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The Secret Garden has a book and lyrics by Marsha Norman, score by Lucy Simon, sets by co-producer Heidi Landesman

[[image: color photograph of set for The Secret Garden]]
[[photograph credit]]MARC BRYAN-BROWN[[/photograph credit]]
[[caption]] One of Heidi Landesman's lavish set designs for The Secret Garden[[/caption]]

"terrified" at the responsibility of directing a $6 million musical. Sweeney Todd, on which she was working when Landesman approached her about The Secret Garden, was budgeted at $600,000. "Just a zero difference," Schulman quips. While confessing to "a little spear of panic" every now and then, she maintains that the size of a budget doesn't change the way she works.

Schulman sees The Secret Garden as "a real family musical." Aware that some adults shun so-called family entertainment because they think that means "a kiddie show," she asserts: "This is anything but a kiddie show. It is very complex emotionally, and the characters are multi-level. There's a lot of darkness in the story. Mary is anything but precious. She perceives herself as an unlovable child, and in the journey she finds she is worthy of love. The story is as provocative to adults as it is to young audiences, and in the workshop we did last October at the old Michael Bennett studio, it seemed to touch men and women equally.

"There's a lack of family shows today--family music, family movies. Theatre is a magical experience, and if families can experience it together, that's a wonderful thing. The show is very optimistic, very positive. I want the audience to feel uplifted, good, and passionate. I'm feeling uplifted working on it."

Schulman is aware of being in a special position. There still are not many women who get a chance to direct Broadway musicals. She cites Graciela Daniele's direction of Once On This Island as one exception but emphasizes that women who want to direct musicals lack role models and have trouble getting experience.

She gathered her experience in regional theatre and summer stock, including her important eight-year stint with the Pittsburg Civic Light Opera. "Even in Pittsburgh I was the first female stage director after 40 years," she says, recalling that she often encountered suspicion when she applied for a directing job. "If they had an experience with one woman and it didn't work, I'd hear that 'we've had a problem with female directors,' which, of course, is nonsense. Do you want to say there's never been a problem with a male director?"

Schulman traces her fascination with musicals to her school days in Brooklyn, recalling that she directed The King and I when she was in junior high. "I wanted to be Deborah Kerr," she remembers. So she also took the role of Anna. Schulman confesses that even before wanting to direct she had fantasies about playing first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers before they moved to Los Angeles. "I learned about abandonment early on," she joked. "But I've always had a soft spot in my heart for first basemen." Now she's an avid Mets fan.

After graduation from the High School of Performing Arts, Schulman attended Hofstra and then learned that the Yale School of Drama was offering playwriting scholarships. Since she had written a few plays, she applied. Once at Yale, she was able to move into acting and into exploring the art of directing. The bulk of her musical direction experience came in Pittsburgh, where she did more than 35 shows, including My Fair Lady, 1776, and Follies.

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