By Robert Simonson
21 Jan 2009

Playbill.com: Do you think there's any chance that the show might follow the path of Hairspray or The Producers and go from a movie to a musical back to a movie again?
SD: Universal Studios are very keen, of course, to start the conversation of turning the musical into a musical film. I think it's an idea that Lee Hall, who wrote the screenplay and the lyrics and the book, and I kind of giggle at, rather than take seriously.

Playbill.com: There are so many remarkable theatrical moments in the show. I'd like to ask you about a few of them and where the inspiration for them came from. First of all, the long ballet sequence in which Billy dances with an older version of himself, and then flies above the stage. How did that moment come to be?
SD: Originally, when we did the show, it was called "The Controversial Ballet Sequence." (Laughs) That's what we all called it. And we called it controversial because we were not sure at all if this was a good idea. I think is was Lee Hall who said, "Isn't there always a dream ballet in the second act?"

Playbill.com: In every other musical, ever since Oklahoma!, it seems.
SD: Yes, with Carousel being one of my favorites of all time. We knew we couldn't have the grown up Billy at the end, which we had in the film. So I wanted to get some sense that you had a grown-up version of him and Billy could see him. And the dream ballet seemed like a wonderful way to do it. But when we first tried it out, it was more of an experiment.

Playbill.com: And the "Angry Dance" Billy does in the first act.
SD: The "Angry Dance" came out of the film, where I thought there would be some sort of number where Billy would dance in his father's boots, which in the show translated to tap shoes. I think we always knew the "Angry Dance" would be the end of act one, where he was going to dance his energy out of his legs, try to get rid of the dance. What's so funny about "Angry Dance" is so many of the abbreviations we used originally in rehearsals [were kept]. Now I look at the program and I can't help but laugh. Dad is just called "Dad." We don't call him by his name. Dead Mum is "Dead Mum." There's "Tall Boy" and "Small Boy." Our little abbreviations in rehearsal have actually become what the characters are called.

Playbill.com: The number "Expressing Yourself," in which Billy and his cross-dressing friend dance with huge dancing dresses is like nothing else in the show. How did that come into being?
SD: That comes about because, first of all, the number was written by Lee Hall, in wanting to enter Michael's world. When we started thinking about Michael's world, we wondered how that transformation would happen, in wanting to go into a child's world of big dresses and wild imagination. Again, in London, we were constantly experimenting with what that world might be. It just seemed totally appropriate that it would be a world of dresses and make-believe, something expressing his joy in just the fact of dressing up.

Playbill.com: For the big dancing dresses, did you turn to the costume designer, the set designer or both?
SD: A little bit of both, but essentially they were created by our costume designer, with a lot of help from the actors and a lot of help from Peter Darling in how they move.