Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created "Sunday in the Park with George

And it comes right out of the scene. That’s the Rodgers and Hammerstein principle for carrying forward a dramatic moment. In this case, George is announcing that he has turned down a commission and that he doesn’t know what to do next.

Apparently, David Hockney stormed out at intermission. Someone heard him complain, “Where are the bloody dots?!”

Sunday ran for 604 performances, including previews, just shy of a year and a half. I happened to be at the theater one night after the show and the doorman told me that there was a group outside that would be thrilled to meet me. I walked out and was greeted by the St. Peter’s Girl Scout Troop No. 156 from Mansfield, Ohio. I visited with them and

that it was the eighties and a lot of the crew was doing drugs.

The Chromolume ended up costing the same amount as the entire set: $350,000.

Turtle Bay townhouse

as we were walking over to the opening-night party at Sardi’s, my father said sweetly, “You didn’t tell me that you put your grandfather in the show.” I had never met his father, who passed away long before I was born and about whom I really knew nothing. “What are you talking about, Dad?” I said. “My father, Louis. He was a baker.” That stopped me

didn’t know Lee Adams or his family, but as far as we were concerned, after Johnny Appleseed (who had lived briefly in our town), he was the most famous person to have emerged from Mansfield.

memory is uniquely personal and, as time passes, the facts of an event are often rewritten to reflect the teller and the stories he or she chooses to hold true.