David Spira: Wooden jigsaw puzzles are a revelation. If you've never done one before, they are a really special thing.

Barry Joseph: Welcome to Matching Minds with Sondheim, the podcast. I am your host, Barry Joseph. As usual, we will be joined by some amazing people to respond to audio clips from over 60 hours of my original interviews for the book. This time to focus on the topic of Stephen Sondheim and Jigsaw Puzzles. Yes, jigsaw puzzles. How profound are jigsaw puzzles? Well, let's listen to what Sondheim once said when interviewed on CBS News in 1995.

Stephen Sondheim: Well, I think that's what art is anyway. I mean, after all a puzzle is, uh, like art is making order out of chaos. You know, take a jigsaw puzzle, right? It's chaos. Put together its a picture. And I think art is the same way on a slight- slightly higher level.

Barry Joseph: Today I'll be joined by a number of guests who can help us understand why Sondheim found jigsaw puzzles to be a perfect metaphor for what art is and the art itself that can be found within their design. I am excited to welcome back two people to the podcast. First we have Michael Mitnick, a writer who lives on the Upper West side of New York. He considers himself a pretty ardent collector of Sondheim stuff. I consider him one of the world's greatest collectors of Sondheim-ia, including Sondheim Jigsaw puzzles. And second, I'm thrilled to also be joined by David Spira. David is the co-creator of roomescapeartists.com and of the Reality Escape Pod.

Welcome back fellas.

Michael Mitnick: Thank you. It's great to be back.

David Spira: I'm very excited to talk jigsaw puzzles.

Barry Joseph: Alright. To frame the conversation, let's use a particular photo. It is a photo of Sondheim's House in Danbury, Connecticut. In the fall of 2023, his house was put on the market and sold after he passed away. If you wanna see the photo, take a look in the show notes. Michael, can you please describe it to our listeners?

Michael Mitnick: Sure. It looks to be Sondheim's master bathroom in Roxbury, Connecticut. On the left side is a dictionary on the counter where the sink is. There are posters for the Kennedy Center celebration on the wall on the opposite side are just shelves and shelves, three deep, of jigsaw puzzles. At the top are white boxes, small ones in the middle are kind of gold boxes that are part of The Last of Sheila promotions, and below it are like 5, 6, 7 shelves of blue larger Stave puzzles.

Barry Joseph: Thanks Michael. So let's use this photo to frame what we're gonna talk about today. The boxes in gold, the boxes in blue, and the boxes in white. But before I do, did you say this is a bathroom?

Michael Mitnick: This is a bathroom.

Barry Joseph: Holy cow. This room looks enormous. I hadn't noticed the sink in it before. Of course, I don't see the toilet.

Michael Mitnick: It's behind where the photo is.

Barry Joseph: So let's start with the gold boxes. The gold boxes represent promotional items sent in 1973 to promote his only Hollywood film, the murder mystery, The Last of Sheila from Warner Brothers. The box that was mailed featured a maze, the design of its passageways tracing the title of the film. Underneath the space for the stamp, it declared PUZZLE in all caps, followed by a number from one through eight. Inside was a jigsaw puzzle. Each one featuring a different member of the cast of the movie. Along with the puzzle was a letter which greeted potential reviewers and distributors.

Quote. "Here you will find the first in a series of mind-teasing little bafflers with which we propose to arouse your interest and sharpen your anticipation for the forthcoming production The Last of Sheila, a classic murder mystery of spell-binding dimensions and fascinating perplexities." The letter went on to describe the jigsaw puzzle pieces contained within the box. Quote. "When you have put together the puzzles, you will have some idea of the nature of the people involved in a sinister game played aboard a luxury yacht and elsewhere on the French Riviera". End quote. Each box introduced a different character with a jigsaw image from the film enhanced with captions that oddly read like a warped children's picture book.

Here's an example. "Alice is a starlet. Alice is ambitious. What is Alice's secret? Raquel Welch is Alice". The puzzle for the eponymous victim, Sheila, reads simply: Sheila is a gossip columnist. Sheila is dead. Michael, can we presume Stephen Sondheim did not pen these delightful epigrams?

Michael Mitnick: It's doubtful.

Barry Joseph: It is doubtful that he did.

David Spira: They they are clunky.

Barry Joseph: David, I don't know if you know this, but Sondheim's collection of all eight- 'cause there were eight different puzzles, which I presume are the ones that we're seeing in these photos- were estimated to sell for $400 when they went up for auction at Doyle's in 2024. Do you wanna guess what they actually sold for?

David Spira: I have no idea. I'm terrible at guessing numbers, but I'm hoping it was more.

Barry Joseph: You are right. They sold as a set for $7,040.

David Spira: Wow. Jigsaw puzzle collectors be crazy.

Barry Joseph: There were 15 pieces in each of the puzzle boxes and there were eight boxes. So that comes out in my estimates to about $59 per jigsaw piece. Now, we have no idea if Sondheim had anything to do with the productions of these jigsaw puzzles other than to know that they could be found 50 years later on his bookshelves. But many in the 1970s who visited his home, especially the one in New York City, would describe other jigsaws that they would see. Here, for example, from one of my interviews, is George Lee Andrews with his wife, Marti Morris, talking about what they saw.

George Lee Andrews: Walls were filled with puzzles and the, the tables were filled with puzzles. Uh, we were always amazed because there was a, a jigsaw puzzle and it was totally white, you know? 'Oh, I didn't remember that.' Yeah. There were no, there was no, there was not a picture, but it was a jigsaw puzzle that he had put together or was working on putting together, and there was not a picture on it.

It was just a total white slate that he had to just figure out with the, the pieces.

Michael Mitnick: I remembered something where I was at Steve's house once, and on the wall was a Richard Avedon photo of him young that had been transformed into a jigsaw puzzle. I pointed to it and I said, "that's cool". And meaning the jigsaw puzzle. And he goes, "yeah, isn't it a great photo of me?" And it was, which is fair.

Barry Joseph: I got permission from the foundation to include it in the book as well.

Michael Mitnick: Oh, wonderful.

Barry Joseph: People who wanna see that can see it there.

Michael Mitnick: That's great. I can't wait to see it again.

David Spira: Hearing him talk about this all-white puzzle. For me, I'm a stress jigsaw puzzler. I've dabbled in jigsaw puzzle design, but mostly I take out a jigsaw puzzle when somebody dies or if something bad happens in life. And thinking about, like, that quote from earlier about jigsaw puzzles are all about kind of creating order from chaos, that's exactly how I feel about the jigsaw puzzle. I love doing them when I'm going through difficulty because there is just constant linear progression. And this is also the reason that I despise solving mono color puzzles or jigsaw puzzles that were kind of not designed to be solved, they're kind of designed to be kind of like a herculean effort. Because that is not the kind of puzzling experience that I'm looking for when I take out a jigsaw puzzle.

Barry Joseph: David, I'm hearing you talking about solving a jigsaw puzzle as a type of meditative act.

David Spira: Exactly.

Yeah, I find that it's a good thing to be doing when I'm kind of reflecting on something, my brain's working through something, but I don't want it to be fully focused on that. 'cause whatever it is is just like kind of too much. Jigsaw puzzle, it is, for me, kind of the best intermediary for that.

Barry Joseph: And when it comes to how Stephen Sondheim thought about jigsaw puzzles and the designs he was interested in, we're gonna learn more about those in a little bit. But for now, let's return to our photo from Roxbury to our wall of Sondheim's jigsaw puzzles. We just talked about the gold boxes. Now let's turn our attention to the blue. Those are signature boxes from the Vermont-based hand cut jigsaw company, Stave Puzzles. Are either of you familiar with Stave, and if so, can you describe what makes their puzzles so special?

David Spira: Steve are sort of the preeminent jigsaw puzzle makers, and they've been at it for a very long time. They're known for making these beautiful hand cut wooden jigsaw puzzles and if you have never seen a wooden jigsaw puzzle before, this is kind of the actual roots of jigsaw puzzles. Early jigsaws, before the cardboard versions, that's all that there were.

People would go and mount an image onto a piece of wood and then cut it, usually with a band saw or something like that.

Barry Joseph: Or a jigsaw?

David Spira: Or a jigsaw. Yeah. Stave are sort of like the top practitioners of these. They do very thoughtful cuts and they cut all sorts of interesting shapes into the pieces of the puzzles.

They're also incredibly expensive, even amongst expensive jigsaw puzzles.

Barry Joseph: Thank you David. Michael, about how many of those blue boxes do you see on the shelves there?

Michael Mitnick: About seven to 10.

Barry Joseph: That's quite a few jigsaw puzzles from Stave in his collection. How did Stephen Sondheim ever learn about Stave? We actually know, because through my interviews with one of his friends, Marty Granoff- he told me it was maybe the late eighties, maybe the early nineties- Marty had a special custom Stave Jigsaw made for Stephen Sondheim around a show that had just come out. He didn't tell me which one it was, I am thinking it's probably Into the Woods. And once Sondheim experienced Stave, he was hooked for life.

David Spira: Wooden jigsaw puzzles are a revelation if you've never done one before. They are a really special thing and Stave is on the expensive end, but there are a lot of other companies that are less expensive. My favorite personally is Liberty Puzzle in terms of the balance of quality to cost. And there's something that is really intoxicating about the scent and the feel and the way that you assemble these puzzles. They are absolutely beautiful. But one bit of advice is usually don't start with the edge if you are assembling a wooden jigsaw puzzle, you'll lose your mind.

Barry Joseph: Can you please say more about why?

David Spira: A lot of times, depending upon your wooden jigsaw puzzle manufacturer, they will make edge pieces that do not interconnect with one another. So if you imagine them as a series of Vs that are kind of going up and down, you can't actually hook a lot of the edges together. So it's best to start from something interesting in the image that calls to you, and then build outward from there.

Barry Joseph: That is great advice. I was gonna share that one of the things that makes jigsaw puzzles designed by someone like Stave so devious is that they take the common assumptions that people have about how you solve a puzzle and then they use that as a weapon against them.

So when my wife does jigsaw puzzles, she always starts by looking for quote unquote, the edge pieces, the flat pieces of which there's gonna be four corners. Because most jigsaw puzzles that we experience are rectangles and they always have a flat outside. So that's usually a fairly safe place to start. But if that's how people are gonna start doing puzzles, Stave's gonna turn that against you. Everything you assume about that is gonna be wrong in a Stave puzzle. For example, I assume if I see a flat piece, that's gonna be a border piece. So they'll take flat pieces and put them on the inside the jigsaw.

They will take outside pieces and make them bumpy. Maybe there isn't gonna be four corners. Maybe it's gonna be rounded or bumpy. They're gonna take all these assumptions about what I do without thinking about it, to solve a jigsaw puzzle, and then make them be the obstacles I have to overcome.

David Spira: I think that when people think about jigsaw puzzles, they often think about like, oh, it's just kind of this process that you go through. When you are working with some of these more elaborate jigsaws, you really are solving the picture. And it is much more of an active process than like, assemble the edge and then kind of build inward from there, which is where I think a lot of the intrigue exists in these types of puzzles.

And based off of everything that I've learned about Sondheim from you, I am quite confident that the active thinking of assembling these kinds of puzzles is where the appeal originally existed for him.

Barry Joseph: David, you're reminding me that we haven't told our listeners who haven't looked at the photo that of all of the jigsaw puzzles in the photo, not a single one has an image on the box. These are jigsaw puzzles that expect you, as part of the puzzle-solving process, to figure out what the thing is that you're even building. That's why Stave can design puzzles that play with your expectation about the edges. 'cause you don't know what the edges are even gonna look like.

David Spira: I get all of my wooden jigsaw puzzles secondhand from somebody who is a collector, and then they put a picture over the box. So I never get to see the image until I have solved the puzzle. So yeah, man, after my own heart.

Barry Joseph: Returning to our photo, we have one set of boxes left to discuss, the white boxes. These are also from Stave, however, they are customized for clients. Let me read a recent paragraph from an article in the New York Times that just came out. A Stave Puzzle's 800 piece limited edition, costs $8,495. Orders from the company, founded in 1974, go up from there. A recent order from a single customer was close to $40,000, said Paula Tardie, an owner of Stave. Quote. "We have done wedding favors, puzzles for opening night gifts for Broadway shows, and some very large puzzles for family reunions". End quote. Hey, let's rewind a second. "Opening night gifts for Broadway shows".

Hmm. Michael, can you please explain what an opening night gift is for a Broadway show?

Michael Mitnick: When you open a show on Broadway or, or, in a high school, or in a synagogue, or wherever you give a gift. For Follies, Stephen Sondheim gave costume sketches to the cast. For Merrily, he famously gave their costumes, their cut costumes. He gave bonsai trees for Pacific Overtures and for Assassins, he gave a solid silver bullet with just the date inscribed. Interestingly, like on Into the Woods, he gave out a kind of little puzzle made of silver magic beans.

Barry Joseph: Did you say "magic beans"?

Michael Mitnick: The magic beans.

But there, there are five in the musical, but there are six in the gift.

Barry Joseph: And each one is inscribed with a letter or number, which communicates a message when you line them up just right. Which was Sondheim's way of thanking people in the show for participating, by including the date of the show, his initials at the end, and the initials of the person receiving it. Now, all of that changed after decades of giving out open night gifts in 1994. Michael, what show of his opened in 1994?

Michael Mitnick: That would be Passion.

Barry Joseph: That would be Passion. So what happened with Passion? What would he give out for that show?

Michael Mitnick: For that show he gave out a custom five by six Stave puzzle with the show art on the front. And then, cut out of it, are the recipient's initials, first and last. And then in the Passion one are custom cutouts of Giorgio and one of the two women.

Barry Joseph: One of the women's a cutout and the other woman is hidden in the piece, holding the heart in the middle of the title for Passion.

Michael Mitnick: Ah, that's right. There it is.

Barry Joseph: So when Sondheim gave that customized personalized jigsaw puzzle as his opening night gift in 1994, he never looked back. From then on, that was his opening night gift. In the nineties, the naughts, the teens, all the way through the 2021 restaging of Company, whose cast was the last one to receive them. Here is a collage of audio from interviews from my book, from performers about what it was like to receive these presents from Stephen Sondheim. First from Alexander Gemignani, who has a long history with Stephen Sondheim, and then Etai Benson, who was in that last production of Company.

Alexander Gemignani: Steve would, for many years, give out jigsaw puzzles as opening night gifts, sort of like, custom made, um, puzzles, uh, that were really fun.

I've got like three or four of 'em hanging around.

Opening night presents, um, always reveal, I think, about the, the human who gives it to them. So that was very, very Steve.

Barry Joseph: So for somebody who doesn't know Steve Sondheim, what would you say it revealed about him?

Alexander Gemignani: Oh, that he's clever . He was very playful and, and, has, you know, a wicked sense of humor. So anything that he would imagine somebody else would struggle putting together, I thought I would bring him great delight. I think.

You know, I think I was just like, "challenge accepted", I guess.

I did them by myself, but they're always harder than you think they are.

And you know, like they're just, I don't know. You feel connected to the person that thought of this idea. It's such an original gift to give somebody.

So I think the, the satisfaction of doing something that Steve was attached to on some level is very, is very satisfying.

Etai Benson: I was not aware that he gave those puzzles as an opening night gift. I didn't know that tradition until I got one. It was a bit eerie and a bit emotional and a bit, I'd say a little bit chill-inducing because I received it after he passed. Um, you know, on opening night of a Broadway show you just received tons and tons and tons of gifts. I brought them all home and sort of took a look at them later with my wife. And we're sitting at our little table and I pull out this, you know, little rectangular, nicely wrapped thing, and I look and there's just a tiny little card that says "from Stephen Sondheim" and I gasped because he had been gone for, gosh, we opened in December. He had been gone for, for weeks. He had been gone for about a month at that point, I think. Maybe a little less. A little less; a few weeks. And to see a handwritten little card that said, "from Stephen Sondheim".

And we had been, we, we were still grieving him. We were still mourning. And so I, I distinctly remember getting a chill up my spine, um, and getting very emotional in that moment. And then I opened it up and it was all those little pieces that came together to become our show logo, which is a picture of Katrina Lenk amongst a bunch of balloons. And I didn't really notice at first until obviously it was all put together that my initials are carved into the puzzle, which is so,

so meaningful. Those details. I mean, look, his, his mantra was "God is in the details." I mean, if someone would've just given you a little puzzle with the logo, like that would've been enough. But the fact that he made sure that there was that personal touch and that personal detail of our initials, it felt like, you know, it felt like a conversation with him as opposed to just a thing that like, "oh yeah, make these puzzles for all these people. I don't really care."

I think we put it together right then and there. Um, and it still sits on that same table where we opened it. It's just, it sits right there. Um, and I, you know, take a look at it sometimes if I'm there, uh, for breakfast or dinner or whatnot.

Barry Joseph: When you do, what are you thinking or feeling all these years later?

Etai Benson: Within a year and a half from April, 2020 until Sondheim passed, um, in 21. Um, I lost my dad and then we lost Stephen Sondheim, who was my greatest artistic inspiration. I look at that Company puzzle and it's, it's the loss of innocence for me, I guess.

Um, so it, it comes with a lot of emotion. And it's not all negative. It's also positive for the beautiful production that we put together. And, what an honor it was to work with him and to finally to actually be in a room with him. It is something I'll never forget, and no matter what happens, you know, this industry is very mercurial and it's up and down, but no matter what happens, I have that memory.

And I think that's what he would've loved and wanted, and I think that's what those gifts mean. It made perfect sense that this would come from Stephen Sondheim. He was sharing a little glimpse into his mind and into his heart with us. And I think, I don't know, there's just, there's no better way to represent his brilliance than through puzzles because his mind

to me was a grand puzzle.

Michael Mitnick: That was really well said, and it's beautiful.

David Spira: I said, that's a beautiful exchange. I have given a lot of custom-made jigsaw puzzles as gifts. I've hired artists and worked with them to come up with the images and everything like that. And it's one of my favorite gifts to give if I know that it's going to be appreciated. I've also given them and they have not been appreciated. So it's funny hearing that the giving of this, like, devious thing that, people are going to struggle with. I wonder what his perspective was on that because I give them hoping that they're going to be enjoyed and solved. I don't give them hoping that they're going to be like something that people are bothered by or upset by. There's a way to design jigsaw puzzles for solvability and to kind of for flow. And that's always what I'm shooting for. And the way you do that is by having variations in colors and textures and depth and interesting identifiable objects that you can start to piece through. So yeah, I love to design that kind of thing. I love to give those as gifts and I hope that these puzzles are as treasured by the people who receive them as they should be.

Barry Joseph: David, when you decide to give someone a customized jigsaw puzzle, what are you trying to communicate that makes jigsaw puzzle the right format?

David Spira: You know, it depends on the person. It depends on why. Like, I worked with an artist to make a jigsaw puzzle to give to each and every person on our convention team a couple years ago, and that was really a way for me to express some of the inside jokes and some of the iconography and things that we had collectively made. And so it felt like a fun canvas to express that on. Other times, I just know that there's something that someone cares about a lot. I know they, like jigsaw puzzles and I come up with a way to combine those into an image that will be meaningful to them.

Barry Joseph: I speak in the book that what Sondheim loved about puzzles, both from solving them and from designing them for others was those moments of crystal clarity that one could experience. And when I've had the opportunity to do, as you have David, customizing some jigsaw puzzles for people as presents, I'm looking for that moment to design for them when they go "Aha"! And they see something they hadn't seen before and they feel this moment of the chaos being dissolved and into clarity. And having that sort of meditative moment that you talked about earlier where everything can come into focus. Michael, when you listen to Alexander and Etai talking about their experiences, I wondered what you were thinking about and feeling.

Michael Mitnick: It must have felt incredible to receive one that was actually intended for you and to look at your own initials. The puzzle itself is a marvelous metaphor of all the different pieces coming together to be part of the whole. And they're a part of it. They're both the fragment of the day and they're, you're literally "putting it together".

It just must feel wonderful. It's also, you have this special memento that you only share with your teammates.

Barry Joseph: Michael, you have. The greatest collection of Sondheim jigsaw puzzles that I've seen anywhere. Talk to us about it.

Michael Mitnick: I think I have about 16 of them.

David Spira: Wow.

Michael Mitnick: Well, more than that, some are actually duplicates. But, they go from Passion to as Etai said, the opening of the Company revival in 2021. They're just incredible. They feature, always, the show artwork. He gave these not just for, obviously, new shows, but for the revival. So the Company revival in 1995 where there's the skyline of Manhattan cut out of the top, including the Statue of Liberty. There's his one and only play, Getting Away with Murder, where the gargoyle is custom cut out so it doesn't have a sort of a straight rectangular edge.

Saturday Night, that is the staging of his very first professional musical, is just the show art. Same deal with Follies from 2001. 2002 brings Into the Woods revival. And that just kind of has a fluttery edge on the show art. Gypsy in 2003 is kind of cool because it has three music note jigsaw pieces that fit into it. Um, with Frogs, there is a, kind of a vase design. Pacific Overtures revival, Roundabout 2004, is just- is a custom shape and symbol. Sweeney Todd, 2005 Doyle revival is the show art, but the form that it's on is, is almost like a fluttery old, hill or something like that.

2006 the Company revival matches the logo of the show, which is a stack of cubes. So it's an extremely vertical puzzle. And, Road Show 2008, at The Public is simply the show art. 2012 was the next Follies revival on Broadway that has kind of a marquee cutout. Sunday in the Park, 2017, has a custom paint splotch. And and then Company 2021, the last one, as, I don't believe there were any for Here We Are, has balloons.

Barry Joseph: Now that 2017 one you mentioned for Sunday in the Park with George.

Michael Mitnick: Yes.

Barry Joseph: Has a piece, a jigsaw puzzle piece, in a particular shape that makes it my favorite of all the pieces in these collections. Do you know which one it is?

Michael Mitnick: Tell me.

Barry Joseph: It is just the left of "in" in "in the Park". It is a shape of a painter with their paintbrush.

Michael Mitnick: Oh, I see it.

Barry Joseph: It is George! Georges Seurat from Sunday in the Park with George. So as you're putting those pieces together, one of the pieces is George, the star of the show, and for many Sondheim fans, you know, a standin for the creative artists Sondheim was writing about in the music for that show.

David Spira: That's lovely.

Barry Joseph: So Michael, when you look at your collection, what comes to mind? What does it mean to you?

Michael Mitnick: I am so impressed with the fact that he went to the trouble and expense of giving these. These productions, clearly, meant so much to him and he valued every person there. And, you know, note that he didn't just give it to the stars or to the cast. He also gave it to the musicians in the orchestra pit, who by the way, were always invited to the parties that he gave for each show at his own house.

It shows that he was thoughtful. The other thing that goes through my head is how incredibly innovative and ingenious the puzzle designers are, who must have been working with him at Stave. Who are finding ways to bring out these themes, to understand the shows, to try to build a special little secret into almost every one. It's delightful.

Barry Joseph: Stave, as policy, will not talk about their clients directly. But they were willing to speak with me, in general, about their practices and they talked about how close they would get to their clients. Understanding them better than other people in their lives sometimes. Because they wanted to really understand who they were and what their interests were, so it could be reflected the gifts that represented them. And that sometimes they would just be thinking about somebody who was a client and the phone would ring and it would be them. They felt that connected to them.

That much synergy.

Michael Mitnick: I would believe it.

Barry Joseph: Michael has given me the opportunity to try and put some of them together so I can better understand how these puzzles worked, and there's about 50 or 60 pieces in each one. For me, I average just under a minute per piece. So it could take me 45 minutes to put one of these pretty small, relative, puzzles together. Spending 45 minutes to put a puzzle together with just a few pieces is crazy. They're that challenging. Oh, what are you showing us, Michael?

Michael Mitnick: I'm holding one up while you're describing it.

Barry Joseph: This is from Putting it Together. What year is that?

Michael Mitnick: ' 93.

Barry Joseph: '90... '93?

Michael Mitnick: The puzzle from Putting it Together, revue 1993.

Barry Joseph: Wait a second. That's before Pa- That's before Passion.

Michael Mitnick: You're right.

Barry Joseph: Did you just blow up the whole history?

Michael Mitnick: I must have, I just got this one.

Barry Joseph: No! I have to rewrite my whole book now.

Michael Mitnick: I'm sorry. You know you're gonna have to keep updating this wonderful book anyway, so it's okay.

Barry Joseph: Michael, look what you did to me. Wow! 1993, huh? I gotta decide what I'm gonna do with that. This is how Sondheim Historiography happens. We take the best that we have at the time. We put it together. We have some evidence. We say what we know, but we also say it's all based on current knowledge.

And then just like science, new information becomes available and we have to revise it. So maybe Passion was not the first show for which he gave a Stave puzzle.

Michael Mitnick: It was the first original, original new musical.

Barry Joseph: Okay. Alright. Um, let me collect myself now from having to reset my history in my head. I'm not ready to reset yet. Okay, now I'm ready. Um, Michael, have you tried to put any of them together?

What's it been like for you to try and solve one of these jigsaw puzzles?

Michael Mitnick: It's really cool. I'd also never seen a wooden puzzle before, so, you know, David is right. It's very satisfying. And the thing about a jigsaw puzzle is that it's a perfect thing to put music onto. So I'll put on the album of the show and it also makes me kind of slow down and listen to some of the numbers that I normally might go "oh, I know that one pretty well. Let me, let me move on". So it's constantly building, uh, new appreciations.

Barry Joseph: Lovely. Well, that photo took us pretty far. We looked at three different colors of boxes, right?

We looked at boxes in gold, boxes in blue, and boxes in white. Again, this was his wall of his jigsaw puzzle collection that reflected, as we just explored, all these different relationships he had with jigsaw puzzles. Jigsaws he liked to solve, that were gifted to him or bought for him, jigsaw puzzles that were created to promote his Hollywood movie, and jigsaw puzzles that he commissioned and gave out over the decades, to show his appreciation for people who were bringing his works on the stage to life. So, with that, I'm curious to know from each of you, what do you think Sondheim's interest in jigsaw puzzles can tell us about him?

Michael Mitnick: As Etai said, he cares about the details and it's a wonderful metaphor. Making sure that each piece, each word, each note, each harmony is carefully designed. And is part of the whole. And then once you've crafted all the pieces the way they should be, it does hang together to form something new.

David Spira: I like to think about jigsaw puzzles as kind of a thinking person's way to engage with art. And I know that the art world just kind of looks down on jigsaw puzzles 'cause they're not- they're not pure. But I think that there is something magical about engaging with an image, one speck at a time. You get to engage with every single bit of that image as you were putting it together. And by the time you were done, you know it so incredibly well. And I think knowing the little that I know about Sondheim, especially relative to the folks that I'm speaking to right now. He cared so much about the finer details of all of the different work that he did, and he cared about active participation and engagement in work, and I think that jigsaw puzzles are a beautiful encapsulation of all of that.

Barry Joseph: David, Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you dear listeners for joining us for Matching Minds with Sondheim, the podcast. If you can't wait for the next episode to drop, then, well, please pick up a copy of my book, hit us up on the socials, Facebook and Instagram, and please comment and like the podcast on whatever platform you use.

It helps us out immensely. I also would like to thank everyone who contributed behind the scenes to this episode, specifically transcription and text editing by Jenny Westfall, the musical stingers, composed by Mateo Chavez Lewis, and the theme song to our podcast with lyrics and music by Cole Malloy and sung by the one and only Ann Morrison, who created the role of Mary in Merrily We Roll Along. Until next time, remember, someone is on your side, especially when matching minds with Sondheim.