#Sara Bareilles on Taking on a Sondheim Role and Why Theater Is Her “Gold-Star Standard”

While Sara Bareilles has been a member of many communities, ranging from the music world to to television, she says the professional theater community is the one she most wanted to join.

“We’re all a bunch of misfits; it’s like a mutual admiration society,” Bareilles said. “We’re all celebrating each other’s weirdness and trying to find ways to be courageous in a world that has a lot of shame and hatred for people who are different.”

Speaking after receiving a Tony Award nomination for her role as the Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods on Broadway, Bareilles reflected on the show’s journey, which began as a two-week Off-Broadway run at New York City Center Encores! in May 2022 and then transferred to Broadway for a run from June 2022 to January 2023. This revival of Into the Woods, directed by Lear DeBessonet, featured spare staging, with only tree trunks as the backdrop to the intersecting tales of the Baker and the Baker’s Wife on a quest to have a child and other fairytale characters in search of their respective happy endings. 

The actor-songwriter has been a big presence on Broadway over the past several years, after writing the music and lyrics for the show Waitress and later starring in the show several times across its two Broadway runs, which started in 2016 and came back in 2021. Bareilles co-hosted the Tony Awards in 2018 with Josh Groban and also brought stage to screen as a lead in NBC’s live musical Jesus Christ Superstar.

In addition to the unexpected trajectory for this Into the Woods, Bareilles and the cast were also contending with how best to honor the show’s composer, Stephen Sondheim, who had died in November 2021. 

Bareilles spoke to THR while on a set break during filming Girls5eva about her Tony nomination, wanting to return to Broadway and the emotions that arose while performing one of Sondheim’s best-known musicals. 

How did you feel about taking on a Sondheim role?

This is really, really meaningful to me, I think because the theater community remains kind of the gold-star standard for me in terms of career achievements, and it’s the community that means the most to me. And I think that over the years, I’ve just always wanted to feel like I was doing right by them, doing good work.

Starting at City Center Encores!, I thought this would be two weeks and then onward to the next project. And then it just kept unfolding and blooming into the next moment and the next moment, and I just felt like it was bigger than all of us in the cast. It was just such a special company to be a part of. And there was a lot of reverence for the show, in particular, because of [Stephen Sondheim’s] passing. It was the first show that got mounted after he was gone, and so he wasn’t a part of the production for the first time and that was very tender. So I just felt like the stakes were really high, I think to just feel like I would do right by this production, personally and professionally, and [the Tony nomination] felt like a really beautiful acknowledgement of that. So I’m over the moon.

What makes the theater community “the gold star” for you?

They’re the best. They’re the most talented. They’re the hardest working. They’re the least recognized. I think there’s something that has to live in theater because of the rigor and the demands of the schedule that doesn’t live in other industries. And this isn’t to diminish other industries, but I just happen to find that the people that are drawn to theater love the craft of theater and love the community of theater so much. We’re all a bunch of misfits; it’s like a mutual admiration society. We’re all celebrating each other’s weirdness and trying to find ways to be courageous in a world that has a lot of shame and hatred for people who are different. 

And so I love the work that gets done, and I love the people who I have encountered. My life has been altered in every way, shape and form by being welcomed into the theater community, and I will forever be wanting to repay that. Just the gift of Waitress and what changed in my life after being welcomed with Jesus Christ Superstar and then Into the Woods and working on another project. There’s a lot of love there for me.

Can we expect to see you back on Broadway soon then?

I would love to. I mean the short answer is yes. I just don’t have an answer for when that might happen. I will be here as long as they’ll have me. It’s enriched my life in more ways than I can measure. And yeah, I’m not going anywhere.

Being a lead in a Sondheim show also means singing complicated, rapid-paced dialogue and rhymes. How did you prepare for that?

What I will say that was both a blessing and a curse of our process was that it was so fast-paced that there wasn’t a lot of time to ruminate or worry about the right or wrong choice. It was very instinctual. I think what came out of having to move so quickly from rehearsal into production was that our instincts had to really come alive. And then it’s also why I feel so bonded and have so much admiration for all the other cast members who are on the [Tony nominations] list and who aren’t on the list. It was such an ensemble show, and you really had to lean into each other to tell the story and to make it feel real. And so the preparation was really about learning to be super present with the material and with what was coming up.

And I was surprised by how much was coming up emotionally: just the tenderness around Stephen Sondheim not being there and his legacy and what it meant to sing these words, what it means to sing a show that was conceived in and around the AIDs crisis and the kinds of crises we’re still facing and that people still have giants they’re fighting in this world and and also how speaking in fairytale sort of reveals a childlike mentality. So getting to “play” inside these very sort of broad characters also revealed something really sort of innocent and truthful. And I think there was just a lot of richness there that I discovered, because we had to move so quickly.

You said you also found your own take on the well-known Baker’s Wife phrase “justifies the beans” by instinct and where it fits within your vocal range. Are you aware of the many TikToks and videos comparing different Baker’s Wives singing that line?

Yes, and this is why I’m telling you, the theater community, they’re the fucking best people. Because who does that? Who takes the time to line up 10 different women singing the exact same line just because they want to revel in like, “This one did it this way and this one’s different.” I think it’s so cute and hilarious. And I love it.

Edited for length and clarity.