Irene Sankoff, left, and David Hein saw the germ of a story in the hospitality offered by the people of Gander, Nfld., after the 9/11 terrorist attacks stranded 7,000 travellers in the Newfoundland town.Darren Calabrese/The Globe and Mail
It's perhaps an understatement to say this has been a big year for Irene Sankoff and David Hein. Their hit musical Come From Away is still coming on strong.
"It was just in January when we opened on Broadway," Hein says.
Their musical is the uplifting story of what happened when the people of Gander, Nfld., took in 7,000 stranded travellers for a week from 38 planes that were grounded in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. What has happened to the couple and to Come From Away has been almost as remarkable.
The couple started with a $12,000 Canada Council grant, which they used to interview people in Gander and the "come from aways" who returned to Newfoundland for a commemoration on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. They workshopped their idea in 2012 and first produced the show at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ont.
By this year, the finished product was a smash show on Broadway and won a 2017 Tony award for best direction of a musical, after being nominated for six other Tonys. It is now up for a Grammy as well.
The musical returns to Canada, in Winnipeg from Jan. 4 to Feb. 3, and then on Feb. 13 to Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre, where it played before heading to Broadway, with a new Canadian cast.
"We've added a new song – appropriately called I Am Here," Hein says.
Come From Away is also being adapted for film by Sankoff and Hein.
"It has been an amazing response right out of the gate," Sankoff says. When it opened on Broadway, "people were thanking us for giving them a story of hope."
The creative couple say that as they work on the film adaptation, they have been thinking a lot about what has made Come From Away both a crowd-pleaser and a critical success.
"I think part of it is that we didn't invent story lines. We were told to have a birth, a death and an emergency in the story and it would be fine, but we didn't do that," Sankoff says.
"What's actually extraordinary are the actual things that did happen – how 7,000 people were put in an unfamiliar situation without a guide or a rulebook. That's really the amazing part of the story."
"We told a story that we were moved by. Watching a New York audience give a standing ovation to a story about human kindness is a testament to us sticking to our guns," Hein adds.
Famous people, from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Hillary Clinton, have, well, come from away to Broadway and enjoyed the show. But the biggest thrill comes from the responses of regular audiences, Sankoff says.
"A few weeks ago, in the audience we had the mother of a firefighter who was lost on 9/11, and also the woman from Gander who had taken care of her up there, and we brought them onstage. The gasp from the audience is hard to describe – it was like we'd given people free cars," Hein says.
The couple laugh when it's suggested that their own story is kind of a Zen tale, in which the less they seek fame and fortune from their production the more it comes naturally.
"We started with a show that didn't have a title, was about 9/11 and didn't have any stars. Our goal was never to make a successful show. It was always just to share a story about people who we loved and to work with people we love," Hein says.
They got the idea partly from having lived in New York when the 9/11 attacks occurred. "I remembered that there was this other side to the story that people weren't hearing about – people helping each other, playing music for each other, seeing if other people were all right," Sankoff says.
As they develop Come From Away into a screenplay, the two say they are faced with many of the same challenges they faced when they wrote the musical.
"The show has people in the cast playing multiple characters, so in the movie we'll lose some of the theatricality," Sankoff says.
"But essentially it's the same – trying to tell as many stories as we can, trying to remain truthful to what people told us. We're looking forward to showing people what Gander looks like."
They're still writing the script and haven't made any final decisions yet. But the couple say they'll stick to their rule of going with their own instincts.
It's their first time writing a movie script together. Ironically, for people whose claim to fame is a show about goodwill and harmony, working together as a couple can have its bumps.
"Writing is fighting," Hein says. "But working with someone who you know loves you in the end is a gift."