What do you do with a B.A. in English? Write musicals, apparently,
Robert Lopez ’97, one of the guys behind “Avenue Q,” has a new show on Broadway, but this time he tackles Mormons instead of puppets in “The Book of Mormon.” Lopez co-wrote this story about missionaries with Trey Parker and Matt Stone of “South Park” fame. Yeah, we know, that’s a lot to process.
When asked in an interview posted on the New York Times’ ArtsBeat blog Wednesday about what made him interested in Mormonism, Lopez responded:
I’d taken Harold Bloom at Yale. I really liked the idea of the bible as literature – a story that can change the world in this very profound and powerful way, but in the end it’s just a story. Nothing demonstrates that as well as the Book of Mormon, because it was written so recently. When you hear the story of it, he so clearly made it up. It’s such a load of baloney. But people believe in it so strongly, and their lives really are demonstrably changed for the good by it. I had thought about doing the bible Part III, but then I realized, that’s the Book of Mormon. That’s the bible fan fiction.
Now we’re excited for the musical about misreading.
Previews for “The Book of Mormon” begin Feb. 24.