How much do you know about this Pulitzer Prize-winning duo?
1. “Next to Normal” began as a 10-minute musical entitled “Feeling Electric” that Yorkey and Kitt wrote as recent college graduates for the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop in the late 90s. The musical was inspired by a segment Yorkey saw on Dateline NBC about electroconvulsive therapy.
2. Kitt and Yorkey met at Colombia University in 1994. Yorkey, an aspiring dramatist, sought a liberal arts education. Kitt picked Columbia because it was in New York and hoped to get a record deal as a singer-songwriter.
3. Kitt and Yorkey also created the 2014 Broadway musical “If/Then” that starred Idina Menzel. The idea for “If/Then” originally came from Kitt’s interest in exploring themes of choice and fate after being to drawn to theater when asked during school to work on music for their campus’ annual show.
4. Brian Yorkey went on to create the popular drama series “13 Reasons Why” for Netflix as well as thriller miniseries “Echoes.”
5. Recently announced, Tom Kitt is now working on a musical version of the 1999 romantic comedy “10 Things I Hate About You” that starred Julia Stiles and Heath Ledger adapted from Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew.”