The stage adaptation of Tiny Beautiful Things is based on the New York Times best-selling memoir of the same name by Cheryl Strayed. It was adapted for the stage by actor/writer Nia Vardalos, with her two co-conceivers Marshall Heyman, a freelance journalist,  and director Thomas Kail, most famous as director of Hamilton. Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things, published in July 2012,  is a collection of anonymous letters Strayed received while writing the “Dear Sugar” advice column for the online literary magazine, The Rumpus, in 2010. She took over for the original Sugar, Steve Almond, who created the Sugar persona as a “woman with a troubled past and slightly reckless tongue.” After a year of being Sugar, Almond felt he did not have the heart or real-life experiences to continue the column. That would have been the end of Sugar, had he not come across a fan letter submitted to the Dear Sugar column by Cheryl Strayed—the only one the column ever received. Almond asked Strayed to take over as Sugar and she agreed and stayed four years, despite the job being anonymous and having no pay. Sugar became so important to many people who wrote to and read the column, as Almond described in the book’s introduction, “because she's offering something almost unheard of in our culture: radical empathy. People come to her in real pain, and she ministers to them, by telling stories about her own life, the particular ways in which she’s felt thwarted and lost, and how she got found again. She is able to transmute the raw material of the self-help aisle into genuine literature.”  

Following the cancellation of the “Dear Sugar” column, Strayed and Almond hosted a podcast on WBUR, a public radio station in Boston, called “Dear Sugars,” which acted much like the column, giving out advice to people who wrote in. “Dear Sugars” aired from 2014-2018. In April 2020, at the request of her readers and fans, Strayed revived her Sugar persona in the premiere of her newest podcast “Sugar Calling.”

Nia Vardalos and TBT’s Production History 

Nia Vardalos, Marshall Heyman, and Thomas Kail began adapting Tiny Beautiful Things for the stage in 2013, after co-conceiver Marshall Heyman recommended the book to Kail. Kail then brought it to Nia Vardalos, and she began to adapt the novel for the stage.  When asked what about the book inspired the stage adaptation, Vardalos said “the audacity. There was something about the letter writers and then, of course, the language that Cheryl Strayed uses, the unending empathy, the bravery of the letter writers, and the illuminative way that Cheryl writes.”

Vardalos went through the book, letter by letter, trying to pull them together to create a story, inviting Strayed into every step of the process. Both wanted the play to be filled with good advice that would remain with audiences long after the show was over and they picked letters that would especially resonate. Letters that were cut were added back in, even when the play was in previews.