This was a disorienting time for Woolverton, who was stunned by the sudden accolades and by another significant life event -- motherhood. Woolverton had married while working on "Beauty," and her daughter, Keaton, was only six weeks old at the time of the film’s release.

"It was glorious and remarkable, but I was in shock," she says. "I was dealing with the movie, and being a mom for the first time. It was a pretty overwhelming, emotional experience."

When Disney decided to develop a theatrical division soon afterward, "Beauty and the Beast" was the logical choice to be its first stage musical. Director Rob Roth developed the project, and dragged Woolverton, who had since worked on the screenplays for "Homeward Bound" and "The Lion King," back into her most involving project. Only this time, she got to adapt it for the theater -- her first love.

"What went through my mind first was, how in the hell am I gonna keep writing about talking teacups and candelabras," says Woolverton. "And then I thought, Linda, imagine, you get to reapply it back to the stage. So the challenge was more than the project itself. I had the opportunity to transform it to a different medium."

"I love the stage," says Woolverton. "I love working with the actors. I love the immediacy of the reaction. It's just so much more alive. Writing a screenplay is sitting in your room by yourself. Writing a stage play is different. If actors are having trouble with my words, I can re-write it for them."

Roth, who describes his relationship with Woolverton as a "rich, fabulous collaboration," says that the intelligence and emotion in her writing allow her to excel at one of the most challenging jobs in show business.

"Writing a book for a musical is the hardest task,” says Roth, “because you have to weave in the lyrics and the music, and it can't be too much book but enough so the audience knows what’s going on. And, it needs an emotional journey. So I think book writing is very, very hard, and she’s very, very good at it."

Matt West, choreographer for "Beauty and the Beast" and "Lestat," credits Woolverton's humor and her personalization of her characters for her success.

"Linda uses a lot of her own experiences in her writing, and that adds a humanity to it," says West, adding, "she also has an incredible sense of humor and a sense of fun in her writing."