PEOPLEWATCH

Sondheim on a Different Stage: Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim began his new role Friday as professor, addressing an overflow crowd of 250 at Oxford University. Sondheim, who wrote the music and lyrics for such shows as “A Little Night Music,” “Follies” and “Into the Woods,” is the first visiting professor of drama and musical theater at Oxford in a post that has been endowed by British producer Cameron Mackintosh. Sondheim is in intermittent residence in Oxford, where he is guiding 13 students through a term that will focus on their own compositions as well as on the London production of “Sunday in the Park with George,” Sondheim’s Pulitzer Prize-winning musical. “All the people in this course have a feeling for the theater,” Sondheim said.