In the spring of 1990 Stephen Sondheim was visting tutor in Musical Theatre at St. Catherine's College, Oxford. This is a question and answer session he gave, along with playwrights Arthur Laurents and John Weidman, to a public audience on Friday 8th of June. 

I was doing some research for a dissertation at college in 1997 and was given permission to sit in a little room for an afternoon and make a copy of the only cassette recording the college made...so this might be the first time it's been heard since then! 
It's quite long but there are some fascinating comments about through-sung musicals and loads of great anecdotes. Sondheim and Weidman were in the middle of writing 'Assassins' so this is discussed at length...Laurents is brilliant throughout and has loads to say on 'Gypsy'.
(Apologies for the sound quality - Arthur Laurents sits annoyingly far away from the mic and the questions are sometimes hard to pick up.)

Dave_muso

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