Meet the Fellows: Mark Sonnenblick, Composer, Lyricist, Librettist

Credits Include: Independents, Bunkerville, Dragonbone Storyshow, Everything At Once

Mark Sonnenblick

• Who do you look to for inspiration?

Definitely depends on the project/song, but Sondheim, Loesser, and Porter are the musical writers I’ll return to most consistently when I’m stuck with a theater problem. I don’t listen to theater casually very often though. My iPhone’s mainly classic rock and current rap. I also really love movies…I think film directors have figured out some awesome storytelling techniques, both aurally and visually, that can be great jumping-off points for brainstorming super theatrical moments/sequences/transitions. Especially in something as fluid and free of rules as a musical.

•     What is the one thing you hope to accomplish this year?

I just got to New York this past April, and probably the best part about being here is the creative community. I really hope over the course of the next year I can push myself to invest in, participate in, and support that community to an even greater degree than I do now while also maintaining a perspective on my personal goals and place in the broader world. In other words, immerse myself without getting fooled into thinking the most important thing ever is to get a show on Broadway. Also I’d love to never lose another 30-day metro card.

• What’s the best (or worst) job not related to your career you ever had?

I did a psych study through a lab in college that I think had something to do with taste. For several weeks they had me drink different colored liquids in unmarked bottles and would periodically scan my brain. They also fed me lunch. To this day I still catch myself craving lunch, always at about the same time every day.

•     Where would you rather be if you couldn’t be here doing this?

Playing a grand piano on top of a mountain but it’s not cold at all just beautiful. And the music I’m playing saves lives.

•      When did you decide you were going to take over the universe?

This is a powerful, important question that should be asked more often on the commercial stage.

• Why would you ever stop writing, if you ever stopped writing?

Writing, especially in New York for some reason, feels pretty masturbatory to me. So I’m always vaguely trying to convince myself to do something different, something that might more directly affect other people. Something where the inevitable stress I’ll feel (and that everyone feels in life) is related to something bigger than self-expression or self-success, however you define it. With stakes that extend beyond a small island in the Atlantic, beyond the small world that engages (/is able to engage) with a specific art form. The problem is I love to write music and words and can’t talk myself out of it because I’m weak and hedonistic. Thanks for this wonderful opportunity, DG.

Bonus Question: How do you measure, measure a year? 

Etch another tally scar into your worthless palm with a white-hot nail.