Jason Robert Brown

Writing music and lyrics, you tend to become a control freak - sitting alone in your room with a bare light bulb over your head, writing communist manifestos.

What's great about collaborating is getting to work with wonderful people. That's what theatre is about: other people getting you to give your best, and getting everyone else's best out of them.

I don't want costumes and makeup between me and the audience - I want more direct communication. There's something for me about being honest on stage, and I'm at my most honest when I'm behind a piano. So I prefer my concert performances.

Maybe I'd see how you could be so certain that we had no chance...at all.