“Stranger than fiction” doesn’t even come close to describing the surreal elements of the premise for Come From Away (reviewed here), a musical which chronicles how in the days after 9/11, thousands of airplane passengers whose flights were diverted to Gander, a small town in Newfoundland, found themselves relying on the kindness of strangers who fed and clothed them, but also uplifted them in such a way that it was hard to believe so much love could be the consequence of an act of pure evil. For composers Irene Sankoff and David Haine, who also happen to be married, this was a story that needed to be told, and after securing a producer, they embarked on a journey that combined the best of human interest journalism, with a keen sense of melody, rhythm and how to merge all of those elements into a cohesive piece, that’s unlike anything else that’s come out in the last decade.

After successful runs in other North American cities, Come From Away, is making one last stop before Broadway, in Washington D.C.’s iconic Ford’s Theatre, where it’s once more infusing love and hope, into a place marred by tragedy. I spoke to Sankoff and Haine over the phone, they had just dropped off their daughter at the daycare, about their writing process, the musicals they loved growing up, and why the message of Come From Away is precisely what the world needs now.

What were your favorite musicals growing up? What musicals made you say, “hey I want to do that someday”?

Irene: The first musical I ever saw was Guys and Dolls at a local high school, I’m of course a big Les Miserables fan, loved Once on this Island growing up. David knows I’m a huge musical theatre fan, my mom and I used to watch old school Hollywood musicals on TV all the time, so I love Singing in the Rain as well.

David: I grew up not listening to musicals, although my dad was a chess player, so once not knowing what it was I got him the album of Chess and he loved it, I loved it, and we listened to it nonstop, so that’s the first musical I ever really listened to. I grew up listening to folk music and Newfoundland music, so I grew up surrounded by the music that makes up Come From Away.

How did you two start making music together?

David: We’re married and there was a certain point where we never saw each other. I was touring as a singer/songwriter and Irene was acting a lot, we wanted to see each other, so we thought we’d spend one summer writing a musical for the Fringe Festival. The biggest Canadian producers in Canada, the Mirvish people, came to see us and took us from this 85-person venue to the 700 seat Panasonic Theatre in downtown Toronto, so we quit our day jobs and suddenly we were writing together 24/7.

How do you divide tasks? What does one of your creative sessions look like?

Irene: We usually have a submission process, we submit to each other a bit of work and say what we intended, what we like, don’t like, and what we need feedback on. I find that it saves us in terms of preventing us fighting over something, perhaps I don’t like if David uses the color red on something, but it’s not what he wanted feedback on. Maybe we’ve been working on a scene for five days and not getting anywhere, so we’ll submit it and move on. We have rules like not writing when we’re tired, hungry, but I’m generally the more cranky one.

David: We write when we’re tired or hungry, we just don’t discuss writing when we’re tired or hungry. In marriage there is fighting, and in writing there is fighting. Writing is fighting they say. We don’t divide the tasks, we share the music and lyrics, but also it’s this incredible thing to have someone who loves you unconditionally who is invested in the project, but also your future. Someone who gives you truthful answers and at the end of the day they love you. I actually can’t imagine making musicals without someone you’re married to.

Is it hard to decide when the work day is over then?

Irene: Oh my god, yes!

David: One of the things that keeps us grounded is our three-year-old daughter, she grew up with Come From Away, she said her first words in Newfoundland, it’s hard to work when she’s around. We play with her, by the time we finish playing with her and put her to bed we’re exhausted. She reminds us there’s life outside the show.

My Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding was inspired by David’s mother, so far would you consider yourselves nonfiction musical composers?

David: This is only our second show but we really like to be inspired by true stories. There’s something about real life that you can’t make up, and it’s incredible when at the end of our shows we watch audience members ask things like “that’s real?”, with Come From Away, we have people from the show who come see the show, and it’s incredible to watch them watch their story onstage.

Irene: We’re really lucky that they are as passionate about telling the story as they are, they are so onboard with our interpretation. Beverley Bass will tell you, she was blindsided when she saw the show at La Jolla, she could’ve loved it or hated it. But she and her husband threw 100,000% behind it. She’s a pilot, so she would hate to hear me using inaccurate mathematical terms. We tried to keep the people as updated as possible, but you really don’t know until they see the show. You’re pleased to be the vehicle for the story.

David: We went to Newfoundland for the tenth anniversary and came back with so many stories. We had seven thousand people arrive in a town with nine thousand people, so we had 16 thousand stories to tell in a 100 minute musical. Along the way we had to amalgamate some of the characters, combine stories, but we were determined to stay with the truth of what happened there. Everything was based on the interviews we did.

I read each of the interviews was 4 hours long! Did this ever get so overwhelming you thought maybe a miniseries on TV would be better than a musical?

Irene: Many times! We blissfully had no idea what we were doing up there, so we got all the information we could. But there were moments when I wanted to do Beverley Bass the musical, other times when I wanted to do “bonding with the animals” the musical, no musical at all, sometimes I wanted a Laramie Project kind of work. But David convinced me once I heard the music out there I wouldn’t feel like that any more. The music helped expedite the process.

David: Music is built into the culture of Newfoundland, they have freezing winters and the community will get together at someone’s house. They will each bring three instruments, and they sing, tell stories, have kitchen parties. This is how they stay warm, but also how they share as a community. The ensemble does this too, they are like a family. You can notice that there are always countless things happening in the background, but the ensemble does this group magic trick to make it work.

I saw the musical the week of 9/11, and the sense of community people were talking about in NYC was what I found on the stage at Ford’s Theatre in your show. What moved me the most though was that it proved to be a great antidote for this election season because your show is about everything Donald Trump is not.

Irene: We couldn’t have planned that, but we agree. It comes back to that people of Newfoundland, when some people flew back on the tenth anniversary to be in Gander, they just really wanted for their story to be an antidote, something else happened that day. 9/11 was horrible, but we can’t give up hope.

David: We were in NY on 9/11, up at an international students residence near Columbia, we were with people from 100 different countries and we were all worried, waiting for news. My cousin was in the Towers but fortunately got out. What I remember is that our friends gathered around the piano, and people sang, it helped us remember we were in this together. I remember NY being like that. We went into the show knowing that this wasn’t a “9/11 story”, it’s a “9/12” story, it’s about how a small community responded to a larger event, and it’s what they did that we want to commemorate.

I was so moved by Beverley Bass’ story, but the show has no protagonists, and the actors play several characters, did this make the show a harder sell in any way?

Irene: We were very blessed in that we spoke to many interested producers and we were able to go with the people whose vision and sensibility matched ours the most. Certainly the same with the director, during earlier stages we certainly had people asking us to focus on who the story was really about, but this is like The Laramie Project with music. We didn’t want to sensationalize anything, we just wanted to show the “no I in team” spirit, everyone did something. One story that was cut was Werner Baldessarini’s, who was the head of Hugo Boss at the time, he was on the floor at Gander high school with everyone else. When they offered to send him a jet, he said no, I arrived here with these people and I’m leaving with them, we’re all in this together. Focusing on one person would’ve lessened that feeling.

David: Irene and I really went through a big Rent period…

Irene: Oh my Lord.

David: ...we’re huge fans of Into the Woods, and we looked at it too, because it’s also a group musical about collective responsibility, but it’s a show where all the characters go into something together, they experience it in different ways, and then come out changed. There was something about that which helped as a guidepost.

The show was workshopped at NAMT, what is the importance of conferences like that for budding writers?

Irene: We had a wonderful cast and director there.

David: It was an incredible opportunity, I think 200 shows applied and there was only nine that year, I think we were only the second Canadian show to make it after The Drowsy Chaperone. We were just lucky to be there, we were amazed people responded so well. We were nervous about bringing the show, even though it was not about 9/11, we were nervous about how people in NY would respond it.

The show is coming to Broadway in the spring. Is this intimidating?

Irene: We also did a workshop at Goodspeed Musicals, and there were people affected by that day up there as well. At the end of the day, people are gonna have the experience they’re gonna have when they see the show. We really believe in the show, and we’ve gotten overwhelmingly positive feedback. Sure NY and Broadway are intimidating, someone’s going to hate it, but we can’t do more than do the best show we can.

David: It’s never a bad time to tell a story about human kindness. In Washington we had a bipartisan audience, Congressmen and Senators, and they all found something that united them. Right now it’s really important to tell a story about welcoming strangers, welcoming refugees, being good and kind. It unfortunately feels more relevant than ever to tell this story. We’ve been nervous at every step of the way, but at La Jolla people started lining up for three hours! They told us they hadn’t seen anything like that since Jersey Boys, in Seattle they brought out the Mayor of Gander, gave him the key to the city and declared it “Gander Day”, in Washington we had a night with the survivors of the Pentagon. It was a moving evening, people said it helped them heal, that what the people of Newfoundland did was a tribute to the people they lost. We’re nervous about bringing it to Gander next, on October 29th for a benefit, all the proceeds are going to local charities. Many of them have never seen the show, it’s going to be the first time, it’s going to be incredible and nerve wracking.

Will we get a cast recording before Broadway? I need that music in my life!

(They both laugh)

David: So do we! We’re in good company, we would love to do a Cast Recording, we don’t want to do it before we lock everything down, but we are getting very close. That’s probably the most we can say right now, but we hope we will have something very soon.

For tickets to Come From Away click here.