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"  Marsha Norman&amp;#039;s first plays led some to crown her the Queen of Tragedy. In works such as Getting Out (about a young ex-con trying to go straight after prison) and the 1983 Pulitzer Prize winner &amp;#039;night, Mother (about a woman&amp;#039;s final preparations for suicide), she perfected a lean, tough style of capturing women in crisis. So it came as a surprise to learn that she was now writing the book for a musical adaptation of Robert James Waller&amp;#039;s The Bridges of Madison County. That best-selling 1992 novel (which was also made into a syrupy movie with Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep) is about a love affair between an itinerant National Geographic photographer and a dutiful Iowa housewife. The book is nothing if not sentimental fluff, and so, true to form, Norman has completely reinvented it. As the musical, with songs by Jason Robert Brown and starring Kelli O&amp;#039;Hara and Steven Pasquale, prepared for its Broadway premiere, we spoke to Norman about the art of adaptation. Related: Artist Carrie Mae Weems Talks Race, Gender, and Finally Getting the Recognition She Deserves How did you get involved in this unlikely project? Waller&amp;#039;s agent said his client very much wanted the book to be made into a musical. I thought, Huh, 50 million copies sold worldwide\u2014there must be something powerful enough in this story that all these people, including me, bought and read it. Rereading it, I thought the main idea could be: What if you had a week that didn&amp;#039;t count? Related: 40 Years of Awesomely Sexy &amp;#039;Fear Of Flying&amp;#039; Book Covers You totally flipped the story&amp;#039;s point of view. You could summarize the book as: In the course of a Candide-like life of taking pictures and having affairs, Robert finally finds a true love that is beyond all his understanding. The musical is: Francesca, who has made good, rational choices as a woman living in 1963, is suddenly offered a chance to feel something else and goes for it. What kind of source material makes for a good adaptation? You want a book that needs you to do something besides what was already done. For example, you can&amp;#039;t show the spiritual journey Robert takes in the novel. But I could show the whole community in which the love story happens. I could fill in the dad, the kids, the world of what Francesca&amp;#039;s isolation feels like. I finally realized she&amp;#039;s a trapped girl, and I&amp;#039;m ready to write that anytime. Of course you didn&amp;#039;t just write a play; it&amp;#039;s a musical. Yes, so I had to do all this in a way that would allow Jason to write his killer songs. One is 14 minutes long! It&amp;#039;s so intense the audience can&amp;#039;t stand it. A novel can&amp;#039;t do that musical thing of filling the earth up with song, expressing how love can take people almost off the planet. Of course, musicalizing it also caused a problem: How do you write a final number for a dead person and the woman who&amp;#039;s still in love with him? We found the solution, but musicals are really pieces of machinery, complicated and tough. I like that. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/music/interviews/a13929/marsha-norman-interview/?click=main_sr>