Editor's Note

By Jim O'Quinn

Rivka Katvan's arresting black-and-white portrait of Stephen Sondheim that appears on this issue's cover was taken backstage at the LaGuardia Concert Hall at Lincoln Center during rehearsals for a 2002 original-cast-reunion concert of Merrily We Roll Along. That's the traveling-backwards-through-time musical that, critics are prone to grumble, "doesn't work," an assertion borne out by its initial failure on Broadway (where it closed in 1981 after 68 performances) and its relative rarity on U.S. stages in the years since. But no Sondheim show, whether it "works" or not, is without its champions—Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, where Sondheim is a staple, has placed its just-announced March 2012 revival of Merrily in the innovative hands of John Doyle. The British director is known for casting such essential Sondheim fare as Sweeney Todd and Company with multi-tasking actor-musicians. Critics, sharpen your quills: There's still plenty of room for new opinions on the significance of Sondheim's ouevre.

That's one of the intriguing points associate editor Rob Weinert-Kendt makes in his revealing, down-to-brass-tacks conversation with the composer: Years of scholarly assessments and critical pronouncements notwithstanding, Sondheim's legacy may be different from, and richer than, what we have imagined.

Weinert-Kendt, a composer/lyricist himself (who, unlike the performance-shy Sondheim, frequently performs his own work in clubs and music venues), steers Sondheim into a detailed analysis of his working process and his relationships with colleagues like Prince and Laurents and Lapine. Even when those collaborations soared, "authorship" of a Sondheim show, Weinert-Kendt contends, resides more in the score than in the book or the staging; and it is Sondheim's "questing fearlessness as a theatrical innovator," not just his songs and words, that is likely to make a permanent mark on musical theatre. Does Sondheim see it that way? "I think like a playwright who writes songs," accedes the 81-year-old composer, who has just been fêted by the Society of London Theatre with its 2011 Olivier Special Award.

That makes for an easy segue to this issue's companion feature—a photo-festive survey conducted by associate editor Eliza Bent of some of this nation's preeminent theatrical awards programs, with the aim of ferreting out the inherent value of awards to individual artists, the cities in which they live and work, and the art form's general visibility and well-being. Alongside the complete text of a startling new play by Rajiv Joseph, this issue also features a trio of artist profiles—of Chicago-based playwrights Tanya Saracho and Laura Schellhardt and North Carolina actor-entrepreneur Mike Wiley—and a provocative report by August Schulenburg on a fresh wave of self-analysis in the black playwriting community.

Any of those items make this issue a keeper—as does Katvan's classic cover image of Sondheim. "The event was almost like a family reunion," the veteran photographer says of the backstage shoot. "I used a long-range lens in the low light and shot from far away. He was having a quiet moment with himself." Now that moment belongs to us as well.

— Jim O'Quinn

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