Steven Sater on the Spring Awakening Movie, Juggling Four Shows and His New Book, A Purple Summer

Steven Sater has two musicals in pre-production and is actively developing two other shows, while nudging Spring Awakening toward the big screen. Oh, and he’s written a nifty little book, A Purple Summer: Notes on the Lyrics of Spring Awakening (Applause), due for release on March 13. “I’ve got so much going on right now, I hardly know where I am,” the two-time Tony winner tells Broadway.com. Here’s an update on all the good things currently on Sater’s artistic plate, plus frank comments on his approach to writing lyrics.

The highly anticipated Spring Awakening movie, to be directed by McG (Charlie’s Angels), “is looking good,” Sater says. “We are hoping to go into pre-production at the start of 2013 and shoot in the spring of 2013.” Sater is mum about casting, declining to confirm reports that Glee’s Lea Michele will again play Wendla. “Nothing is decided,” he says, noting of the 2006 original stage cast, “It’s tricky, because we’ve all grown up and moved on. But it’s something we all talk about—I’m very close with that cast, as you would imagine. We went through our ‘spring awakening’ together, and it changed all of our lives. I was just hanging out with Jonathan Groff [Melchior] and Lauren Pritchard [Ilse]; Lea couldn't join us because she had to shoot late.”

Two musicals by Sater and his Spring Awakening partner, Duncan Sheik, are on tap in 2012: Alice by Heart, commissioned by London’s National Theatre, will be staged by 28 youth theaters across England, with one chosen to re-create their work at the National. “It’s our take on the Alice in Wonderland story, for [audiences] even younger than Spring Awakening,” he says. Meanwhile, The Nightingale, a contemporary version of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of a young emperor, is headed for La Jolla Playhouse in July. “We’ve been working on that show on and off for 10 years, but it’s finally coming together at the right time, with the right director [Moises Kaufman],” Sater says. (A third Sater/Sheik show, Nero, is currently “on the backburner.”)

Sater has also found time to work with two other composers. Some Lovers, “a love story of two people over the course of 20 years” with music by Burt Bacharach, received mixed reviews in a December 2011 Old Globe Theatre production starring Jason Danieley. “We did it very quickly for a number of reasons,” Sater says, “and now we have a lot of work to do. It’s a remarkable new score, Burt’s first since Promises, Promises, and we hope to do it at another regional theater before bringing it to New York.” Prometheus Bound, Sater’s collaboration with Serj Tankian, was produced in March 2011 at the American Repertory Theater, starring Gavin Creel. “That was an amazing experience, and we’re figuring out the next step. Serj is releasing two new albums and [director] Diane Paulus has been busy with Porgy and Bess, but it’s a really, really cool project, and we’re eager to bring it to New York.”

Last but not least, Sater is celebrating the release of A Purple Summer, a book inspired by notes he wrote to translators who have helped bring Spring Awakening to 38 countries around the world—not to mention a helpful guide for the boatloads of young actors who will appear in 138 productions of the show being mounted this year at regional theaters, colleges and high schools (in an edited version). “Kim Grigsby, our musical director, told me that when young actors tried to hit the notes in these songs, she always felt the key was to explain the intention of the lyrics and invest them in it.”

Sater packs his book with references to Shakespeare, the Bible and various poets who helped inspire his Spring Awakening lyrics. “I’m steeped in literature,” he explains. “I’m invested in Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman and Wordsworth and Milton and Shakespeare’s plays. I never aspired to be a lyricist until I met Duncan Sheik.” And to those (like Sondheim) who insist that musical theater lyrics must rhyme perfectly, Sater responds with a shrug. “People can be so prescriptive about these things. I’m not talking about Stephen Sondheim, who is amazing and who has earned his right to his beliefs, but I'm writing lyrics for Duncan, who does not compose traditional theater music. I’ve read reviews or chats online about ‘Sater can’t do a correct rhyme,’ and I say, ‘Do you think I’m trying to rhyme and I’m unable to?’ My lyrics are, in fact, filled with internal rhymes and rhyme schemes inspired by material I’m invested in. People like Duncan and Serj Tankian are bringing a different sound to the theater world, so it makes sense that I am writing a different kind of lyric.”