Sara Bareilles and Sarah Ruhl to adapt THE INTERESTINGS for stage
Photo credit: Jason Mendez/Getty Images
Two-time Grammy® Award winner, three-time Tony® Award and three-time Primetime Emmy® Award nominee and multi-platinum recording artist Sara Bareilles and Pulitzer Prize finalist and Tony Award nominee Sarah Ruhl will team up for a new musical The Interestings, based on the New York Times bestselling novel by Meg Wolitzer.
The Interestings will feature music and lyrics by Bareilles and a book by Ruhl, with the musical currently in development. Further creative team and production details will be announced in the coming months.
Sara Bareilles said: "I wrote the first song for The Interestings before I even finished the book. To borrow a quote from one of our main characters: I have fallen in love...with a group of people. Meg Wolitzer's extraordinary creation, The Interestings, was such an immediate and fascinating world of humanity and ache and adolescence and regret. I found so many moments that felt like singing. Making this musical has been a conjuring, a deep listening to the themes of the beautiful novel and a tremendously energizing creative conversation with the wild wisdom and endless talent of Sarah Ruhl as my collaborator, bringing these new friends to life in a new way. I am so thrilled to be a part of this wonderful team.”
Sarah Ruhl said: "I am so thrilled to be adapting this novel, a hymn to yearning and being alive, with the goddess-like fount of creativity, Sara Bareilles. Meg's brilliant book speaks to some of the biggest questions: how do we become? How do we know when our lives are of value, how do we know when we have ‘enough’? How do complicated friendships endure? The setting of an arts camp is familiar to me as a besotted former camper and sings with nostalgia. I can’t wait to share this tale of youth and growth with an audience.”
The Interestings tells the story of six teenagers who meet at summer camp in the 1970s and form a lifelong bond over their shared dream of leading creative and inspiring lives. Decades later in New York City, that bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. The Interestings traces their lives as they grow together and apart to explore friendship, love, envy, class, art, money, and power; and how all of it can shift and tilt precipitously over the course of a friendship and a life.
Watch this space, Besties!