When the first show you write becomes a global phenomenon, it could go to your head.

That’s not what happened to Joe DiPietro.

When I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change exploded onto the scene in the 90s, Joe could have sat back and watched the royalties rain down.  Instead, fueled by the passion for the theater that he discovered in high school (but didn’t pursue until after a career in marketing), he wrote more, experimenting across a diverse style of shows . . . and achieving even greater success, winning four Tonys for Memphis, which also took home Best Musical, and writing a host of other shows on and Off Broadway.

And after all that, he’s an even nicer guy than when he started.

Joe sat down to tell his story of how he got to where he is, what has kept him sane (and smiling) in a business that can beat you up, and a whole host of other things, including . . .

• How he learned to write under pressure and on deadline (like, I don’t know, when a $15mm Broadway show is in previews?).
• Whether writers should think about the commerciality of a piece when coming up with an idea for Broadway.
• How the lack of success of All Shook Up helped changed his career (and his life) for the better.
• The challenges of writing a jukebox musical and how he overcomes them.
• What has changed about writing for the theater in the last 20 years, and what that means for new writers.

You know what I love to see in this business?  When good things happen to good people.  There’s no better example of that than Joe DiPietro.

Enjoy his podcast!

Click here to listen.

Listen to it on iTunes here.  (And if you like the podcast, give it a great review, while you’re there!)

Download it here.

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