Editing Stephen Sondheim (section)

==={{anchor|Mentorship of others}}Mentoring===
After he was mentored by Hammerstein,{{sfn|Zadan|1986|p=4}} Sondheim returned the favor, saying that he loved "passing on what Oscar passed on to me".{{r|youtube.com}} In an interview with Sondheim for ''The Legacy Project'', composer-lyricist [[Adam Guettel]] (son of [[Mary Rodgers]] and grandson of [[Richard Rodgers]]) recalled how as a 14-year-old boy he showed Sondheim his work. Guettel was "crestfallen" since he had come in "sort of all puffed up thinking [he] would be rained with compliments and things", which was not the case since Sondheim had some "very direct things to say". Later, Sondheim wrote and apologized to Guettel for being "not very encouraging" when he was actually trying to be "constructive".<ref name=legacy>{{cite AV media| people = Stephen Sondheim, Adam Guettel| title = The Legacy Project: Stephen Sondheim (In Conversation with Adam Guettel) – Educational Version with Public Performance Rights | medium = DVD| publisher = Transient Pictures |year = 2011}}</ref>

Sondheim also mentored a fledgling [[Jonathan Larson]], attending Larson's workshop for his ''[[Superbia (musical)|Superbia]]'' (originally an adaptation of ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]''). In Larson's musical ''[[Tick, Tick... Boom!]]'', the phone message is played in which Sondheim apologizes for leaving early, says he wants to meet him and is impressed with his work. After Larson's death, Sondheim called him one of the few composers "attempting to blend contemporary pop music with theater music, which doesn't work very well; he was on his way to finding a real synthesis. A good deal of pop music has interesting lyrics, but they are not theater lyrics". A musical-theater composer "must have a sense of what is theatrical, of how you use music to tell a story, as opposed to writing a song. Jonathan understood that instinctively."<ref>{{cite web |author=[[Anthony Tommasini]]|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/11/theater/theater-a-composer-s-death-echoes-in-his-musical.html?src=pm&pagewanted=1 |title=Theater; A Composer's Death Echoes in His Musical|work=[[The New York Times]] |date=February 11, 1996 |access-date=July 4, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170406111532/http://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/11/theater/theater-a-composer-s-death-echoes-in-his-musical.html?src=pm&pagewanted=1 |archive-date=April 6, 2017 |url-status=live }}</ref>

Around 2008, Sondheim approached [[Lin-Manuel Miranda]] to work with him translating ''[[West Side Story]]'' lyrics into Spanish for an upcoming Broadway revival.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://nymag.com/guides/fallpreview/2008/theater/49532 |title=This Could Drive a Person Crazy |work=New York |first=Jeremy |last=McCarter |date=August 24, 2008 |access-date=April 17, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160318120646/http://nymag.com/guides/fallpreview/2008/theater/49532/ |archive-date=March 18, 2016 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Rebecca Mead">{{cite magazine|url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/hamiltons|title=All About The Hamiltons|magazine=The New Yorker|author=Rebecca Mead|date=February 9, 2015|access-date=June 15, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170930211838/https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/hamiltons|archive-date=September 30, 2017|url-status=live}}</ref> Miranda then approached Sondheim with his new project ''[[Hamilton (musical)|Hamilton]]'', then called ''The Hamilton Mixtape'', which Sondheim gave notes on.{{r|Rebecca Mead}}<ref name="Rosen">{{cite web |last=Rosen |first=Jody |title=The American Revolutionary |work=The New York Times Style Magazine |date=July 8, 2015 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/08/t-magazine/hamilton-lin-manuel-miranda-roots-sondheim.html |access-date=June 15, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160617013314/http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/08/t-magazine/hamilton-lin-manuel-miranda-roots-sondheim.html |archive-date=June 17, 2016 |url-status=live }}</ref> Sondheim was originally wary of the project, saying he was "worried that an evening of rap might get monotonous". But he believed Miranda's attention to, and respect for, good rhyming made it work.{{r|Rosen}}

Sondheim provided a [[cameo appearance|voice cameo]] for the [[Tick, Tick... Boom! (film)|2021 film adaptation of ''Tick, Tick... Boom!'']], directed by Miranda, for the scene in which a fictionalized version of himself leaves a phone message. Sondheim worked on a revised text of the message and voiced it himself after [[Bradley Whitford]], who portrays him, was unavailable to rerecord the line.<ref>{{Cite web|date=November 29, 2021|title=Lin-Manuel Miranda Reveals That Stephen Sondheim Rewrote His Voicemail Scene in 'Tick, Tick... BOOM!'|url=https://decider.com/2021/11/29/lin-manuel-miranda-stephen-sondheim-rewrite-tick-tick-boom/|access-date=December 2, 2021|website=Decider|language=en-US}}</ref>