The Theater of Our Emotions with Zak Sandler

I recently had the honor of sitting down with the brilliantly gifted Broadway pianist, Zak Sandler. Sandler has played piano on Broadway for Wicked, Mean Girls, Motown, and The Color Purple. His original musical about his mental health journey, Inside My Head, premiered at the NY Theatre Barn, was selected as a semi-finalist at the O’Neill Theater’s National Music Theater Conference, and presented at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. Zak revised the show as a writer-in-residence at the Kennedy Center’s REACH page-to-stage festival in January 2022. He is touring the show - which includes a group discussion - to colleges, high schools, mental health and non-profit organizations, medical schools, companies, and anyone else who wants to host this inspiring, life changing event.

Zak has won several music awards including the Fenno Heath Award for writing the new Yale song, the Neva Greenwood award for writing a symphony in 8th grade, the Mount Vernon Piano Competition (playing “Rhapsody in Blue” with the Mount Vernon Orchestra in 8th grade), and was selected as a composer for the Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project at Northwestern (a mixture of a thrilling week of writing, and a deep depression).

Zak graduated from Yale with a BA in music composition in 2008 - two years after his exhilarating and terrifying first psychotic episode - in part thanks to the excellent medical care, and psychotherapy, from a favorite practitioner in New Haven. 

Beyond musical theater, Zak is an avid mental health activist, speaking about his mental condition on “This is Actually Happening” (podcast with 45K+ plays), Jaison Thomas’ Brand Identity Podcast, and “Moments of Clarity” (radio show with 12M+ listeners). In 2018, he won the Young Leader Award from the New York State chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), and is a featured speaker with This is My Brave, RespectAbility, and the JED Foundation.