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[0:00] Gordon: Welcome back to Episode 8 of the Broadway Teachers Podcast. Hello, Pam.

[0:09] Pam: Hey, Gordon. I'm so glad that this is sort of the finale for our first season of the Broadway Teachers Podcast. To have Bobby and Kristen Lopez at the Broadway Teachers Workshop a few years ago was such a treat. They were coming off the huge hit of Frozen, of course, and it was about to be on Broadway. I had just done a concert of theirs that I directed at Lincoln Center in which we spanned all of their work. So it was a great opportunity to really get to know them, know everything they do, and understand the range and scope of their talents. It's sort of amazing. You'll hear a lot about them personally, their family, and the love that holds them together and propels a lot of their wonderful, wonderful music. So here they are. Enjoy the conversation.

[1:07] Gordon: The following was recorded live at the Broadway Teachers Workshop, an annual program that brings theater teachers together with the Broadway community for behind-the-scenes classes, workshops, intimate discussions, and Broadway shows in New York City and online. Learn more at www.broadwayteachinggroup.com. Please welcome Bobby and Kristen Lopez.

[1:34] Bobby Lopez: Hi.

[1:35] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Hi, you guys. I'm really honored to be here.

[1:38] Bobby Lopez: We're really honored to be here today, and really want to think of this as a talk to the people who actually inspired us the most. You guys are doing God's work out there. I know it isn't easy. I was a theater educator myself in my 20s. While he was writing Avenue Q, I would get up at 6 in the morning and get to school at 7:30 and start saying, if you can hear my voice, clap once. If you can hear my voice, clap twice. So I have tremendous respect for what you guys do, and I hope that what we share with you today can be useful and help you on those Tuesdays in February when you're like, I want to go to the Caribbean and never come back.

[2:34] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Actually, one of the stories I wanted to share also was when I was in fourth grade, my mom took me to a production of My Fair Lady at the Elmsford Dinner Theater, and I saw it once, and I came back, and that weekend I wrote my own version of My Fair Lady, and I brought it into my fourth grade teacher, and I said, I wrote the school play, and I dumped it on her desk. It was all handwritten, terrible handwriting, and I was like, I want to do this. I want to direct it and produce it and put it on for the school, and God bless Miss Leibowitz. She was like, okay. The MTI lawyers weren't as powerful back then. I had written a version of My Fair Lady that included an Eliza as a child scene where everybody called each other a ding-a-ling, and then forwarded to her sort of the story, except I changed the ending because I thought, Eliza shouldn't be with that guy. Tell them what it was.

[4:12] Bobby Lopez: Well, one of my best friends sent it to me. She had saved it somehow, and it ends with her calling Higgins a ding-a-ling and going off and teaching all the Cockneys how to speak proper English, paying a...

[4:24] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: One day I really want to do this show, by the way. It was my teacher who said, okay, and acted like a producer and pulled in the music department, Mrs. Huntington and Mr. Carlisle, and they taught us all the music and pulled in the art department and had them all make Cockney hats and paper flowers and maids' costumes, and she was the one who said, yeah, and I never forget that. Every step that I take, and with my own daughters, I try and say, yeah, yeah, let's do a bagel show, or whatever. And Bobby's story is similar.

[5:16] Bobby Lopez: Yeah, well, I had similar stories. I had teachers who were so encouraging to me as an elementary school kid who showed signs of wanting to write. So in third grade, we had just started to use the cafeteria instead of bringing our lunch, and I was so interested in the cafeteria that I was inspired by the idea of a meatball hero to write a show called Super Meatball, about a meatball that jumps out of a sandwich and sort of saves the day all the time. And then in middle school, I was in a group. I don't know if some of you guys teach theater groups outside of schools, but that's right around here. I grew up in this neighborhood on Bleecker Street, and we were the Sullivan Street Players, and I got to write a show every semester, music and lyrics for this group.

But maybe the biggest influence in my education was a woman named Barbara Ames, who taught at Hunter College, Hunter College Elementary School, and she took over the whole grade, basically, and she did West Side Story, and she also had written it out by hand, copied it from the movie. I don't know where MTI was. Anyway, this woman was able to inspire the entire grade to stop learning and do theater for the entire second semester, and it worked on me. It just made me want to do this, and it also worked on another guy named Manuel Miranda five years later at my same school. They had the same teacher who did it. Like, isn't that cool?

[6:46] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: That's cool.

[6:49] Bobby Lopez: And now our office is like down the block from Ms. Ames.

[6:52] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Yes, and apparently Ms. Ames was also quite attractive, which I think also had something to do with his inspiration.

[7:00] Bobby Lopez: It didn't hurt. It didn't hurt.

[7:09] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: So this actually kind of leads into our next song.

[7:15] Bobby Lopez: I was just thinking, we were talking the other day about the process in the room as we're starting Frozen, and we're really starting to come in now, really on Monday, we're going to begin the collaboration on this first Denver production in the rehearsal room, and you have to follow a protocol. We've been busy writing Frozen 2, by the way, which is why we didn't rehearse this. We have an excuse. I always have to learn the lesson of don't just say exactly what you think, because that's in school. You kind of raise your hand, you get called on, and the right answer is the right answer, and there's no first, you know, those kids whose hands shoot up? I was that kid. And it doesn't always work that way in the world. You kind of have to play, you have to be sensitive, and you have to work with people, politics and all that stuff, and it just makes me nostalgic for a certain time, when things were simpler.

[8:10] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: I wish I could go back to college. Life was so simple back then.

[8:17] Bobby Lopez: What would I give to go back and live in a dorm with a meal plan again?

[8:27] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: I wish I could go back to college. In college you know who you are.

[8:33] Bobby Lopez: You sit in the quad and think, oh my God, I am totally gonna go far.

[8:42] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: How do I go back to college? I don't know who I am anymore.

[8:49] Bobby Lopez: I want to go back to my room and find a message in dry erase pen on the door.

[8:55] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Whoa, whoa, I wish I could just drop a class. Or get into a play. Change my major. Or fuck my TA.

[9:03] Bobby Lopez: I need an academic advisor to point the way.

[9:09] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: We could be sitting in the computer lab.

[9:14] Bobby Lopez: 4 a.m. before the final paper is due.

[9:18] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Cursing the world cause I didn't start sooner.

[9:21] Bobby Lopez: And seeing the rest of the class there too.

[9:27] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: I wish I could go back to college. How do I go back to college?

[9:33] Bobby Lopez: I wish I had taken more pictures.

[9:42] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: But if I were to go back to college, think what a loser I'd be.

[9:51] Bobby Lopez: I'd walk through the quad and think, oh my God.

[9:55] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: These kids are so much younger than me.

[10:17] Bobby Lopez: Thank you.

[10:19] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Thank you. That song is from Avenue Q, and I have to credit my co-writer on that one, Jeff Marks.

[10:25] Bobby Lopez: Yes.

[10:26] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Who I met in the BMI workshop, which is a wonderful program. It's a good segue into people ask us how we met.

[10:35] Bobby Lopez: And we actually met, I was a first year at BMI. I had just figured out, oh, I'm not an actress. I don't need to do nonsense in New Hampshire for the rest of my life. I'm a writer.

[10:47] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: You're the author of My Fair Lady.

[10:53] Bobby Lopez: You ding-a-ling.

[10:57] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Anyway, I had just realized I was a writer, not an actress. And I was in the first year. And there was this smoker of the hit songs from the year before. And Bobby and Jeff came into the room. They were doing the first song from Avenue Q. And Bobby walked in the door. And I had an electrified moment where I was like, oh my God. My husband just walked in the door. I'm going to marry that guy. I'm going to marry that guy. I hope he's not young or gay. And then he proceeded to put on a red yarn wig and play a female puppet, trying to get out of jury duty. And then afterwards, I came up to him and was like, oh my God. You're so talented. Oh my God. You're going to be famous. You're so good. And the thought bubble above my head was, this is the man I'm going to marry. I love him. And the thought bubble over Bobby's head was.

[12:00] Bobby Lopez: Finally, this is working. I'm going to get to date her. I'm going to get to date this chick.

[12:06] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: And the reason we bring up BMI is that as educators, we thought maybe there were a couple of things, some real basics that we learn at BMI that if you have aspiring writers as students or you want to do exercises or something to encourage that if you're a female, you don't have to just be an actress. You can actually be a writer, which was certainly a message that it took a long time for me to figure out. There's something called an I want song. And it could be a really fun exercise to do where you find your favorite character from literature or anything, really movies. And you say, what does this character want and how would they sing about it? And it's the basic building block of everything.

All musicals that work and everything we face with Disney day in and day out is what is your main character's I want song. I think characters are hard. They're hard to make them likable because you don't want them to be too much this way or too much that way. But they have to be specific enough to believe as a character and you have to get behind what they want and they have to be likable. So it's a real burden that's placed on the I want song in every traditional show. And for Frozen, we wrote three I want songs for Anna, because what often what your character wants and what she needs ends up changing. And every time you rewrite the story, every time you rewrite this main character, which is very often, especially like every there's maybe six screenings of an animated movie at Disney, six different versions of Anna, six different different stories, really.

And we knew we had sort of honed in on the fact that we wanted to send up the idea that true love always saves the Disney princesses and broaden the definition of what true love could be. But we had to find a likable way to make a princess that was yearning for this true love. We had to make it go past our, you know, the new modern sensibility that's like, come on, don't wait for a prince to come save you and sort of serve that up in a way that would be likable, which is.

[14:33] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Robert and I have been writing together for a long time, and we have a lot of fun doing it.

[15:03] Robert Lopez: Yeah, we started writing songs in college and just never stopped.

[16:03] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: It's been a journey, for sure. We’ve had our ups and downs, but we always find our way back to each other and to our music.

[16:08] Robert Lopez: And now we have kids who are also getting into the arts, which is really exciting.

[16:15] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: They are both so passionate about what they do, and it’s amazing to see them grow.

[16:21] Robert Lopez: We try to support them in every way we can, whether it’s going to their performances or helping them with their projects.

[16:25] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: And we also have our own little family traditions that keep us connected.

[16:29] Robert Lopez: Like our family jingles! We make up songs about everything.

[16:33] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Yes! We even have a jingle for airport food.

[16:36] Robert Lopez: It goes, “Old Slightly Cold Slightly Wet Sandwiches.”

[16:37] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: And we tend to write these on vacation, which is always a blast.

[16:38] Robert Lopez: We once made a rental car jingle too.

[16:39] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: “Thrifty, thrifty, our cars don’t have that many ants!”

[16:42] Robert Lopez: That one was a favorite.

[17:12] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: On our last vacation in Sedona, we had a hot tub and ended up orchestrating a jingle for a Harry Potter quiz.

[17:29] Robert Lopez: It was longer than the actual quiz itself!

[17:54] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: “What time is it? Oh yes, I think you know. Time for the Harry Potter quiz show!”

[18:15] Robert Lopez: We have a lot of fun with those family moments.

[18:42] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: And speaking of fun, we’ve been working on a new show that we’re excited to share a bit about.

[19:08] Robert Lopez: One of the rules we learned at BMI is that the character driving a musical should have a larger-than-life personality and a huge noble want.

[19:37] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: But we wanted to see if we could break that rule a little.

[20:05] Robert Lopez: We’re working on a romantic comedy that’s really about one guy’s brain, and all the characters represent different aspects of his mind.

[20:33] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: It’s a unique take, and we’re excited to see where it goes.

[21:01] Robert Lopez: Most of the characters we write for have some kind of flaw that we’re dealing with ourselves.

[21:31] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: I can relate to Anna from Frozen in many ways, but this new character is much closer to Bobby, who is more introverted and shy.

[21:41] Robert Lopez: The setup is really interesting, as he has to work against all these challenges just to say hello to the girl he likes.

[29:06] Robert Lopez:

[37:27] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: What was I gonna say? Oh, so I was thinking cut to, we go to the Oscars and I'm not wearing mom clogs, I'm wearing real shoes. And we're there with the president of Disney Music and he knows the drill and he sneaks in a plastic flask to the Oscars, you have to go through a metal detector. And I was like, no, no, Tom, I'm not gonna drink tonight, I really wanna remember this night, I wanna remember it. And then we get to the moment where John Travolta is like, the wickedly talented Adele Dazeem. And I reach over and I go, Tom, give me that flask. But Idina killed it, she killed it, and the rest is a complete blur. And I'm going to try and sing it, but I'm not Idina Menzel. And if you wanna, I'd love for all of you who know it to especially join in from the past is in the past, because it's just like screeching, okay?

Snow glows white on the mountain tonight, not a footprint to be seen. A kingdom of isolation, and it looks like I'm the queen. The wind is howling like the swirling storm inside. Couldn't keep it in, heaven knows I tried. Don't let them in, don't let them see. Be the good girl you always have to be. Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know. Well, now they know. Let it go, let it go, can't hold it back anymore. Let it go, let it go, turn away and slam the door. I don't care what they're going to say. Let the storm rage on. The cold never bothered me anyway. It's funny how some distance makes everything seem small. And the fears that once controlled me can't get to me at all. It's time to see what I can do to test the limits and break through.

No rights, no wrongs, no rules for me. I'm free. Let it go, let it go, I am one with the wind and sky. Let it go, let it go, you'll never see me cry. Here I stand and here I'll stay. Let the storm rage on. I'm going to build a snow palace now. My powers flurry through the air into the ground. My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around. And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast. I'm never going back. The past is in the past. Let it go, let it go, and I'll rise like the break of dawn. Let it go, let it go, that perfect girl is gone. Here I stand in the light of day. Let the storm rage on. The cold never bothered me anyway. Thank you. That song, that song, man, it's hard to sing. When you're doing it in like 2027 with some high schooler, I think you should find a way to change those keys in there. The three faces of Elsa. The high Elsa and low singing Elsa. Triple cast it.

[42:42] Host: So we're almost at time for these guys. So is there anything we want to say in conclusion other than you're both phenomenal human beings and artists? Let's thank them for being here. Thank you.

[42:57] Robert Lopez: Thanks so much.

[43:00] Kristen Anderson-Lopez: Thank you.

[43:30] Host: Thank you.