Playwright Craig Lucas has a long association with South Coast Repertory. It began in 1985, with the West Coast premiere of his dizzying dark comedy, Reckless. Since then, SCR has produced five other projects with Lucas at the center: Blue Window (1985), Three Postcards (1987), Marry Me A Little (1988), The Light in the Piazza (2014) and, of course, Prelude to a Kiss, his surprising and funny fable about love and transformation, which SCR premiered in January 1988.

After its initial run at SCR, Prelude to a Kiss was produced off-Broadway in 1990 and then moved to Broadway only months later. The production was nominated for two Tony Awards (including Best Play) and, in 1991, the play was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Since its stunning debut, Prelude to a Kiss has been adapted into a film, revived on Broadway, and performed all over the country. It’s become a modern classic—and its playwright a luminary of the American theatre. 

But Lucas isn’t an artist who’s content to rest on his laurels. Nor does he limit himself to one discipline. His career is expansive, and his resume includes not only playwright, but also screenwriter, stage director, and film director. Over the past decade, he’s become one of the most sought-after librettists for new operas and musicals, as well. Earlier this year, his fifth musical opened on Broadway—an adaptation of Days of Wine and Roses, based on the 1962 film of the same name.

With the premiere of Prelude to a Kiss, The Musical, Lucas returns to SCR after a decade—this time, with collaborators Daniel Messé and Sean Hartley. In advance of rehearsals, Lucas and Director of The Lab@SCR Andy Knight chatted about the art of making a new musical and the tenacity of theatre. 

Andy Knight: Will you share how the Prelude to a Kiss musical came about? What was the genesis of the project?

Craig Lucas: I hadn’t thought about it at all. My tendency is usually to keep moving forward. I’ve known a lot of other writers who really like to go see productions of their existing work, and I’m not one of those people. But I received a message from the very gifted Sean Hartley, who was a friend of another colleague I’d worked with, saying that he was interested in maybe making a musical of Prelude. And we talked. Then at a certain point, he asked me who I thought was a worthy composer, and I suggested the equally extraordinary Dan Messé. Dan also writes lyrics, so they came to the conclusion that they would do the lyrics together, and Dan would do the music.

Once they got started, they asked me if I thought it’d be possible to get a commission. Because musicals take a long time, and you really need someone who’s going to help carry it forward, so there’s continuity. You don’t want to be going from director to director, theatre to theatre. Chaos will ensue. SCR seemed like the ideal place, despite the fact that they have not made a practice of doing new musicals. But there’s still been a feeling that we’re going to be protected, and there’ll be continuity. And so, in that way, it’s really been a blessing.

At a certain point, I went, “Well, we can do this. We can actually do this. So let’s commit to it.” With the full understanding that it was going to be a very different creature than it once was. It simply can’t be the same animal. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the play Green Grow the Lilacs that [the musical] Oklahoma! is based on. Well, it’s about homosexuality. In the Wild West. Now, if you go to see Oklahoma!, you’re not really going to come away from that going “Yup, that’s about homosexuality.” It’s not going to happen. It’s a different animal.

What’s it been like to revisit the piece after more than 30 years, especially with the idea that you don’t like to look back?

Well, it didn’t really feel like looking back. It felt like adapting something that exists, and when you do that, you transform it. And my tendency, and what I was taught by my mentors, is to look for what in the underlying material can be teased out—because then you’re given license to invent, based on some existing architecture. So encountering it as underlying material that already existed is what made it seem possible. And knowing we were going to have to throw things out and rethink things.

You’ve written quite a few books for musicals and operas. How do you approach adaptation of other written works into musical form, and what goes into that collaborative process? 

So there are a couple of questions that are almost like flashlights. If you just hold onto those questions and keep pointing them at the narrative and the form, something will be revealed. I like to live with questions. I don’t like to rush to answers because the questions are more useful when they’re not answered. Or not quickly answered. 

You know, the received wisdom about musicals is that they have to have a reason to sing. But I think that’s a little narrow. I think they also want to have a reason to dance. Or a reason to move. And if you keep holding those questions, the light of those questions is going to illuminate something. Because they’re always building to what wants to feel inevitable—the singing. But the singing doesn’t want to be separate from the logic. It doesn’t want to feel like the songs are one thing and the story is something else. Or the talking is something else. And I think very few people, except those who’ve actually made musicals, understand that it’s all the same fabric. When people criticize the book by focusing on the dialogue, it’s immediately apparent that they know virtually nothing. The talking is not the book. The narrative, the shape of the entire experience, is the book. 

So, when you take any existing material, you climb inside, and you look for the things that are actually interesting to you, or exciting to you. And then you live it, moment to moment, keeping an eye out for where music springs forth.

Is this the first time you’ve adapted your own source material into a musical? 

Well, there’s an opera, Two Boys, that I made with composer Nico Muhly. It’s an original narrative based on Nico’s interest in a real event. So that was my story, based on what we took from reality and what we changed for the opera. But this is the first time I’ve taken something that I wrote as a play and tried to turn it into a musical. 

Did you find the process any different—or any easier? Or was it more difficult?

Some things were easier because I had a lived history with a great director working on the story, and so I had an understanding of what was driving it and how it functions—if it was going to stay the same. 

You know, [Prelude to a Kiss] is basically a story from the point of view of someone who falls in love completely—and for the first time—with someone. And then they discover that person doesn’t seem to be there anymore. The person looks the same, but it doesn’t feel right. And their conviction that this is not the person they fell in love with grows deeper and deeper, despite all the evidence that says that’s not possible. But this person says, “Nope! It’s not her. And I want her back.” And that’s the stuff of epic legends. That’s Gilgamesh. That’s Tristan. That’s the Wagner opera, Parsifal. It’s true love. So that’s a good base to have if you’re going to write a musical. The more they want it, the better the musical is. “I’ll die if I don’t get what I want” is very useful in a musical. It’s useful in plays, too, but plays can be slightly more discursive, and they can have a roving eye in terms of who it’s about. Like Twelve Angry Men. That would make a terrible musical, I think. Because who’s it about? All twelve of them. 

For someone who’s been an important voice in the American theatre for years, what keeps you coming back? 

Movies are expensive and require hundreds of extra laborers. Television requires a delivery system. You know, technology is both a boon and a curse. The thing about theatre is—and I’d include opera, ballet, and theatre together—the people you’re watching with are there in the room with you. You’re in the same space. It’s live. It won’t be the same the next time it’s performed. And no matter how many times you watch a movie, it never changes. It’s frozen in time. So it’s less alive.

Theatre is a demonstration of the collective will of human beings to prove that we have the capacity to come together and share space and make things happen in a profound and meaningful and joyous shared manner to affirm our values. And most importantly, it’s a ritual.

When you perform a ritual, you’re taking something that you received from your antecedents. So it comes from the dead, and you’re reenacting it for the living, so that those who have not been born yet will receive it intact in the future. That is the point of a ritual. All great plays—great plays—are ancient stories retold in a new mask and costume. 

I didn’t invent the transposed souls in Prelude as a narrative. It goes back. Thomas Mann used it. Shakespeare’s plays are full of people pretending to be someone they’re not. That’s what I believe we’re giving the future and ourselves when we go to a great play or a great musical or a great opera: an ancient story that helps us constitute ourselves as a species that is worth preserving. Because everything—everything—in technology now is designed to make us doubt democracy. Designed to devalue human life and to edify money and things. Tucker Carlson is busy selling us Russian authoritarianism so we can pull the bricks out that hold up our republic. And it’ll all come crashing down. That’s how tyrants come in and kill us if we don’t do what they want.

So, for me, I go to theatre as reminder of why life is worth living, and I do not believe that can be destroyed if a bunch of theatres go bankrupt. Someone will take over those buildings. And someone is going to start performing, and they’ll just use candlelight. And people are going to pay attention. We can’t help it. 

By Craig Lucas. Photo by Bronwen Sharp.