ABSTRACT
Composer Stephen Schwartz, who by the age of 26 had already experienced success with Godspell, Pippin, and The Magic Show, became enthralled in 1974 with an unlikely source for his next project: Studs Terkel’s national bestseller Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, which was published that same year. The young Schwartz was used to a collaborative creative process, which he had enjoyed during his experience writing and staging Godspell. It was Schwartz’s commitment to the workers and their stories that convinced Terkel to support the unlikely project of setting worker interviews to music. Craig Carnelia was exposed to Broadway at an early age and claims Richard Rodgers’s No Strings, which he saw at age 14, as his first musical of inspiration. This chapter demonstrates the case study model by analyzing the song, “Just A Housewife” by Carnelia.
