play was called THE LATE CHRISTOPHER BEAN and I got the part of the funny sister.

VOICE: Did that first play bring you a greater love for the theatre and for acting?

NAN: Oh, yeah. That was it. By the time I finished that play, it was pure undying passion. The first time I went out on stage and heard that laughter, knew I could make people laugh- that was just the most amazing experience. It really changed my life. During that first play, all the clichés were racing around in my head- the costumes, the lights, the smell of the make-up, all of it! It was the doing of it that I loved. I always loved watching plays, but I realized my passion for acting was a hundredfold more than my passion for watching.

VOICE: I think Gracie is excited about your first play also! Did your teachers recognize and encourage your talent for writing?

NAN: There were several who did and others who didn’t. The same teacher who frowned on The Catcher in the Rye -another time, she gave a writing assignment to “describe a room in your house.” So I chose our laundry room, which was just this ridiculous spot with cat scratch boxes and clothes lines and God knows what all, and it was really a pretty funny piece of writing, but she handed it back to me with a “C” and a comment saying, “A living room or a den would have been a more appropriate choice.” There were teachers like that who were not encouraging, but there were others with senses of humor who liked what I did. It was actually my classmates who were most encouraging. They were always telling me they knew I was going to be a writer. At our pre-Commencement Class Day, it was traditional for the seniors to sing songs to all the teachers- you know, funny songs written to established melodies. I think I wrote most of those lyrics. I guess, actually, those were the first lyrics I ever did.

NAN: I was the first ever graduate of Bryn Mawr to go to Sarah Lawrence, which was and is a fairly artsy college. I don’t think anybody on the faculty was surprised that I chose to go there. I loved Sarah Lawrence from the first moment I set foot on the campus- there was just this warmth about it. Most of the girls were like me- wanting to focus on something in the arts. I mean, I knew it would be a waste of time for me to go to a college where I had to take Math and Science. And I felt I’d gotten a fantastic basic education at Bryn Mawr. At Sarah Lawrence, I knew I’d be able to spend the majority of my time in writing, theatre and music. In my sophomore year, I wrote and directed my first play called MY DEAR, WE’RE ALL SAVAGES. It was a comedy based on an experience I’d had with a boy who tried to seduce me over spring vacation and, Saints be praised, it was a success. People laughed all through- they loved it and that was one of those ecstatic moments, those moments when the world sort of bursts open. The next play I wrote and directed was a bomb. It was a farce called BLASTING IN THE BUD- a Shakespeare quote. Everybody laughed and laughed, and then walked out saying, “What in the hell was that?” But I was lucky. My playwriting teacher, Wil Leach, allowed me lots of free rein to experiment and find out what worked and what didn’t. Wil later went on to direct THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD on Broadway.

VOICE: Did you act in any of your own plays during your years at Sarah Lawrence?

NAN: I didn’t act in any of the plays I had written, but I did act in others. I was very much torn at that point between being an actress or a writer. I loved acting. I just always adored it. I was never the heroine; I usually played the funny role or the character role. In THE CHALK GARDEN, I played a fearsome old lady, quite a serious role. In THE TURN OF THE SCREW, I played the role of Flora, the little girl, because I was so tiny, and I still remember walking down this spooky stage staircase with a candle in front of my face. I also directed plays other than the ones I wrote- I directed a Noel Coward and a Shaw one-act. I just loved all of it.

VOICE: It sounds like your time at Sarah Lawrence was amazing! You must have wished you could stay there forever.

NAN: Sadly, I left Sarah Lawrence all too soon at the end of my junior year to marry my high school sweetheart. I had just turned 21, which was obviously way too young to be getting married. Since my husband was going to begin his first year at Harvard Medical School, I applied to Harvard to spend my senior year there as a special student. This would allow me to still be able to receive my degree from Sarah Lawrence, which was what I wanted. But I’ve always regretted that decision to leave Sarah Lawrence. Harvard was so impersonal, and they let you get away with murder. It was the only place I ever got straight A’s. At Sarah Lawrence, they pushed you much harder, and there were only about 500 students. Classes typically were no more than 15 students, and you got to know all your teachers. At Harvard, the classes were huge and the only time I went to visit one of my teachers in his office, you would have thought a volcano erupted. I mean- clearly he was not used to students dropping in, but he was delighted, pulled up a chair for me, and then had no idea what to say to me. As far as writing at Harvard, I mostly did short stories, and with acting, I was only in the chorus of a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s RUDDIGORE. It just wasn’t the same when I returned to Sarah Lawrence for graduation. I was a married woman, and I had grown apart from my friends. After graduation, I taught English and Drama at The Pingree School for Girls in Massachusetts.

NAN: I returned to school to get my Master’s in Creative Writing at Boston University. I was a teaching fellow, which helped my medical student husband and me with the income. And the Creative Writing program was terrific. I studied with the novelist John Barth, and Anne Sexton, the poet. They both had a profound effect on my writing. My poetry and short story writing improved so much during that time. Simultaneously, my daughter Eliza was born, so things were very busy and constantly changing. I still loved both acting and writing, but finally I had to make the choice. I auditioned for a big improvisational group in the Boston area, and I was called back, but I didn’t make the final cut. After that, I just instinctively knew I didn’t want to live that way, the whole cattle call anxiety. And since I loved writing just as much as acting, that was it: writing.

VOICE: This experience must have given you a good understanding of what actors go through as they continue to audition time and time again.

NAN: I love actors and have the greatest admiration for them. When I see what they go through, the constant rejections, just horrible. Thank God they’re all brave and dedicated enough to keep doing it. I especially admire the actors who work in New York. They’re doing it because they love the theatre, clearly not for the money, and they spend half their lives getting rejected. There is so much talent in this city- just not enough roles. I do love auditions- being behind the table, waiting for the next surprise to walk through the door- but I hate the part of it where you have to take a photo and toss it onto the “no” pile.

VOICE: It takes a certain kind of person to be an actor- always waiting to be discovered. When did you get your first break as a writer?

NAN: My first professional job as a writer was for television. I worked for the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting for two years and wrote for a show called “Consumer Survival Kit,” a variety show with skits and songs. Each week I was given information about a different topic- anything from mental health to weddings to insurance- and I would read through a huge stack of research and then I’d write a script. There were constant script meetings, revisions and I loved the tape nights. I always wrote funny songs, and those were the first songs I ever had produced because this was a nationally televised show. I think I had three or four of my songs on that show.

VOICE: Your job with the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting sounds like it was so much fun.

NAN: I really loved it, but I got married again- to John- when my daughter, Eliza, was four years old, and we moved to New York, because that was where John was based. It was a big move, and one that was much harder on Eliza than me, because I had always loved the City. When I was a kid, my father used to take us to New York once a year, and those were the most exciting weekends. We’d stay at the Pierre and he’d let my brother and me order cokes and pretzels from room service. We’d go out for dinner and a show, and my father always told the cab driver to drive us through Times Square. I remember looking at all the lights and watching the Camel sign puffing smoke. Then, years later, during PIMPERNEL, it was almost surreal to stand on the roof top of The Minskoff, having a cigarette with one of the actors- there I was looking down on that same Times Square while my show was playing in the theatre beneath. Incredible.

NAN: I spent my first year in New York copywriting for Columbia Records, but I was not happy. They wanted me to write ads for rock albums and I was terrible at it. I don’t think I was hip enough. I ended up writing all the ads for their classical and musical theatre departments. It was very frustrating, and I hated it because I wanted to be writing my own stuff. I couldn’t take it for more than a year, so I left. Then I became pregnant with my second daughter, Nola. I didn’t have a job but I was still working. I’d written tons of poems about the experience of pregnancy with my first daughter, so, during and after the second pregnancy, I worked on the poems- just a montage of all the wildly different moods and feelings that hit you during pregnancy. I had a photographer friend, Linda Ferrer, who had similarly taken pictures of herself during her pregnancy. We put it all together into a book, called it Nomads, and tried to sell it.

NAN: No. The photographs were too expensive to reproduce. Then Matthew Diamond, the choreographer/director, approached me about turning it into a musical. So we worked on that for a year or two, at which point it was called PRIMAPARA and then LULLABY, but by then BABY had opened on Broadway, so everybody said, “It’s been done.”

NAN: Right after Nola was born, I went to work at Radio City Music Hall. I wrote a song called “My First Real Christmas” for the Scrooge scene, and it stayed in their Christmas Show for twelve years. It was a song sung by Scrooge as he was dancing around on Christmas morning after he’d seen the light. It was just an awful song with lyrics like “I’ve never danced with a turkey before.” After that I co-wrote an entire show for Radio City called MANHATTAN SHOWBOAT, a huge vaudeville extravaganza. I loved working at Radio City- it’s an extraordinary place.

NAN: I co-wrote a screenplay for a movie called MY LITTLE GIRL. It didn’t go anywhere, but it had an incredible cast: Geraldine Page, James Earl Jones, Mary Stuart-Masterson, Ann Meara and Peter Gallagher. I was a mother during all of these years so I had to fit my writing in between all the “mom activities.” I think that’s how I got in the habit of writing late at night. It was the only time I could concentrate. My office was usually the dining room with the kitchen on one side and the living room on the other. There were children always racing back and forth through the dining room, so I got used to writing with constant interruptions. My favorite time to write became after everyone had gone to bed. It was that or nothing!

NAN: Well, that’s one wonderful thing about being a writer- you can work at home and you don’t have to miss out on their childhoods. I was very involved in my children’s lives, yes. Library trips, lots of reading together, school activities, dentist, doctor, shoe buying, you name it. And I loved giving them unusual birthday parties- murder trials, quiz shows, game nights, treasure hunts. I’d make everything up, so I guess I expended a lot of writing energy on those parties. Eliza is now 31 and she’s a writer- God protect her! It is not an easy life, but she’s very talented and has always been a great writer. She’s just written a wonderful children’s story, which will hopefully get published. I have my fingers crossed for her. Nola is 24 and in her second year of law school. She wants to be a prosecutor or maybe go into politics, and that’s all so vicariously exciting for me.

She worked for the U.S. Attorney’s office last summer. They actually let her do a direct examination of a witness after only one year of law school. I went to court and watched her interrogate the ballistics expert. There she was, with the gun in her hand, and, I swear, all these moments of her childhood flashed before me- Nola riding Bucky the Wonder Horse at age 1, playing “Super-Guys” at the playground. I hear from one or both of my daughters almost every day. They’re great kids. They stay close to us and we are absolutely blessed.

VOICE: Did you do any writing during those years when your number one job was being a mom to Eliza and Nola?

NAN: I spent several years writing musicals in a total vacuum. I would come up with plot lines, and write all the dialogue and lyrics by myself with no music, no composer. Just dummy tunes in my head. I used to think that this was such a waste of time. But it wasn’t. I was practicing my craft, and it totally prepared me for everything that lay ahead. One day, the mother of a student at Spence, the school my daughters attended, asked me if I was involved in the theatre. I explained that I was a writer and my husband was a

lawyer for the theatre. She said she wanted to do a talent show at Spence and thought I would be the right person to produce it. I thought about it and told her that I would produce it if I could also write it. I wanted it to be a musical about putting on a talent show, a show within a show, with a cast comprised of both parents and teachers. She gave me the go-ahead. I wrote the dialogue and about 15 lyrics set to established show tunes- it was so much fun. I called the show SPENCECAPADES, and it was about all the parents and teachers preparing to “put on a show.” It was really a happy, popular event within this tiny community. From that experience I was hired to do two Industrials for the real estate industry. They were also musicals, for which I wrote both book and lyrics, as well as producing them. So I did have a lot of years to practice the craft. And then I met Frank Wildhorn.

NAN: Well, my husband is John Breglio. He’s an entertainment lawyer who’s very active in the theatre industry. That actually was more of a hardship for me than a help. For years, whenever we were at an opening, I would try to desperately squeeze into the conversation that I was a writer, but to all the theatre types, I was just “the lawyer’s wife” and I couldn’t get through that wall. In fact, I even wrote a song at one point called “I’m His Wife” about what it feels like to be invisible. So- years of frustration, particularly after having done SPENCECAPADES when I felt like I was finally doing what I love. And then I just went back to being the lawyer’s wife again.

NAN: It was very hard, but everything changed on our 13th wedding anniversary. John was at a meeting for THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL with Jimmy Nederlander, the producer, and Frank, the composer, and Arthur Kopit who was going to write the book. At that point, John was the lawyer for the show. They were discussing the fact that they didn’t have a lyricist. John and I are both anti-nepotism and never wanted to do anything to further each other’s careers, so he never suggested me for anything. But this time he took Frank aside afterwards and said, “I know this writer. Her name is Nan Mason.” (That’s my name from my first marriage and I wrote under that name for a long time.) “I think she’s pretty good, so you might want to see her lyrics.” Frank said, “Have her call me.”

NAN: I was jumping up and down, screaming and yelling. This would be a real shot! I ran out and bought the book and rented THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL movie. I devoured them both within a period of about four hours because I figured Frank would ask me questions about the story. And then I called Frank. He said, “I don’t want to see anything on paper. Just send me things on tape.”

NAN: Well, I didn’t have anything to send him. I mean, what was I going to do? Send him the Radio City Christmas song with “I’ve never danced with a turkey before?” The only other thing I had on tape was my un-produced musical, LULLABY, and I didn’t think esoteric songs about pregnancy were going to do it for him either. I knew I’d never get the job from anything I had on tape. So, within a period of about four days, I sat down and wrote two lyrics for THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL just to tunes in my head. One was funny- it was called “Cloak and Dagger,” and the other was a love ballad for Percy. I sent Frank the two songs on paper- which is exactly what he said not to do- and told him, you know, that my “taped material was on the way.” Right.

VOICE: You must have held your breath waiting for a reply! How long was it before you heard back from Frank?

NAN: He called about a day later and said, “This stuff is great. Let’s have lunch.” He never again mentioned anything about hearing tapes, thank God. So we had lunch and really hit it off. He immediately started talking about THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL and another show he wanted to do with me called VIENNA. You know Frank. He’s always got a million projects. With Frank, it starts like a roman candle. You don’t inch your way into something; you’re suddenly exploded into it. During our conversations, Frank was always talking about Linda. It was “Linda this” and “Linda that.” And I thought to myself, “Obviously I should know who this Linda is.” But I didn’t have a clue, so I just kept nodding my head when he talked about her.

VOICE: At this point you still didn’t know if you had THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL job?

NAN: No. I had to wait five months to find out. In the meantime, we worked on VIENNA. We wrote a lot of songs and they were good- great stuff, and we got along so well. Yeah, I got to know all of Frank’s habits. He always wanted snack food around- pretzels, potato chips- and soft drinks, never booze. He doesn’t really drink. He’d come to my apartment, and after about an hour he’d ask me if I had any frozen chocolate. I always kept Hershey bars in the freezer just for him and I’d bring them out. You know, we had a lot of fun together. Then he called me one October day- the 21st I think, 1989- and told me I was going to be the lyricist for THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL.

NAN: I was beside myself. I had dreamed about it for so many months- well, so many years. Decades. I was going to be the lyricist for a Broadway show. Sheer amazement.

NAN: Actually, he did. Shortly after John suggested my name and Frank had seen my lyrics, he asked John to have lunch. During the course of the lunch, John confessed that the lyricist he’d suggested was really his wife. Frank’s response was, “I don’t care who she is. She can write!” And that was so gratifying because everybody else in the theatre did care who I was- they just defined me as John’s wife. Period. Like I couldn’t possibly be anything else. It’s so sad how often that goes on in life with the spouses or partners of well-known people. You just figure that’s all they are- the hanger-on, the appendage. People rarely wonder if there’s anything else going on with that appendage. And, you know, I wasn’t a hustler. I couldn’t push myself at people. Frank would say, “Where have you been?” And I’d tell him I was a “Baltimore Girl” and because I was raised to be polite and nice, I just wasn’t aggressive. When something I wrote was rejected, I simply retreated. If it wasn’t for Frank giving me a chance, it’s possible I could have spent my life in a corner writing in a void. I just couldn’t go to people and say, “I’m good. Look at this.” It wasn’t in my nature, but Frank pulled me out of the corner.

NAN: I first met Linda very casually in a recording studio. I started getting to know her when I wrote “Storybook.” There were many drafts of that song. Frank was planning on doing a demo for PIMPERNEL, and I knew he was going to have Linda sing “Storybook.” Linda would look through all the different drafts, and Frank would call to tell me Linda’s thoughts, or she’d get on the phone herself. I remember she wanted to sing “Where” 3 times. “Where, where, where is my storybook ending?” So Linda had some input into the song. Then Linda came to my apartment with Frank and sang “Storybook” at the piano, and I remember loving her instantly. At first I felt so neurotic and superficial in comparison to her. It’s hard to articulate how I felt. Linda was so natural, so at ease, warm, calm. There is nothing artificial or pretentious about her. And here I was jumping around the room and talking a blue streak. She immediately seemed older than I was, more mature, wiser. (I’m really older than she is.) Anyway, Frank was playing “Storybook” and I remember dancing around the living room, shouting out things like, “Oh, this will be a choreographer’s dream!” I really liked Linda, but I think I was a little intimidated by her because I didn’t know if she liked me. I felt like I was too showy, and Linda was so good and down-to-earth. And I was a lot younger then, too. I don’t think I would feel that way today.

NAN: Linda and I became friends when we recorded the concept album for THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL in Miami during the summer of 1991. A truly happy time. The recording sessions would start late in the afternoon and go on until two or three in the morning- my kind of time! Sometimes I’d be rewriting a song and sometimes I’d just be in the studio, listening. I was the word police, always wanting the lyrics to be exact. I still do.

NAN: There was free time too. I remember Linda driving me around in the car and we’d just laugh. One day we went swimming in the ocean with Chuck Wagner. The water was so nice and warm, and we spent hours splashing around in the waves, playing like kids. I guess Linda and I bonded in Miami. Although she was younger than I was, she would always give me good advice. It was sort of surreal in the beginning- hearing her sing my words, then hearing them played back, critiquing it, re-doing it. We were all a family down there and I was in ecstasy.

VOICE: Tell us what it was like when your first show finally opened on Broadway.

NAN: My adrenaline was racing so high when PIMPERNEL finally opened- again, such a surreal moment. But I have to say that opening night was a time when my heart just broke. Some theatre friends had tried to warn me that the reviews might be bad, but I didn’t want to believe them because I’m such an optimist. When the reviews came filtering through at the opening night party, I was completely stunned. About 35 of us left and went to Dave Clemmons’ house for our own party. I went with Nick Corley, the director of the original workshops of PIMPERNEL. We all drank and hugged a lot, but ultimately I didn’t want to cry in front of everybody so Nick and I left, and I burst out sobbing right there on the sidewalk. Nick was holding me, and, as I was crying into his shoulder, I heard a man’s voice behind me saying, “Why is that girl crying? She shouldn’t cry. That girl should be happy.” The man then just disappeared, and Nick told me the man looked a lot like his father who had died about 10 years earlier. The whole thing felt ghostly to both of us- in the good sense, like some strange spirit telling us everything was going to be alright. But that night my heart was broken. I loved everything about PIMPERNEL- the actors, the crew, the producers, the show itself. I couldn’t understand the venom poured out against us. I had a bad couple of days. And then I started to crawl out of it. I’d go over to the theatre about once a week. I’d stand in the back of the theatre and hear the audience laugh, and I’d watch them walk out, smiling, happy. My friend Helen, who was the matron for the Ladies Room, would always tell me after intermission, “Nan- the ladies love it.” And we had so many supporters, people on the web, people like Sal Italiano, this guy I didn’t even know, a fan really, and he’d go to the TKTS line every day and tell everybody to go see PIMPERNEL.

NAN: That was another one of those jumping up and down moments. I was in London working on SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, and I was completely engrossed in my work there. Arlene Phillips, the director, liked me to be up on stage with her helping with the scenes. I loved that because I’m such a back-seat director. I’d really like to direct again some day, and Arlene let me be very involved. Two days before the opening, my husband arrived in London. I had literally forgotten all about the Tony nominations because my mind was completely into FEVER. I was up on the stage during rehearsal when I spotted John in the wings and thought, “What’s he doing here?” He came on stage and took me by the shoulders and said, “What about Best Musical? What about Best Actor in a Musical? What about Best Book of a Musical? You got a Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical.” I just screamed! Now the British are not used to screaming Americans, so they kind of stared at me and smiled and then we went back to work.

NAN: That was another happy period in my life. I had this Tony nomination and FEVER had opened in London to good reviews. I’d just arrived back in the States, and the PIMPERNEL gang had planned a party for our Stage Manager, Steve Beckler, who was leaving. They turned it into a co-party since it was also my birthday that night. We celebrated at Barrymore’s and took lots of pictures with all my best friends from the show. I spent so many great nights with the PIMPERNEL family. This one was particularly special because of the show’s nomination and the nominations for Douglas and me.

NAN: I was. And I thought now we’d continue to run, but after the Tonys, the producers told us they were going to close the show. Really, Bill Haber and Pierre Cossette et al were true kings to keep it open as long as they did because we weren’t making any money, and finally the time had come for the party to end. But when I heard the show was going to close, it just felt all wrong to me. You know, from my perspective, I’d go on the web and read all these thousands of messages from people who loved the show, who kept coming back, some people seeing it 40 times, 80 times, whatever. One woman in New Haven told me she’d seen it 103 times “so far.” Wow. Anyway, it was like something stubborn inside me that just refused to let it die. Everyone, including my husband, tried to get me to just accept it and move on, but I decided to write a letter to Ted Forstman to ask him to keep PIMPERNEL alive. It was really a business letter, listing all the reasons I felt the show should keep running and what things we might do to improve our chances, and everybody said Ted would just read it and toss it in the trashcan. But he called me the next day and said, “Okay. Let’s talk about this.” Six harrowing weeks of indecision followed, and finally Ted told me he was joining up with Dave Checketts and Radio City Entertainment and the show would go on. New director, cast changes, new advertising, etc., but yes, the show would live. Bobby Longbottom, who is now one of my closest friends, came in to direct and PIMPERNEL II was born, and this time we got good reviews. We ran for another year at the Minskoff and then moved to the Neil Simon, with a few more changes- Voila: PIMPERNEL III. So we basically ran for three seasons on Broadway, and we hung on by the skin of our teeth the whole time. The show never completely overcame those initial bad reviews. But PIMPERNEL is now being produced in theatres all over the world. I would love to have a production in London’s West End. It was all quite a ride. I guess what I’ll always treasure most about the whole PIMPERNEL experience are the friends I made. I miss everybody, miss the nights when we’d all leave the theatre and go hang out at Barrymore’s or Sam’s or Marlowe’s. What a time.

VOICE: And now you’re embarking on a similar journey with CAMILLE CLAUDEL. How did the project begin?

NAN: The idea to do a musical about the life of Camille Claudel came from Frank and Linda. I’m not sure which of them came up with it. I’ve heard Linda say in her concerts that she’s always bugging Frank to write a musical with a woman as the hero. The character of Camille tantalized Frank, because she was so sexy and an artist. He called me up about five years ago and asked if I would like to work on the show. I basically told him, “No.” I thought it might end up too depressing. I tend to be a humor-and-happy-endings type of writer. Well, I just am. I didn’t say, “No” as in “No, I won’t do it.” I did say, “God, Frank, I don’t know. It’s so dark.” But he urged me to look at all the aspects I could relate to as a woman artist.

NAN: Well, I started thinking about it some more, and one night it hit me that I could write this role- there were issues in my own life that were similar to Camille’s, and I realized I did have something to say. So the work began. We always knew that Linda was going to play the role of Camille, and that was exciting. From the beginning, I’ve tried to create the role with Linda in mind, but I didn’t have to bend over backwards to do that. She has similarities to Camille, too. The character came flying out. When I did rewrites, I’d make adjustments here and there- just language I thought was better for Linda. But the character of Camille- there were no concessions made there. I’ve been fascinated watching Linda become Camille.

NAN: I insisted from the beginning that CAMILLE CLAUDEL have a lot of humor, which I now realize was a little bit like forcing a square peg into a round hole. I created two characters who were doctors- major characters in the show. One of the doctors, who in the reading was played by my friend David Cromwell, was particularly funny, and Camille’s relationship with the other doctor was intriguing- almost another love story in itself. The show, at that point, was set in the asylum, with flashbacks to Camille’s life. But after we had a reading in October, it was clear that the doctors had to go. The show was too long and almost everyone agreed the asylum sections were the ones that interested them the least. I realized that I could still use natural character humor here and there, but I was going to have to forget any rip-roaring laughs. So, you know, it’s no PIMPERNEL, but I won’t let anybody use the “T word” because to me it’s not a tragedy. Just the fact that we are doing a show about Camille Claudel means it’s not a tragedy. It means that Camille had her impact. She said what she needed to say and lived her life the way she wanted. I mean, everybody has tragic aspects to their lives, but this woman also had passion, a deliciously scandalous sex life, obsessive intensity in her work, and she was brilliant. She did get artistic recognition back then. She was a brave thing. Some of her letters are very funny, always feisty and quite direct. The show does present a woman who gets caught up in the craziness any artist might, but, hey- a little Prozac and she would have been fine. Unfortunately there was no Prozac, and Camille lived in a time when your family could commit you to an asylum and keep you there in perpetuity. So the asylum was in and then out. I’ve cut old songs and scenes, added new ones, beefed up some parts. The changes keep coming. Because it’s an original musical based on tons of biographical research, we’ve experimented with many paths. I finally put my foot down the other day and said, “Boys! We can’t try every possible path- I’ll be dead before we’re done.” So now we’re at a really good spot. We’ve found the flow, the right way to tell the story. It’s basically chronological and takes you right up to the time of Camille’s commitment. The show ends with Camille singing “Gold.” Those words are the ones I want the audience to take with them as they leave the theatre.

VOICE: It all sounds amazing! We know the fans can’t wait until the stage debut in August.

NAN: I’m still redrafting! Whenever I hear people say they already have their tickets, I think to myself, “Oh God! People have already bought their tickets and I’m still writing.” I guess I’d better finish, right?

VOICE: Tell us about the lyrics you have written for CAMILLE CLAUDEL.

NAN: Since “Gold” is the song that’s so familiar at this point, I’ll tell you about that one first. I was in New Haven for the opening of the National Tour of THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL. Frank had given me the melody and said, “This is going to be a ballad—a big love song for Linda.” I listened to it and I thought, “No. This is not a love song. This music feels like survival- it’s bittersweet, triumphant.” I decided that I wanted it to be the last song in the show, and I wanted Linda to come out and sing it all alone in the dark with just a spotlight on her. The title comes from the fact that Rodin always told people that he showed Camille where to find the gold, but the gold she found was truly her own. So I wrote the song and met Frank for a work session at the Shubert in New Haven. He sat down at the theatre piano and I put the lyrics in front of him. He started playing, and I could see in his eyes that his brain was ticking, ticking, ticking, ticking, and he was getting really excited. He was already thinking about the connection between “Gold” and the Olympics, and it just took off from there.

VOICE: Where were you and what were you thinking on that night when “Gold” was heard by billions of people during the opening ceremonies of the 2002 Winter Olympics?

NAN: Well, I was slightly insane that night. My friends can attest to that. John and I were at our country house with Bobby Longbottom and Tom Kosis. We knew “Gold” was going to be in the opening ceremonies, but we didn’t know when. As the moments ticked by, I was tearing my hair out and I called Frank about every half hour. He kept telling me to calm down, they were going to do the song, etc., etc. I called him again when it was getting very late and still no “Gold,” and this time he started to sound worried. Then I got Linda on the phone and asked her what she thought. I was in such a state. Finally I heard the first few notes and I fell on my knees and said, “Thank God!” Then I just held my breath through the whole song- that’s what you do, wondering if something’s going to go wrong. I was in a state of suspended animation until it was over. I had to ask if it had sounded alright- I didn’t even know. John later said, you know, falling on my knees, etc., was a little bit much. As it was. But it was an incredible experience, and the moment when I knew “Gold” was going to have a life.

VOICE: You should know that so many fans were going through the same experience as you on that night- calling each other and wondering when “Gold” would be heard.

NAN: I also wrote “Snow Falls” when we were in New Haven. Frank had given me this melody that I loved, what he called a “little motif” that he thought might come in handy somewhere as a recitative or something. I was looking out my hotel window at the snow- I have a major snow thing- snow, ocean, sky, moon, all of it. The lyrics just poured out of me in about 20 minutes. I had an instinct not to do any regular rhyme scheme, but to just let it rhyme where it wanted. “Gold,” “Snow Falls,” and “A Woman in His Arms” were the first songs I wrote, and actually “Gold” and “Snow Falls” are the only two that have remained completely intact to date.

VOICE: You mentioned the sky and the moon. What exactly is your fixation with celestial bodies?

NAN (Laughing): Yeah, Frank gets on me about that, too. I think a lot of times when I am writing a song, particularly a ballad, I am trying to compare feelings to something immense. My brain and my heart immediately turn to the sky and what’s up in the sky. The expansiveness of the sky has always been an amazing thing to me. That’s why I love islands like Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, because you can see the whole sky spread out before you. The sky is also a romantic thing that I’ve carried with me since I was a teenager. I have a thing for oceans too, but that doesn’t get used as much. We just changed a song for CAMILLE because they told me there was too much water imagery in the show. It’s funny that you picked up on that, though. Every now and then Frank will say, “Too much wind and stars!” and I’ll say, “Yeah. Yeah. Okay.” There have been times when I’ve said to him, “I really don’t agree with you,” or “You’re wrong and I’m right.” But most of the time, I’ve got to tell you, if Frank says, “This isn’t it,” or “You can do better than this,” he’s right, and I listen. Frank is incredibly smart and very good at critiquing. But I love watching Linda with Frank; it’s really hysterical. She’s a very direct, honest person. If she listens to something he’s doing and she doesn’t like it, she’ll just be very straightforward. “ No. You gotta change that.”

NAN: I think he loves it. He says things like, “My wife will kill me if I don’t change this.” If Linda thinks a song is great, she’ll say so. If she doesn’t, she’ll say, “You can do better.” Occasionally, I’ll do that with Frank. I’ll say, “It’s not quite right” or “It’s not interesting enough.” And he’ll look at me and I’ll say, “What?! I’m just being like your wife!” (Laughs)

NAN: If you were at Carnegie Hall in February, you heard Linda sing another song from CAMILLE called “Coming Home,” but now it’s called “I’m Home.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the title goes back to “Coming Home.” As soon as it was written, we started thinking about it as a concert song for Linda. She wants it to be her song to the audience. She wants to say, “This is where I belong, here with you.” I did some tailoring of the lyrics before Carnegie Hall, but I have a few more fixes for the concert version, which I’ll do as soon as I have time to lift up my head and breathe. I love watching Linda in concert- that inimitable, natural way she has which makes the audience fall in love with her. My favorite songs she sings are “Don’t Rain On My Parade” and “Man of La Mancha.” I love that triumphant side of her you hear in “Man of La Mancha,” and we’ve decided to have the song Linda sings at the end of Act One be that kind of moment. There is also some of that triumphant sound during “In The Stone,” the first piece of music you hear in CAMILLE CLAUDEL.

NAN: It is such a joy working with Linda. First of all, you have her voice, which is like no other. And Linda is very funny- we’re definitely using that in CAMILLE. She has this loopy humor that I love. You’ve heard that laugh- it’s great! And then she also easily expresses deeper emotions. Her feelings are so close to the surface that when you want Linda to show emotion, it is going to be real- very real. I don’t know of any other performer quite like Linda in terms of her being completely unaffected. It’s like you’re sitting in her living room, though ironically, she would probably be more nervous if you actually were sitting in her living room. She is most at home with an audience when she’s on stage. That’s where she blooms and talks to you. The naturalness is incredible. Linda is so eager and because there is no ego there, she will go to the director and ask, “What do you think?” She is so beautifully flexible. To Linda, it’s a simple thing. If somebody has a good idea, she’s going to listen to it.

NAN: We are thrilled with the cast. We had a huge number of actors who auditioned for the show, but only about 20 or 25 for the role of Rodin. We went through hundreds of actors in our heads before we chose the ones we wanted to see. Michael Nouri didn’t come in till near the end. And- wow! Did he take us by storm! His whole being was Rodin. He was a tornado. Linda was doing a scene with him where they were arguing, and she was so into this argument- more than I had ever seen before. She was reacting to the fire Michael was sending out. We all immediately knew we’d found Rodin. After the argument scene with Linda, he said, “God! That was great. Can we do it again?” A lot of actors will ask, “Can I start over?” and you know it’s because they feel like they didn’t do it right the first time. With Michael, it was clearly just this sort of ravenous, grinning hunger to get back into it. He sang “Trembling Man” and “Woman In My Arms” and just became Rodin right before our eyes- his hands, his face, his voice, his eyes- and that’s so galvanizing. It was just like when Doug Sills came in for PIMPERNEL. It was the same fabulous jolt- an actor walks into an audition and you say, “There he is! We found him.”

NAN: Matt Bogart will play Camille’s brother, Paul Claudel, a very important role in the show. Paul Claudel was a complex guy- a poet, playwright and diplomat, and also a man who became fanatically religious. He and Camille adored each other and were very close as children, but there was a gradual parting of ways. Paul’s presence overshadowed Camille’s life. He initially did not have his own song but he does now. Matt gave a terrific audition, and he and Linda have great chemistry together. Milo O’Shea will play Camille’s father and played that role at our October reading. Everyone fell in love with Milo, and when I say in love, I mean IN LOVE! No one wanted to let go of him when he walked out of the room. He is an extraordinary actor and so real. He’s funny and touching at the same time. You’ll love him! We didn’t know if he would agree to go to Goodspeed, but he did. He loves the role, thank God. Camille was very close to her father, and he was her defender throughout her life. Polly Bergen will play Camille’s mother and she’s perfect for the part, which requires a great comic touch as well as every shade you can imagine of maternal shifts ( Since this interview, Polly has had to bow out of the role because of minor surgery. She is being replaced by Rita Gardner.) Camille’s mother was a daunting woman- well, you’ll see. She didn’t have her own song originally either, but I’ve now written one- “Lost In The World.” That’s the song I find myself singing to myself all the time now because I like it a lot.

VOICE: The cast sounds extraordinary. Are you going to begin the show when Camille and Paul are children?

NAN: We are going to show them as children, but they will skip from age to age quite rapidly. Matt will have to do the biggest leap because he is basically eight years old at the start and has to jump to 45- not an easy task! But he did it very well in the audition.

VOICE: It almost seems too good to be true! After five years of hard work, the fans will finally get to experience another Knighton/Wildhorn musical.

NAN: It really has been a fascinating process, and that’s just going to heighten as we get into the staging and choreography- the movement of the statues and so forth. This time around, I hope critics will finally listen to Frank’s music. His work for CAMILLE CLAUDEL is so subtle, varied, beautiful.

VOICE: You’ve had many wonderful moments in your professional life. What do you consider to be your proudest moment?

NAN: My proudest moment. Hmm. Well, I guess it would actually be a series of moments, the times when I receive letters from people about what I’ve written. Those are the times I know I made the right choice in my life and when I am the happiest and the most at peace. Those letters somehow validate my life. People have written and told me my songs have helped them through difficult times. Doug Sills once received a letter from an Israeli soldier who said how much it helped him listening to “Into The Fire” every morning, and Doug then sent me a copy of that letter, which I cherish.

NAN: Well, God knows it was hard getting it started- you know, “the lawyer’s wife,” sitting in the corner til Frank pulled me out, and so forth. But now I guess my greatest challenge is collaboration, which I have to say is also so intrinsically necessary and valuable if I want to write well. It’s a double-edged sword. Collaboration is wild. In musical theatre there are so many artists involved, so many different voices. In business, there is usually one leader who has the final say, but in theatre it’s not that way. You’ve got to all sit around, talk over a problem and reach a solution that everyone agrees with, and do it, ideally, in total peace and harmony. It’s a tricky thing, like walking a tightrope all the time- wanting to listen to everyone, trying to sense when they’re right or when they’re wrong, learning to make compromises, knowing when to stand up and say no, when to just give something a try even though you don’t agree with it, and trying to make sure it never turns into an argument. This is very important to me because I hate fighting. I don’t know how to fight- it’s just not in my personality. If I ever do find myself shouting at someone, I feel kind of proud! It’s a “Baltimore thing.” It just doesn’t come naturally to “Baltimore Girls” to put their foot down. So although collaboration is a challenge to me, in every sense, I’d also have to say that when it’s done well, it’s a rather astounding process.

NAN: That is the question I really prepared for before this interview! And I actually lay in bed one night thinking about this answer. I might have been a zoologist or worked with animals in some capacity. I am an animal nut! Other than that, I might have chosen to be an actress, archeologist or minister. Or librarian. I love being around books, and as a kid, I thought the coolest thing in the world was to watch the librarian stamping out books.

VOICE: There are a lot of people who are happy you chose to be a writer. What do you enjoy doing when you are not writing?

NAN: Reading. That’s the biggest thing. Books. But I also love crossword puzzles and jigsaw puzzles, games in general. And movies- old black and white mysteries and science fiction like “The Day the Earth Stood Still” and “The Uninvited”- the 30’s through early 50’s. That genre. I guess the happiest times for me right now are being with my family and my dogs.

VOICE: Gracie just opened her eyes when she heard that! What advice would you give to aspiring young writers?

NAN: First of all, always follow your own instincts. And don’t give up. Don’t let anybody discourage you. Read like crazy; read everything. Be aggressive and persistent until you get your foot in the door. It breaks my heart to know how many talented people out there don’t get a chance. I even wrote a little lyric about it in CAMILLE, and no matter what, I am not going to let anybody make me cut it. Rodin sings about all the music that will never be heard and all the books that will never be read because people can’t get their foot in the door. That, to me, is tragic. The most important part of my advice is to get your foot in the door and to try, without ever hurting anyone and without being abrasive, to persist until you make your voice heard.

VOICE: You must feel so blessed to have had Frank give you the opportunity to open that door.

NAN: I really owe an enormous amount to him, and I could go on and on about what a good human being he is- loyal, generous, caring. I have just grown to love him more and more every year. And he’s so smart, a truly unique composer. He writes better melodies than anybody else around today, melodies that reach people instantly, touch chords. And Linda is like my new sister. At least that’s the way I feel about her. Frank once said she and I are nothing alike, but we do have a lot in common, especially our love of animals and our need for solitude. And she likes jigsaw puzzles! We recently had the best night out at a bar in Connecticut, just the two of us, leaning across the table at each other, spilling secrets, and she put up with my cigarette smoke. I love her. You don’t find many people like Linda and Frank in the theatre. They are two honest, decent people and I have an intense admiration for them. I love them like family, and that includes Jake!

VOICE: And we think that connection shines through in your work! It’s been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you for taking the time to share the story of your creative journey so far.

NAN: You’re welcome! Talking with theatre lovers, fans, whatever you want to call it- sharing it with people, that whole dialogue is what it’s all about for me.

And there was joy through it all,
And I am standing tall!
And though my voice was just a whisper,
Someone must have heard!

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