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But there were times where you just don't know how to solve the puzzle.' I don't think I ever thought I was a wrong fit. 'That is a good fit for my kind of writing. 'I think Diane responded to the humor in some of my songs and had an intuition about where the tone of the show was going to live, which was straddling a more serious piece and also something that is very playful,' Bareilles says. 'She understood the lead character and really understood the kind of emotional depth we needed to have on stage to make an impact.'

'She just understands narrative, not only textually with lyrics but with melody,' says 'Waitress' choreographer Lorin Latarro. 'I knew in a heartbeat that we had a show,' Paulus says. Weeks later Bareilles emailed an MP3 demo of 'She Used to Be Mine,' the soulful ballad that drives the musical's climax.

Teacherspateachers brave sara bareilles movie#

Paulus asked her to watch the movie and not worry about what might be 'right' but to write from the heart. Paulus got the 'Waitress' material from producer Barry Weissler - they worked together on the 2013 Broadway revival of 'Pippin' - and her first notion for a composer was Bareilles. 'It's exciting that Broadway songs can have a pulse in pop culture, and to be working with best talent in our country.' She's speaking from Boston, where her production of Alanis Morissette's 1995 'Jagged Little Pill' is debuting at the Paulus-led American Repertory Theater Diablo Cody ('Juno') has stitched a book around Morissette's album. 'If there was a perception that wasn't appropriate, that's gone,' Paulus says of the pop invasion. Since then, the ABBA catalogue hit 'Mamma Mia!' (in 2002) and the Four Seasons' story 'Jersey Boys' (2006) proved that audiences would flock to pop hits repurposed on stage that dubious jukebox trend endures this season with Jimmy Buffett's 'Escape to Margaritaville' and the Donna Summer bio-drama 'Summer.'īut increasingly this decade, singer-songwriters like Bareilles are writing directly for the stage: Sting ('The Last Ship'), Edie Brickell ('Bright Star'), Sheryl Crow ('Diner' at D.C.'s Signature Theatre), Bono and the Edge ('Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark'), Trey Anastasio ('Hands on a Hardbody,' with Amanda Green), Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard ('Ghost'), Bon Jovi's David Bryan ('Memphis,' with Joe DePietro), and Cyndi Lauper, whose 'Kinky Boots' won a 2013 Tony Award. That's the big evolution, 20 years after Paul Simon controversially flopped with his gangster study 'The Capeman' and left complaining that Broadway was an impenetrable insider clique. And, hopefully, we can be conduits to that new audience who maybe doesn't know so much about theater, but know us.' I don't think either of us has the delusion about, 'Let's make this about us.' Let us be good conduits for that celebration. 'I wasn't not nervous about saying yes, but I don't know,' she says. A more probable model for Bareilles and Groban is the 2015 co-hosting duo of Alan Cumming and Kristin Chenoweth. 'Superstar' begot the Tonys gig, which in recent years has gone to cutups such as James Corden, Kevin Spacey and Neil Patrick Harris. Bareilles not only sang 'I Don't Know How to Love Him' with silvery soul but also suggested to a national audience that she can act. Playing Jenna and just plain being Bareilles - whose star caliber has led to singing her 2007 heartbreaker 'Gravity' with Elton John and performing at the Oscars and at the White House - begot the 'Superstar' casting with John Legend and Alice Cooper. (Bareilles recorded most of the numbers on the 2015 CD 'What's Inside.')

'Be Jenna for me, Sara,' she'd say, just to hear Bareilles sing the songs. Still, Paulus says, there were rehearsal nights when almost everyone else had left and she'd coax Bareilles onstage. 'Now it's like, 'Let go of the baton, Sara.' 'īareilles might even have played the part from the beginning, only Paulus wanted the rookie composer to focus on making the show. 'They're having a hard time getting rid of me,' Bareilles says. The musical opened two years ago and is still running strong, with Katharine McPhee now starring as the unhappily pregnant waitress Jenna (who has an awful husband and a gift for making pies).