ABSTRACT
Schwartz’s principal collaborators on Pippin were book writer Roger O. Hirson and director/choreographer Bob Fosse, the latter of whom made numerous changes in the show. Set in the Middle Ages but reflective of the lives of contemporary young people, Pippin involves the immature title character’s search for self-identity. He tries out the military, pleasures of the flesh, political activism, and domesticity, but tires of each because he believes himself to be “extraordinary.” One depiction in the original version of Working was of an 11-year-old newsboy based upon three interviews in Terkel’s book. Schwartz’s song “Neat to Be a Newsboy” mostly has to do with how much the child loves the movement of the bushes after he throws a newspaper into them. A disappointing flop, Rags had a run of only four performances in August 1986, but book writer Joseph Stein, composer Charles Strouse, and lyricist Stephen Schwartz continued to work on it for the next few decades.
