Interview: A Great Big World Feel the Wonder in Their Theatrical Debut

A Great Big World—singer/songwriters Ian Axel and Chad King—is best known for emotional, heartfelt pop songs like the Grammy-winning “Say Something,” “This Is the New Year,” and one of my personal favorite songs of all time, “You.”

Now, the best-friends-since-college are making their theater debut with Wonder, a new stage musical based on R.J. Palacio’s bestselling novel, currently at the American Repertory Theater through February 15. Axel and King provide the score to go with Sarah Ruhl’s book, telling the story of young Auggie Pullman, a boy with a facial difference navigating school, bullying, friendship, and empathy. These ideas resonate personally for King, who has lived with multiple sclerosis since he was 21 and last year made the difficult decision to step back from performing due to the disease’s physical challenges.

Still, Axel and King have been so close for so long that they can finish each other’s sentences. In this conversation, they talk about how Wonder came to them, their crash course in writing for the theater, the thrill that comes with hearing other people sing their music.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Are you musical-theater guys? How did Wonder come to you?
Chad King: We’re not. This is our first. We met at NYU in the music business program. Musical-theater was always in the back of our mind…

Ian Axel: As a kid, I listened to a lot of film scores.

Chad: Disney movies, animated movies.

Ian: I wouldn’t say I was a theater nerd, but I was drawn to theatrical things. I was writing theatrical melodies on the piano when I met him. And I think we both—

Chad: Immediately, right when I first met you at the piano, it was like, “Oh, my god, we should write a musical.”

Ian: That was kind of how we…We just wanted to write a musical, and then we got sidetracked. He’s like “You should be singing.” “I’m going to manage you.” “Let’s form a band.” And then we did the whole band thing. Fast forward to 2019.

Chad: We eventually got here.

Ian: In 2019, we found out that Jill Furman, our producer, was looking for writers for Wonder. We wrote a couple songs on spec and sent them in, and they chose us somehow.

Did you see potential in the book to sing?
Ian: Yeah. I mean, it immediately spoke to us with its message of kindness and empathy and keeping that childlike wonder, for lack of a better term, and imagination, alive. Me and Chad already do that in our music, so there were a lot of themes that we already wrote about that crossed over into the story. It felt like the right fit for us, and it was a story that we wanted to be part of.

Chad: After reading the book, it was very clear that there are so many moments that want to sing. So many of the characters want to sing. There’s something awesome about how R.J. Palacio, the author, set up the book. You have all these perspectives and it’s so beautifully written that it wants to sing.

Tell me about your crash-course in musical-theater writing.
Ian: We learned a lot. We had an amazing team of people around us—Sarah Ruhl, our book writer, Taibi Magar, our director, Nadia DiGiallonardo,, our music supervisor—pointing us to a North Star. Chad and I are ultra-collaborative. I don’t know how to do stuff alone. We love collaborating with people. Sarah’s FaceTiming us multiple times a day, like, “How about this?” Everyone’s working together.

Chad: One of the big things I learned, and I think Ian learned it, too, was the idea of just trusting and surrendering. There were so many awesomely talented folks involved in this show, that you just have to say “Ok, I trust you.”

Ian: We’re creating this thing, and everyone is better because of each other. I know it sounds cliché, but there’s really nothing else like that, where all these elements and all these people come in with their own expertise and create this thing that’s different than any of the things individually. I think it’s taught us that we want to keep writing musicals. We’ve got the itch now.

Chad, given your experience living with MS, did working on Wonder, which asks audiences to look more closely at difference and empathy, resonate with you in unexpected ways?
Chad: When we started Wonder, my multiple sclerosis symptoms really weren’t stopping me from doing the work. And then, maybe two or three years in, they were. It became harder to walk. It became harder to sing. It became harder to just do things, and fatigue started to really get to me. For me, Auggie, the main character, is so inspiring. He didn’t give up, so Chad doesn’t have to give up. That was me holding on.

There’s a very specific Auggie moment towards the end of the show that I felt very much like I had [in real life]. I fell in Boston. I’ve fallen before, but this time, it felt different. There were several people that came to help me. It was in this moment that I felt like I was surrounded by Wonder in my head. I had Auggie in my head and had this moment of, like, “Get up, Chad. It’s ok. Everything’s going to be ok. You’re going to get through this.” And then I did. I don’t know. I feel like he’s been guiding me through this process.

Knowing that you’re both performers as well as writers, was it weird to be sitting on the outside and hearing other people singing your songs?
Ian: it was liberating in some ways because we had to do the work, but it wasn’t that work. But then there were also moments where we would have to sing a melody to someone, and I would feel my own voice. I was like “Oh my God, I haven’t sung like this in weeks.”

Chad: I remember the first time the entire cast was in the music room, and they were rehearsing a song we wrote for the first time, and I was like “Oh, my God, all these people are singing this song.” It was so amazing. It was—

Ian: —So cool.