Tony Award-winning composers of Ragtime STEPHEN FLAHERTY, left, and LYNN AHRENS discuss their history of professional collaboration in the Winthrop Junior Common Room yesterday.

“Rewrites are the essence of life. No matter what you do, it’s hard to get it right the first time,” Tony Award-winning lyricist Lynn Ahrens advised an attentive crowd of about 60 thespians and musicians yesterday.

Speaking in the Winthrop House Junior Common Room, Ahrens and composer Stephen Flaherty, her professional partner of 20 years, engaged the audience of student and community artists in 90 minutes of discussion. The event was the first workshop in this year’s Learning From Performers series.

Ahrens and Flaherty are best known for composing the Tony award winning-musical Ragtime. But rather than bask in the glow of their crowning achievement, the two focused on their collaborative history and mutual frustrations.

Michael C. Mitnick ’05, who interned for Ahrens and Flaherty for two summers, led the duo through its two decade-long history.

Ahrens and Flaherty first met at a conference in New York City 20 years ago. “We were writing together within five minutes,” remembered Flaherty.

The chance meeting was a fortuitous one.

“I do write music, and he does write lyrics, but it’s comforting to know that he’s 1000 times better at composing, and I’m somewhat better at writing lyrics at this point,” Ahrens said.

“My way of writing was secluding myself in a room and waiting for inspiration to hit,” said Flaherty. “Lynn, her method is much more improvisational. Our strengths were very complementary, but our ways of working were very different. It took a while for us to mesh.”

Their collaboration began with an ill-fated musical adaptation of the movie Bedazzled. Flaherty would go to various city venues to play songs from the show.

“I always had an image of myself playing in a nightclub and some small, bearded man in the back saying, ‘Hey, that’s a great song. Got any more?’” Flaherty said. “Sure enough, one night we were playing a number from Bedazzled, and there was a small, bearded man in the back saying, ‘Hey, that’s a great song. Got any more?’” Flaherty said. “Sure enough, one night we were playing a number from Bedazzled, and there was a small, bearded man that literally said, ‘Hey, that’s a great song. Got anymore?’”

The bearded man turned out to be Ira Weitzman, a hot-shot Off-Broadway producer.

Although Bedazzled was never produced, Weitzman proved an invaluable contact, eventually helping Ahrens and Flaherty with their first success in 1988, called Lucky Stiff.

In the interim, Ahrens and Flaherty struggled to make ends meet. Ahrens worked as a jingle writer in the 1980s.

“I was writing ‘What would you do for a Klondike bar?’ by day and writing musicals by night,” Ahrens said to the amusement of the crowd. “I didn’t have a dream to get produced or anything. I just enjoyed writing so much that I didn’t want to stop.”

Flaherty worked in the pit of other shows, even two nights after Lucky Stiff opened. “It was a very humbling way to make money at that time, let me tell you,” Flaherty said.