I did five shows with Hal Prince. I was a rehearsal pianist for Kiss of the Spider Woman, musical director for The Petrified Prince, an uncredited ghostwriter for a show that closed out of town, and in 1998, when Hal was 70 and I was 28, I made my Broadway debut as the composer and lyricist for Parade.

Fifteen years later, Hal asked me to be the music supervisor for Prince of Broadway, a show that celebrated his work as a producer and director over the six decades he spent working on Broadway. At the time, he told me Steve Sondheim was going to write a new song for the finale of the show, something that would sum up the whole evening.

A couple of months later, Hal called me to say that Steve would not in fact be writing the number—that Hal wanted me to write it.

It was impossible. What on earth could I write that would follow an entire evening of masterpieces by Sondheim, Bernstein, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Bock & Harnick, Kander & Ebb? I stared at a blank computer screen for a week and then finally told Hal I couldn’t do it. “Sure you can!” he said, and if you want to know what made Hal Prince Hal Prince, it’s not just that he said, “Sure you can!” but that he made me believe it.

I had a breakthrough when I decided that I would write the song as though Hal himself were singing it to the audience. I was specifically inspired by the well-known fact that after every opening night of every show he did, Hal would be in his office first thing the next morning to have a meeting about the next show.

I wrote a song called “Wait ’Til You See What’s Next.”

Monday comes and it feels like the end of the line.
There’s nothing to say,
There’s nowhere to go,
There’s no one to listen.
One day comes, I decide to reclaim what is mine.
In spite of myself,
I’m dying to know

What’s across the road,
What’s behind the wall.
What’s around the corner?
And what will it take ’til I find my way?
Will it be today?
Will it be too late?
Wait ‘til you see what’s next.
Just beyond the hill,
Just along the river,
There’s something that’s pulling me out the door.
Try for something more!
Try for something great!
And wait ‘til you see what’s next!

Step by step, when it’s hard just to see or to hear,
A flicker of doubt,
A slack in the pace,
A small hesitation—
Step by step, then at last, when the fog starts to clear,
I open my eyes…
I’m ready to see

What’s across the road,
What’s behind the wall,
What’s around the corner.
And what if it’s not what I thought I’d see?
If it’s not for me,
Chalk it up to Fate,
And wait ’til you see what’s next!
Just beyond the hill,
Just across the river,
You thought that you knew how the path could turn –
Something more to learn!
Open up the gate…

And wait for the story you’ve never seen;
Wait for the bloom on the bough.
Wait—there’s a flicker across the screen—
Coming soon!
Coming now!

Just across the road,
Just behind the wall,
Just around the corner,
A new bit of history there to write—
Something you all might
Underestimate,
But wait ’til you see what’s next!
Just beyond the hill,
Just along the river,
Or perched on the edge of the great abyss—
What you can’t dismiss
Or anticipate!
Just wait!
Wait ‘til you see what’s next!

When Hal was 87 and I was 45, we did the first production of Prince of Broadway in Tokyo, and that song was the finale. I could tell during tech that something wasn’t working—neither Hal nor his co-director Susan Stroman knew quite how to stage it, and the actors seemed a little lost too. I love the song and I still close all of my concerts with it, but I knew it wasn’t the right way to close the show.

While we were preparing for our move to Broadway, Hal said he’d changed his mind: What the show really needed was an opening, and then we’d reprise that at the end for the finale. So now I needed to write a new song, one that would start the whole show and tell us what a director does, and more importantly, why. This was even more impossible. I worked on it for two months and came up with nothing, so I called Hal and I asked if I could interview him for an hour, hoping it would spur something. After that interview, I wrote a song called “Bringing a World to Life.”

I was thinking the other day, I used to have tin soldiers
And a cardboard model of a stage,
And on Saturday afternoons, I’d listen to the opera on the radio.
So I’d move all my soldiers every change of mood or tempo,
Every moment of ecstasy or rage—
From the downbeat at 1 ’til half-past 4,
There I’d be, all alone on my bedroom floor,

Bringing a world to life,
Analyzing all the missing pieces.
Bringing a world to life,
Coloring the chimneys and the sky,
Taking a ride across the borders,
Gliding on the wind,
Making it feel
One degree realer—
Realer than real.
Building a world.

Start a world in a tiny box, a concert hall, a basement.
Fill the space with a house, a child, a song.
Make a place that you want to disappear and hide away until the curtain falls.
If the world starts to shatter or collapse, make a replacement—
Maybe that’s what the point was all along.
On a boat, in a pub or cabaret,
I have spent every minute, every day
Bringing a world to life!
Decade after decade of decisions,
Bringing a world to life—
Setting loose the visions in my head.
Making it more than wood or paper,
More than sleight of hand—
Finding the heart,
Telling the story:
That’s how you start
Building a world.

We went into rehearsal with it, but you can feel when a number isn’t working: The room starts to seem impossibly big, like you can’t get an idea from one side of the stage to the other. I knew the song wasn’t right. Too long, too poetic, trying too hard. And I couldn’t help but feel like the audience was going to be wishing we would just get to the good stuff. Hal came over to the piano one day while Stro was restaging it for the eighth time, and before he even said anything I took the song out of my score and dropped it in the recycling bin.

“Okay, I have a different idea for how to open the show, I don’t think we need an opening number. But come on, why don’t you write a great closer? You know, a real killer!” he said.

“Well, I did that already,” I said, and he said, “No, no, something that’s more…” A gesture with his fist, like a judge bringing down a gavel. “You know, like that.”

I thought about that for a minute. I realized that in both of the earlier songs that were meant to sound like Hal, I had, without really meaning to, put in a lot of me—ambivalent, cautious, resigned. Hal was not any of those things. He was decisive, he was fearless, and he was not given to regret. He made a decision, and if that decision didn’t work, he just made another one. That’s a sensational quality for a director, but it’s not natural for writers, or at least not for me. Hal achieved everything in his life and career because he believed he could do it and then insisted that it happen. If I read that sentence to him, he would probably nod and say, “Yes, but also a lot of luck!” Fine. Also a lot of luck. But first, confidence. Assurance. In order to be that guy, in order to be Hal Prince, something has to tell you when you’re starting out in this world that you can bend the universe to your will, and you have to believe it. You have to need to believe it. I don’t think that way, not really, but Hal did.

He lived and worked for 91 years on his own terms. He surrounded himself with a strong and loving family, he had immense financial success, he gave opportunities to countless performers, writers, and designers, and in the process, he had a hand in virtually every important musical in the second half of the 20th century. The theatre he loved and created was a place where the audience was challenged to think: about humanity, about America, about fear and love, and about space and light and sound. When Hal was excited about something, he was all in. When I was 23 years old and Hal was 65, I was the right person in the right place, and he got excited about me. He had the entire theatre community of New York City waiting to hear what I wrote. He expected me to be as good as he thought I was. Sure I can.

When Hal was 89 and I was 47, a quarter of a century after we’d first met, I decided that rather than write a song where Hal sings to the audience, I’d write one where he sang to me. The song is called “Do the Work.”

Do the work.
Do it now.
If there’s something to say, then say it.
Find your team.
Find your voice,
Put it out into the world.
Do the work.
Get it done.
When you’re finished, you start the next one.
Will it last?
Will it count?
Time will tell.
Fill the space.
Do the work, pal,
And do it well.

Do the work.
Find a way.
If it matters to you, then prove it!
Make a point,
Make a stand,
And then get it on the stage.
What you see,
What you feel
Is the start of an inspiration!
Give it truth!
Give it sound!
Give it light!
Take the chance,
Do the work, pal,
And do it right.

If there’s something that you’re dying to express,
There is no one that can guarantee success,
But you do it nonetheless!
You’ve got to tell your story. Tell your story!

Tell the story with whatever’s close at hand.
Use a canvas or a stage or baby grand.
Take a look and take a stand!
You’ve got to tell your story. Tell your story!

Any reason can be good enough to start:
If you’ve emptied out your pockets or your heart,
For the love and for the art,
You’ve got to tell your story! Tell your story!

See the vision in your head and take control!
It’ll cost you ev’ry atom in your soul!
Let the rhythm start to roll so you can tell your story!
Tell your story!

Do the work!
Take the step!
Make it reckless and unexpected!
Make it brave!
Make it wrong,
But for God’s sake, make it now!
Do the work!
There you go!
Get back up if you get rejected!
Plant the seed
And then see
How it grows!
On your mark…
Count to ten…
Do the work, pal…
And on it goes.
On it goes.
On it goes.
On it goes.
On it goes!

Wait ’til you see what’s next.

Jason Robert Brown is the Tony-winning composer and lyricist of Parade, The Last Five Years, Songs for a New World, The Bridges of Madison County, 13, and Honeymoon in Vegas, among other works.