November 25, 2024 • 50 mins
We step behind Broadway's emerald curtain to explore Wicked with two leading scholars. The University of Kansas' Paul Laird, professor emeritus of musicology, received unprecedented access as Stephen Schwartz composed his blockbuster musical and wrote the definitive book on its making, Wicked: a Musical Biography. His colleague Jane Barnette is a professor of theater & dance and the author of Witch Fulfillment: Adaptation Dramaturgy and Casting the Witch for Stage and Screen. She reveals how the evolving story of Oz has redefined witchcraft in modern theater. In this engaging discussion, we prepare for the film while learning more about the book and musical that changed how we see good, evil, and female power and friendship. Article: KU experts comment on ‘Wicked’ film adaptation
Play Episode:Wicked Movie: The Making of a Witch
Wicked Movie: The Making of a Witch explores the nuanced and powerful portrayal of witches in the highly anticipated Wicked movie. Witch Hunt podcast hosts Josh Hutchinson and Sarah Jack delve into their immediate reactions and the deeper social themes conveyed through the film
Purchase the Wonderful and Wicked Books of Oz in our Bookstore
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Witch Hunt. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
And I'm Sarah Jack. Today we continue our
exploration of which representation on stage and
screen. There's no bigger witch story in
modern entertainment than Wicked.
As we anticipate the upcoming film adaptation, we're thrilled
to welcome 2 distinguished scholars who bring unique
perspectives to this revolutionary musical.
(00:23):
Paul Aired, professor emeritus of musicology at the University
of Kansas, wrote the definitive book on Wicked's development,
and had unprecedented access to composer Steven Swartz during
the show's creation. And Jane Barnett, professor of
theatre and dance at the University of Kansas and author
of Which Fulfillment brings her expertise in adaptation and
(00:45):
which representation, offering insights into how Wicked
transformed our understanding ofwhich characters on stage.
Together, they'll help us understand how this reimagining
of Oz's witches continues to challenge our assumptions about
good, evil, and the power of female friendship.
From its groundbreaking music toits political resonance, from
(01:06):
its ritual Broadway run to its upcoming film adaptation, we'll
explore why Wicked's magic endures.
So whether you're a dedicated fan who knows every word of
Defying Gravity or you're just curious about how stories about
witches reflect our changing culture, this conversation will
give you new perspectives on this remarkable show.
Let's. Dive in.
(01:28):
Welcome to Witch Hunt Podcasts. Thank you both for joining us.
Before we explore Wicked, would you tell our listeners about
your work in this realm and whatdrew you to studying this
remarkable piece? Well, my name is Paul Laird.
I'm a professor emeritus of musicology at the University of
Kansas. For a number of years I've
specialized in research in musical theatre.
(01:51):
It's taken me into various corners.
The corner of interest here is I've worked extensively on the
music and works of Stephen Schwartz 2 I wrote two books
about it. One of them was on Wicked and
the other was on Schwartz's other works, with a tiny little
chapter on Wicked referring themto the larger study.
I've interviewed Stephen Schwartz a number of times, and
(02:12):
I've done a great deal of other publishing on other aspects of
musical theater. And yes, my name's Jane Barnett,
and I'm a professor of theater and dance at the University of
Kansas. My area of expertise is
adaptation dramaturgy, and I have recently written a book
called Witch Fulfillment, which is about the wishes we fulfill
(02:34):
when we put witch characters on stage.
And a couple of those chapters specifically reference Wicked.
So because it's an adaptation, and also because it features
which characters, it is definitely something of interest
to my research. And in addition, a future
project of mine is also tacklingthe question of revisal.
(02:57):
Not revival, but revisal and musical theatre especially as it
connects to the work of dramaturgical research.
And Professor Laird, could you tell us more about your books
Wicked, a musical biography and the musical theater of Stephen
Schwartz? Certainly the IT was good.
There was originally going to bejust one book on the musicals of
(03:20):
Stephen Schwartz, but as I started working on it, I came, I
came across I was given just reams of material on the writing
of Wicked. So it turned into a single book.
It was called Wicked, a Musical biography.
It came out in 2011 from Ramen and Littlefield, and three years
later I published a book on the musical theater, Stephen
(03:40):
Schwartz. These were based upon extensive
interviews with Schwartz and people that he worked with
various collaborators in reference to Wicked.
I also spoke to Witty Holtzman, the woman who wrote the book of
Wicked. I spoke to Stephen Ramos, who
was the music supervisor. I spoke to William David Brown,
who was the orchestrator, along with a few other people.
(04:00):
So I had lacked and access to a lot of primary materials,
including I I saw many scripts as they were preparing the show,
a lot of drafts of songs and it would.
And I even hadn't worked an orchestral score from the
recording, which is when you do what I do.
That's the Holy Grail of musicology.
(04:22):
Study musical theater because you almost never see
orchestrations. So they they made a great deal
of material available to me and I was able to write in in quite
a bit of detail on Wicked especially, but I know all of
his output quite well. Thank you.
And Professor Barnett, can you tell us more about which
fulfillment? Sure.
This book was in some ways a follow up to my first book,
(04:45):
which is called Adapter G, a newword that I decided should be in
the lexicon that is basically a sort of condensation of
adaptation dramaturgy. And I for a long time have been
fascinated with the ways that weframe witchcraft on stage and
the sort of differences between a fantasy witch and some
(05:09):
depictions of witchcraft that wemight see in real life.
And also, just for what it's worth, I, like so many other
people, had been obsessed with The Wizard of Oz for so long.
And when I have taught adaptation dramaturgy well
before I wrote the book Adapterjy, I used to use The
(05:30):
Wizard of Oz as a case study because it's such a familiar
story to use to think through different kinds of adaptations
in different media. But I have to say, Paul, so much
of your work was so helpful in the chapters where I talk about
Wicked because as you say, you had that incredible access that
helped us to kind of build the pre story to how we get to where
(05:55):
we what what most people sort ofthink of as the beginning of
Wicked on Broadway stage. Paul is able to really bring us
into the pre story, which of course for anybody interested in
adaptation, is a crucial piece of the puzzle.
But witch fulfillment is writtenas a ritual.
So it's basically written in theorder in which contemporary
(06:16):
witches might call circle. And so it starts, at least in my
tradition, in the East, which has the element of air.
And that is the chapter that I discuss Wicked and other Wizard
of Oz adaptations. We're going to jump in.
Bond's introduction of good witches marked a cultural shift
(06:36):
in American understanding of witchcraft.
How does Wicked further complicate the good, bad witch
dichotomy established by The Wizard of Oz?
So I'm glad that you mentioned that because I think that's an
important piece of the puzzle tounderstand how there wasn't room
really for thinking about or having iconic representation of
a so-called good witch before bomb in the American culture
(06:59):
especially. But what we see with Wicked
that's so intriguing, starting with McGuire and then of course
on the musical stage and now coming on the film is the
question of how did the Wicked witch get to be wicked?
And what does it mean to be wicked?
And is it actually wicked if what the person is doing is is
(07:21):
rooted in a desire for social justice?
And so depending on one's read and depending on one's reception
of the of both the novel and themusical, and again, coming soon
to theaters near you, the film, part of what it complicates is
this overall question of is she so wicked after all?
Can we see why she does the things she does?
(07:43):
And more frankly, maybe to the point, is Glenda so great?
In the 1st place, I think we do get some redemption, at least in
the musical version of Glenda orGlenda.
But at the beginning when we meet her, at least for me as
someone who was an outcast of myown, I was not at all.
(08:03):
I was like, oh, who is this pinkfrothy things?
So yeah, it complicates it a great deal.
Yeah. And in fact, in in in putting
together Wicked, the whole, one of the core ideas of the entire
show was dealing with good versus wicked questioning, which
is which. And Schwartz was, at first, he
(08:24):
was every song was going to include either the word good or
the word wicked in the title. He realized this was a very bad
idea. It was limiting what he was
trying to do, but that that's how far he was taking the idea.
And the the political aspects that I'm, which are very strong
in the stage version. And it's going to be fascinating
(08:44):
to see how that transfers into the film, especially now.
But the political aspects of it are, you know, they're sort of
what make, you know, is Glenda good?
Well, not really. And of course, it was Gregory
Mcguire's idea to turn the entire story on its head and
have this wicked witch actually be this kind of this person
campaigning for for social justice.
(09:08):
It the story itself, there's themusical itself is far more
complicated than most of the fans of the show are ever going
to want to admit it's. True.
Thank you. How would you answer the
question why these witches now? I'll start with that one just
because that's the what I like to call the, ER, dramaturgical
(09:29):
question. And I'm not the only one.
Most dramaturgics do call it that.
It's the question we always ask ourselves when we're putting on
a theatrical production. But of course it can be
transferred to any media. And it's that notion of OK,
fine, you want to stage a show, but why?
What does it say to your audiences?
So not only time wise, but also location wise, who are your
audiences? And one of the things to keep in
(09:51):
mind, of course, is that Broadway audiences for a long,
long time have been predominantly female.
And yet many musicals had missedan opportunity to truly focus on
female friendship and on the centring of female agency.
Not to suggest that there were none that did that, but as Paul
(10:12):
points out with much more acumenin terms of the musicality,
there's a difference here in terms of the depth of of
characterization that is allowedto occur for both Elphaba and
Glinda. And I think why this musical now
for then was certainly in terms of when Wicked the musical began
(10:32):
on Broadway and even before thatin in development.
I think that was in response to shifts that were happening, I'm
sure globally. But certainly in the United
States in terms of thinking about a new kind of era and
thinking through the sort of shift to a different way of
perhaps how we might think of what it means to be an American.
(10:55):
And then, of course, now, as we went, even more so at this exact
moment, after the election, but certainly leading up to the
election and after, in my opinion, after the decision that
the Supreme Court made with Dobbs.
I mean, I think there's just been a real awakening,
regardless of political persuasion, an awakening among
(11:16):
folks who have uteruses about the importance of really having
that agency to say what is on one's mind, but also to make
decisions about one's body. By these witches, now you know,
in in a way, I'm not trying to argue the other side here, but
Oz is timeless. Yes, that's true.
(11:36):
Oz Oz is with by far and away the most important American
literary fantasy. It it has changed more people's
lives than almost any American story I can think of.
Schwartz he he didn't, he didn'teven read the book by Gregory
McGuire. He was on a scuba diving trip in
Hawaii and somebody mentioned this book they were reading,
(12:00):
Gregory McGuire, and gave him a few sentences about it.
And he said, he says, when I hear a good idea for a musical,
a bell goes off in my head. And it went off immediately.
I mean, he didn't even have the book in his hand.
And he called up his agent and said, find out who has the
rights to this. We need this.
He just, he knew a good story, agood idea when he heard one
(12:20):
again, without having any accessto the book yet.
So I do think there's a strong timeless nature here.
That said, again, a lot of it I think has to do with the
politics in the show. The song Popular actually has
the word Great communicator in it, making fun of the great
communicator. And of course, people my age who
(12:41):
lived through the Reagan era, this is what people called him
for whatever reason. And it was a very pointed, it
was a very pointed reference. Of course, it wasn't a reference
for 2003. It was a reference going back to
the 1980s. But there were a lot of people
who remembered it. I just think what this show has
to say about politics in the United States in the last 40
years is really quite extraordinary.
(13:01):
For the moment, as Jane has already said, I it couldn't be
more timely. But I do also think that the
idea of two women in a show, 2 powerful women in a show, that
it is one of the strongest callsfor female empowerment Broadway
has ever seen. It's just fascinating.
The 1 is a quote good witch and one is quote sorry for the
(13:23):
scarecrows who scare roads but bad witch.
And then we spend the whole showwrestling on which is which.
Yeah, if I can follow up really quickly, I certainly agree that
the timelessness of The Wizard of Oz is at least from my
perspective, unquestionable. And it's truly not a surprise,
may I say, that sports had not read the the novel when again,
(13:47):
with all due respect, certainly what he ended up creating was
quite incredible, extraordinary.But as you also point out too,
Paul, in terms of the development piece, once we get
the actual singers in the room, especially Idina Menzel, but
even Chenoweth right, that starts to shape the musical, the
quality of the musical itself. And so there are a lot of us,
(14:09):
myself included, who are a little disappointed that he
missed some of the darker sides of Mcguire's novel and the sort
of arguably powerful queer undertones that are in Mcguire's
novel. Now, there are others who have
read Wicked, of course, as you well know.
For example, Stacey Wolf has a very compelling argument about
(14:31):
the the queer love story betweenAlphaba and Glenda.
And I think that's compelling, right?
But. But one of the things that is
true of every musical, but I think in some ways, especially
this one because of its fan culture, is that there's the
intention of the writers and what they may have started with,
but then there's the fan response.
(14:53):
And at this point, arguably the fan responses wholly and utterly
taken over whatever it was that they might have started with.
Yeah. 2020 years on, yeah, the fan responses is probably as
important or more important thanthe original intentions.
But yeah, I mean, I talked to both Holzman and Schwartz about
what you didn't really take the story that's there.
(15:14):
And they both said, well, yes, once you get the rights to the
story, you can do whatever you want with it.
And they essentially he took characters and made our own
story out of it. But I was completely shocked the
first time I saw the show. I was interviewing Schwartz
right after it. I read the novel and I saw the
show, and I was like, I mean, I felt at sea because it was so
(15:36):
different. But then I also have to admit,
as a musical theatre scholar, I realized that if they'd set the
exact story that was there, Elbawould have sung 16 songs in a
minor key and would have closed on opening night.
Yes, it's the adaptation here. It's a fascinating story and a
little bit beyond what we're doing here, but it also has a
lot to say about what the witches do and who they are.
(15:59):
Would you like to elaborate on that?
What how it affects who the witches are?
One of the things that I noticed, at least in terms of
versus the novel versus the musical on stage, has to do with
that origin story of why is her skin green, Who is Alpha BA And
I? I do want to acknowledge that
(16:19):
this is one of those ongoing debates in fandom, but I think
it's important in today's culture to acknowledge also that
there's this there's potential in terms of the baby being
understood or seen as potentially intersex or
otherwise just genderless. They reference the baby as it
(16:40):
and they're of course we know about the salesman with the
green potion and all of that piece of the puzzle.
But I think from a queer lens, which was in in many ways and
through line, for which fulfilment was queer theory, and
thinking through the ways that queer time and queer utopia can
help us understand witchcraft, Ithink that piece for me was one
(17:01):
of the most regrettable missed opportunities.
And there's like a moment like Iwould say not even a second, but
like potentially a half second of potential there with that
sort of storyline of that salesman with a green potion.
That then is echoed in the musicality and even the staging
(17:21):
later when we meet the Wizard, of course, for good reasons once
we discover that sort of connection.
But what wasn't there that I wasreally compelled by and
potentially, I don't know, mightit be in the film, I hope was
the sort of question of how Alphabet performs gender or
doesn't, right? Or how her performance goes up
against. It's implied because of the
(17:43):
pinkness of Glinda. It's brand new words, right?
Pinkness. It's implied, but it's not
explored to the extent that thatI believe is certainly possible
within Mcguire's novel. How does?
Steven Swartz Score musically distinguish Gwenda and alphabet,
and what does that tell us abouthow we're meant to understand
(18:03):
each witch? They have distinctive voices
they were conceived to have distinctive voices, but as
Jane's already alluded to that the people they hired to sing
the original roles made the score evolve in a slightly
different direction. For this, for Glenda Idina
Menzel, excuse me, the characterof Alphabet was always going to
be a belter. They rhythm and Blues diva sort
(18:27):
of role, which you get with my The Wizard and I, and certainly
in sections of Defiant Gravity and other songs.
And But Idina Menzel brought to the role the ability to belt far
higher on the treble staff than most singers consider advisable.
Usually you're only belting to about the middle of treble
(18:47):
staff. She could do it all the way to
the top, and it brings a keeningquality to her songs that's not
only attractive, it's just absolutely electrifying.
But so when Schwartz, she came in fairly late in the process.
They were work shopping this thing starting in 2000.
Kristen Chenoweth actually came in in two.
(19:10):
I was saying either really 2001 or late 2000.
But a couple of years before theshow opened, she was involved.
And so he was writing for her. I sorry, I got a little bit off.
Let me finish with Idina Menzel.She came in much later and a
couple of the songs got rewritten with her and mine in
subtle ways, but still, she was essentially the voice they were
(19:32):
looking for. Galinda was also going to be a
belter. And the songs like What is This
Feeling and Popular were writtenfor a a female belter, which is
a very typical Broadway sound. Kristen Chenoweth Blow is
singing in terms she's kind of afreak because she belts really
well and she also can sing very,very high above the treble
(19:54):
staff. She has an absolutely operatic
quality soprano extension in hervoice.
And she's she's a trained opera singer.
And she kept saying to Schwartz,why can't I sing soprano?
And Schwartz kept telling her, because you can't be two people.
And then he realized, wait a minute, she is two people.
We have the private Glenda, the Glenda in the dorm.
(20:17):
The Glenda talking to her friends, and we also have the
public Glenda, Glenda the good, Glenda out speaking, Linda out
being Glenda the good. So those those roles, those
songs are written for the soprano extension.
She goes, she goes not as high as she can, but pretty high in
those songs. And then the private Glenda is
(20:38):
the belter. They had to find women who can
sing this role, Schwartz said. You write it for one person.
I mean, you find this whole pileof people out there who can do
it. Obviously it has been a problem.
The show has been running for over 20 years minus COVID.
But that, so the the types of singers they were played a major
role in that. And it influenced what Schwartz
(20:58):
was doing in his score. He would have been perfectly
cabled to write songs without even considering the singers.
But when you're writing with a workshop process, which is the
way most musicals are put together today, certainly all of
his musicals are put together that way.
You're dealing with actors, and sometimes the actors are so good
in the role, which Christian Chenoweth was, that they just
keep singing the role. Stephanie Block was actually
(21:20):
going to be Alphaba, but then Idina Menzel came in, auditioned
and was and replaced her. Stephanie Block played the role
later. Paul, can I add to what you're
saying? And I want to be clear, a lot of
this is coming from your work, but also Stacey Wolf, in terms
of I was thinking in terms of that the vocal patterns that
(21:41):
they establish. What I found to be really
compelling, especially frankly in the audience, I read about it
first and then I saw it in the audience is the way that it
switches. And that in that for good,
right? Like that sort of moment and for
good where they switch is just, I did not expect to cry because
I knew it was coming. But there is something about
musical theatre that is different from regular quote UN
(22:03):
quote straight theatre, legit theatre, however you want to
make that distinction. But it truly is an embodied kind
of spectatorship, right? Sometimes we tap our toes,
sometimes it's just sort of likea vibration in our body.
But a lot of times it can make us laugh or cry.
And in that moment for good where they kind of they and Paul
will. Cross parts.
(22:24):
Thank you. All of a sudden Elpop is singing
above Glinda. Yes, and I know exactly the
moment you're talking about and it's incredibly satisfying.
Yes, electrifying. And you know what?
It's witchcraft, if I may, that to me, as someone who studies
witchcraft, was just so powerfulbecause it's a transformation.
(22:44):
So what's at the root of all witchcraft?
Transformation. And to see that happen on stage,
through stagecraft, through through music.
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
I get so excited. Well, I mean, you know it in
some ways. It's such a skillfully written
score is witchcraft. That's why you go through all of
the workshops. If the song doesn't land, why
(23:06):
didn't it land? Is it the coming up to it?
Is it leaving it? Is it something in the song
itself? There's 20 songs on the original
cast recording. Schwartz wrote parts of about 50
songs for this show. We the amount of material I've
seen of things that didn't end up in the show, including
entirely written songs. There's a table in my book that
(23:27):
goes on for pages about the various songs written for the
song placement. It's, you know, we're, we're
talking obviously about collaboration, but we're just
talking about experimentation. What works the best?
And in this score, make a bad pun.
He scored because these songs were well tested.
(23:47):
The performances were thought through by an awful lot of
people. And so when you get a song like
Define Gravity or For Good, which let's face it, high school
kids are going to be singing, high school females are going to
be singing that song in final concerts until the end of time
because there is no better expression of the idea of best
friends forever. But I also think what you're
(24:08):
talking about is dramaturgy, although it's not necessarily
common parlance, right? Of course, collaboration has
always been part of theater. Let me be clear.
And I would also say so has dramaturgy.
We just says we haven't always necessarily acknowledged it.
And one of the things that dramaturgy is strongest at is
being that sort of extra set of eyes in the room or in the
(24:29):
workshop. Who can say, oh, what I hear you
doing is blah, blah, blah. I wonder what would it make
sense to switch registers at this point to see if that helps
to solidify the way that they'vekind of switch.
Because it's also when I think, Paul, you point this out in, in
your work as well, the, the factthat there's this talk about
limitless versus limited, right?And there's this sort of switch
(24:51):
that happens in terms of who thinks they're limited and who
thinks they're limitless, right?So at first we see Elphaba
thinking that she's limited in large part because of her green
skin, but also because she's feels unloved and, and
ostracized. And eventually she gets to a
point of limitlessness, whereas Glinda comes in with this
(25:12):
feeling of complete power that does get clipped because of the
choices that she has made, arguably fairly selflessly, so
that Elphaba can can continue onin secret.
Yeah, choices that hurt her a great deal.
Yeah, the growth in her character is quite
extraordinary. She actually becomes a fully
(25:33):
realized human being by the end of the second act.
And of course, in the first act,she's just a silly young woman
in many ways. Yeah, yeah, the unlimited.
Of course, there's the unlimitedmotive that occurs in, I think
it's stated 4 times during the course of the show.
Schwartz knew early on that he wanted her to be singing
Unlimited. And then finally, Alphabet at
(25:56):
the end is singing how she's limited because she can't go on.
Her presence is not going to fixthe finish this Glenda has to
finish it. So yeah, the words limited and
unlimited take on a very interesting take for both
characters, both witches. There's also the third witch of
course too, Madam Marable. Or the 4th, Also Nessa Baum.
(26:17):
Yeah, we yeah, Nessa Rose. Oh, sorry, Nessa.
Rose, Nessa Rose. Yeah, why not Baum?
Let's just try it. Why not?
Yeah, you've already got Alphabaname for his initials, so why
not throw his whole name in there?
How do you think the casting of Cynthia Rivo and Ariana Grande
(26:38):
is going to impact the portrayals of these roles?
Now, this is a big thing, at least from my perspective, from
which fulfilment the book that Imentioned earlier, because I
have an early chapter about casting for the stage or for
performance in general, but alsocasting in terms of spell
casting and just how capacious the word is.
(27:00):
Because casting can mean fishing, it can mean a vote.
God help us. It can mean a bunch of different
things, right? But for for a long time,
American audiences have been clamoring to have a professional
black actress play the role of Elphaba.
And there's been a lot of question about why, especially
since she's going to be painted in green anyway.
(27:22):
It just doesn't, it's been very odd.
And also, frankly, in terms of the vocality, there are plenty
of black singers and musical theatre actors who can play that
role exquisitely in. Can I just interrupt very
quickly? Please.
Yeah. Absolutely agree with what
you're saying. We have to remember the model.
The way that Idina Menzel is singing through most of that
(27:44):
show comes more out of black popular music than it does out
of white popular music. 100% yeah.
And not to mention and, and here, of course, don't let me
get too far on the soapbox, but frankly, all of musical theatre
comes from that trajectory, right?
Because there's this whole history of Vince Tracy behind
it. And not to mention parts of
(28:06):
vaudeville and and gospel music.Anyway, don't get me started on
that. But I think that the casting of
Cynthia in the role of Elphaba, that there is a great power in
the representation that the opportunity to represent that
particular role on on film. It's not that Cynthia Rivo is
(28:26):
not well known because of courseshe is.
She's Tony award-winning and certainly has had fame of her
own. But I think this is a new
frontier and something that a lot of the American fandom for
Wicked has has wanted for quite some time.
I keep saying American because on the West End, they have had
some examples of black actors playing the the role of Elphaba.
(28:47):
Now we have had a a black actor in the role of Glynda, Brittany
Johnson, but there's there's another sort of layer of power
in choosing Ariana Grande for that role.
Is she playing against type? I don't know.
I'm not that into the Ariana Grande.
(29:07):
But from my perspective as someone who started this whole
quest to look at which representation, my initial sort
of pass at that book was about makeup design and also
prosthetics from the neck up. So I've been for a long time
very interested in how we use makeup to create freak or other
(29:28):
characters, things like the noseand headgear and stuff.
And I'm, I personally am quite interested in the fact that
Ariana Grande has a makeup company, R.E.M., and that this
is the person who ends up playing this role of Glenda.
And why is that important? Well, because also the very
first well known Glenda, what isher name?
(29:48):
Billy something. For.
That's right. Billy Burke had a a sort of
column about makeup in early magazines that sort of helped to
guide early, yeah, in early cosmetic history.
So there's this really interesting kind of for the real
nerds of makeup, right? There's this really interesting
(30:09):
trajectory that can be traced with Ariana Grande in that role.
Yeah, I I love what Jane just said.
All I would add is there's a long history and musical.
We have been film musicals especially of bringing pop stars
in to hope to Co opt their fan base.
And of course Ariana Grande has a very, very large fan base.
(30:32):
It's going to get an awful lot of people into seeing the movie.
I'm certainly not surprised thatsince she was able to do the
role so well that they gave it to her.
And I have nothing to add about Cynthia Revo.
I think James covered that very well.
I'd like to talk a little bit about the Wizards use of magic
versus the females use of magic.Well the wizard doesn't do magic
(30:55):
he has no power and alpha when alpha but realizes this is what
brings down bring brings about the meltdown that hazard making
have to leave after defying gravity.
The wizard only claims to have power.
He's a fraud. There are no male figures who
perform magic in Wicked. I think that's actually
(31:15):
important. The women have the power and
they not only have the magic power, they have the musical
power because as I explained in my book, it probably too much
length. The powerful people in musical
theater, the ones who were singing, and the vast majority
of the songs are sung by Galindaand Alphabur.
Both their vocal presence on theoriginal cast recordings about
(31:36):
equal actually, and the wizard sings, but the wizard had just a
couple of songs. But the wizard has no magic.
I, Jane, may have more to say about this than I do, but I
think it's very important that we don't have there is the
wizard is a fraud. Yeah, I'm.
This is such a good question, right?
Because what kind of magic are we talking about?
(31:57):
Are we talking about sleight of hand magic?
The kind of magic shows I'm going to pull a rabbit out of a
hat. Don't look over here, look over
here. That's the kind of magic that
the wizard does. He represents for me the kind of
traveling medicine show kind of magic or magician that we saw in
the turn of the 19th and 20th century, not just here in the
(32:19):
United States, but elsewhere. The fact that he's a fraud, but
also that he's a confidence man,right?
So he basically is, if you thinkit, you can do it.
And look what I have done. I think that is again, one of
these, why this wizard? Now, hopefully it's quite
obvious that that's part of an era globally that we're dealing
with in terms of strong men, confidence men, people who talk
(32:42):
a good game, people who might beperforming more than they're
doing, people whose idea of politics is in fact performance
may be full stop. But for the women, the
witchcraft that they're performing in terms of Elphaba
and Glinda, and then also Nessa Rose and Madame Horrible.
Thank you, that thank you. That magic is what I
(33:07):
distinguish, in my book at least, a kind of fantasy magic,
because we see flying, or at least like an indication that
there might be flight, and we see actual transformations occur
right in front of us. And while that is compelling and
certainly entertaining and the kind of thing that I too enjoy,
my, my deeper interest is in thekind of magic that contemporary
(33:33):
practitioners of witchcraft might might be interested in, in
creating through ritual, throughintentions, through spells and
things like that. So I do think that there's
something very important here torecognize in terms of the
different ways that magic is done gender wise, that I think
it is significant that we have afraud who's doing magic but who
(33:58):
has a whole lot of power, tremendous power, who is male
versus these women who are who are doing all sorts of really,
frankly, much more remarkable magic, but they don't have
nearly as much power. Yeah, and of course it's the
fact. I mean, and of course Alphabet
has this ability and she just, she doesn't know what it is.
(34:20):
She doesn't know how to harness it.
It's Madam Morable who sees it and tries to teach her some.
And of course the whole idea is she's teaching her so she can
bring her to the wizard, and allof a sudden the wizard would
have an assistant who really does have magical power.
Yes, the fantasy kind of magic we're talking about, but it's a
terribly important part of the story.
And as as you said, there are many different ways of looking
(34:45):
at magic, looking at witchcraft,what does witchcraft mean to
different people in different contexts?
And one thing I appreciate in Witch Fulfillment, you
acknowledge that there are stillwitch hunts going on.
There's persecutions of people accusing witchcraft, which is
something we talked about a lot on this show.
(35:07):
And how do you think we have real world examples like that?
Wicked, There's a lot of it about othering, about alpha
buzz, otherness. How do you think those two
things do that? Is there a connection?
Yeah, I don't think it's a direct connection, but let me
(35:28):
start by saying first of all, one of the things I really
admire about your show is the fact that you are bringing
attention to this. I think so few people
understand. I've been teaching in Witches in
Popular Culture class here at KUfor several years, and without
fail, the students are absolutely floored to learn that
(35:49):
that witch hunts still occur. It's a terrifying time because
I'm not sure that we're always necessarily going to be looking
at that happening so far away. Yes, there's a lot of this
happening in India and in parts of Africa and in parts of Asia
and in parts of the Americas, right?
And probably more close by than you might think.
(36:09):
And typically speaking, the kindof folks who are targeted for
witchcraft are indeed people whoare deemed outsiders for all
sorts of reasons, including their sexuality, but also
sometimes their power or their ability to heal in ways that go
against what is the status quo idea or understanding of what
(36:30):
healing is or even potentially what psychologically is supposed
to be. You know the norm.
And in that regard, I think we see some very interesting
comparisons not only with Elphaba but also with Nessa
Rose, right? Because she is an individual who
uses a wheelchair. And obviously in the musical,
(36:51):
it's not as though we get to know her as this really good
person. And I think that's I think
that's good in some ways to havesome complexity there that we
don't always want to just paint with broad strokes an idea of,
oh, here's a character with a disability.
Let's make sure that that's likethe hero.
I think we want to make sure that we have full humanity in in
(37:13):
all the cases. But I think in that family line,
there's something potentially quite interesting, especially
when you think about the potion,right?
So the notion of, again, as muchas we are to understand that the
potion was also a fraud, that itwas also a thing that was being
sold for reasons that were moneydriven as opposed to healing
(37:34):
driven. But, but when we think about
what kinds of people are targeted for witchcraft in a in
a desire to either kill or otherwise contain, we often look
at healers. We often look at people who are
using unusual ways to heal others.
(37:55):
And if you think about what Alpha Buzz project becomes in
terms of her dedication to the animals, right, and her desire
to to stop what's happening to the animals in terms of them
losing the ability to speak and them losing status.
I think in the animal class we see a little bit of a parallel
(38:17):
to what what we can look at in terms of the long history of
witch hunts. The othering issue is with with
Alpha Alphabets. It's fascinating part of the
show and she's green that there's all kinds of things that
make her different. It's made very clear in the
script and in the music that sheis another and everybody
considers her to be. So when her powers become
(38:40):
clearer, obviously she becomes even more of an other.
Nessa Rose is a problem character.
She was supposed to have a much larger part.
She had a song, the melody she keep every time she sings in the
show, she sings the same melody and that was going to be her own
song. But they just, they realized
they could not have three major female characters.
(39:01):
The story, the musical wasn't long enough.
The story, you can only do so much in a musical.
It's hard to develop character. And Nessa Rose, she just had to
be put on the back burner. It's not what they wanted to do,
but it just became absolutely necessary.
As far as her disability, the the way the disability is
treated in the show does not show any kind of forward-looking
(39:21):
thinking about how disability can be treated in a in a musical
or a film or anything else. It's pathetic really.
But it's all part of this keeping her character from being
too important, because beyond Alpha and Glenda, they simply
could not have another female that the audience was going to
be wondering much about. Is someone dancing through life?
Suggests very different world views between the characters.
(39:44):
How does Wicked use these personal conflicts to explore
larger political ideas about power and prejudice?
Oh, what a great question. Such a good question.
Where would you start with that,Jane?
I'd go straight to the music, but maybe.
We I was hoping you would talk alittle bit about the music and
because I used to play violin, but I am just not as I just
(40:09):
don't understand it in the way that you do, no.
The song Dancing Through Life was the last one that came
together for the show, and the major reason for that is it
bears such a huge plot that so much of the plot is developed in
that song. It's 7 or 8 minutes in length.
And we learned so much about Glenda.
We learned so much about Alfa. But Fiero comes in and we we
(40:32):
have this kind of dense male character, but he's the party
guy and we get that established.There's just, there's so much
going on in that song. They worked it out in the the
show ran in San Francisco in June of 2003 and Schwartz had
allowed to have a full out production.
He was hoping to have a simple production near in New York.
(40:53):
But instead they wanted, he wanted a full out production in
San Francisco, as far away from New York as they could.
But he allowed that to happen with the stipulation that they
would shut the production down for six weeks so that they could
do their rewrites. Then that six week shutdown cost
producers a million and a half dollars, keeping everybody on on
salary. So this was, I'm sure with the
producers. This was one major shouting
(41:14):
argument, but it's the way he and Lenny Holtzman wanted to
work. And it was during that summer
that he wrote Dancing Through Life and that they figured out
how they could get all the bloodthrough that.
They were still trying to figureout what Elphabus Grand Crusade
was at that point. The goat was that Doctor
Dilleman wasn't a history, as you know, he's not a history
teacher in the book. He's got some formula.
(41:35):
He's trying to prove the talkinganimals.
They wrote all kinds of materialto go with that, but they just
said it didn't make it was too hard to show on stage.
So they backed away from that made him a history professor and
you know, a lot of these decisions that were made quite
late. So Dancing through Life was it
was a a huge collaborative project through the summer of
2003. I think it does comment on the
(41:57):
politics of the show, not as much as the character of the
wizard, though. The character of the wizard, I
think, is the, if you will, the political center of the show,
because this is the leader of this country and we recognize
things about him that we know about leaders that we've
experienced in our lives, dancing through life.
For me, it's more of showing a difference of the character,
(42:19):
really showing the difference between the characters of Glinda
Elphaba and Fiero and Nessa Rose, for that matter.
There's so much character development that's going on in
that. And yes, they're witches, but
they're also young people, and they're just trying to find
their way. They're trying to fight people
they love. They're trying to find out who
they are. And for me, what what along with
(42:39):
that song is about is about whatso many of us go through, like,
you know, late high school and during college, just trying to
find out who we are. And I think that's a lot of
what's going on in that song, the music, it's got disco in it,
it's got normal musical theatre material, it's got a little bit
of everything. And that's what a musical
theatre composer has to be able to do, draw in any musical style
(43:01):
they need to. So it will be immediately
understandable to the majority of the audience.
Paul, will you remind me, is this during the big dance or
will you help me or? Yeah, the dance, the dance, the
song. Actually, Elbow begets the Black
Hat from Glenda during song. Glenda's talking with her
friends may say, oh, you don't hate anybody that much to give
(43:21):
that hat to. And she gives her hat.
And that's where Fiero comes in.And Fiero, of course, looks at
the pretty blonde and is interested in her first, as
everybody expects him to. And then he's to say, well, we
got to have a party. So we now we learn about the Oz
does Ballroom, which in the original novels ACD plays.
It's a little different when youget to it in the musical.
(43:43):
And then we have Alphabet comingin and doing the dance herself
and Glenda Deal, Glenda realizing how deep this woman is
and how deep she isn't. And it goes to her.
It's there's just, there's so much character development and
story development going on in that song.
It's hard to think of song. There are other songs and
(44:04):
musicals that do this much. This one's huge.
I'm glad that my sort of memory wasn't too far off there,
because it does. I think the song also allows us
to look at how the musical at least is, again, not necessarily
intentionally doing this, but certainly from a fan perspective
can do this is showing us the power of the patriarchy as well.
(44:26):
And even in terms of Glenda's recognition that she's not so
deep, because the way it reads, at least to me, is that kind of
the at least the beginning. The only reason she wants to
learn more about animals and do anything good is that she wants
Fiero to look at her and not to look at Alphaba.
And that sort of triangulation, for me, is an important
(44:49):
narrative that isn't always centered in musical theatre.
We certainly always have, like, boy meets girls stories.
That's basically musical theatre.
And we certainly always have love triangles.
Yeah, absolutely. But to have the sort of jealousy
and or different choices hinge on socially relevant kinds of
(45:12):
activist choices, arguably that was that.
That was refreshing. And that potentially has a
little bit of a different read. It makes, at least from my
perspective as a feminist spectator to signal Joel Dolan's
work is what that does for me isto say, oh, I knew you were
(45:33):
superficial, Glenda, but man andFiero, I just have to say how
grateful I am that he is just sodumb now.
I mean, at least that he is at least like he's just so
underdeveloped, at least in the stage musical piece of the
puzzle, because it's refreshing,frankly, to be able to objectify
(45:54):
a male on stage and to not feel bad about it, right?
I don't mean to, I don't know what I'm saying really, except
for I just enjoy that. And and typically the actors
playing that role are pretty nice to look at.
So there's like this moment of, oh, he's pretty, but who cares?
Let's get back to the girls. And yet he does grow as a
character as he grows closer to Alphaba.
(46:15):
Which I attribute to Alphaba andnot to him.
Yeah, I, I would see that. I would understand why.
I would understand why. And I can't say I'm a female
feminist watching the show, but I am a male feminist watching
it. And I I am very grateful for a
show that spends so much time with the women.
Again, it's unusual, it really is, and I'm hoping that the film
(46:38):
carries a similar message along those lines.
I don't see how it can't, but wehave seen much ballyhooed
musicals come in and just fall flat on their face.
What are you most looking forward to in the film?
Well, the score, but. That's right.
Aren't there new songs? No.
Or not new but like. No, I don't think so.
(47:00):
I think I, I, I, I haven't heardthat, have you?
I have. I've heard.
Let's put it this way, I've heard it on Reddit.
So what does that mean? I don't know.
OK, well I'm looking forward to hearing the songs I love with
the full Symphony Orchestra, which is an off.
That's an awful lot of fun. And a films because film.
Film studios use full sympathy orchestra.
You can only fit so many instruments in a pit.
(47:20):
So it opens and even if nobody knows what they're listening to,
it opens up the score in a way that it's going to sound
completely different than the show.
The other thing I'm looking forward to is seeing all the
things you can't do on stage because we can have singers, we
can have we can see their faces while they're singing.
It just did it. Everybody needs to remember that
(47:41):
film is a completely different medium and you can't just say
we're filming Wicked, you're you're exploding Wicked when
you're bringing it to a screen. So I'm looking for all those
things. One of the things that I think
is really exciting from what I've been reading and even just
some of the videos that have started to trickle out, there
are at least a couple of scenes that seem somewhat continuous
(48:04):
that they built such a huge set that there's because it's rare
in film to have continuous shots.
And there are at least a couple of them that are set in the sort
of bigger area with all the actors on set and with
three-dimensional sets that havebeen built at great expense.
And with a camera that tracing all of that more or less in one
(48:26):
shot, As far as I understand, that is very exciting because to
Paul's point, typically when we jump to film, that's one of the
things that we miss. We miss the sort of largess of
the world. Because of course, with theater,
we can always choose who we're going to look at or what we're
going to look at on the stage, whereas the camera is giving us
(48:47):
the sort of frame that tends to be much more close.
But the other thing that I thinkI'm really looking forward to,
again, as a makeup person, as someone who is both a makeup
enthusiast and a makeup artist, is I'm really looking forward to
seeing how the green skin transfers on film.
That's a very difficult color towork with other colors on stage
(49:10):
and with lighting. And then everything I've seen of
Ariana's costumes and her makeupand her hair, I'm really looking
forward to that kind of design element being much more, for
lack of a better word, consumable.
And then the final thing is someone who does theater and
wants more and more people to beinterested in both theater and
(49:32):
in witches. I, I think it's just going to
widen the possible audience for both for musical theater and for
folks who, if they're not already interested in witches or
fantasy witches, at least that it's going to widen that
audience base. Thank you both so much for
joining us today. It's been a real pleasure.
(49:55):
My pleasure. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Professors Laird and Barnett.
And thank you for joining us forthis episode of WITCH.
Hunt, join us every week. Have a great today at a wicked
tomorrow.
Welcome to Witch Hunt. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
And I'm Sarah Jack. Today we continue our
exploration of which representation on stage and
screen. There's no bigger witch story in
modern entertainment than Wicked.
As we anticipate the upcoming film adaptation, we're thrilled
to welcome 2 distinguished scholars who bring unique
perspectives to this revolutionary musical.
(00:23):
Paul Aired, professor emeritus of musicology at the University
of Kansas, wrote the definitive book on Wicked's development,
and had unprecedented access to composer Steven Swartz during
the show's creation. And Jane Barnett, professor of
theatre and dance at the University of Kansas and author
of Which Fulfillment brings her expertise in adaptation and
(00:45):
which representation, offering insights into how Wicked
transformed our understanding ofwhich characters on stage.
Together, they'll help us understand how this reimagining
of Oz's witches continues to challenge our assumptions about
good, evil, and the power of female friendship.
From its groundbreaking music toits political resonance, from
(01:06):
its ritual Broadway run to its upcoming film adaptation, we'll
explore why Wicked's magic endures.
So whether you're a dedicated fan who knows every word of
Defying Gravity or you're just curious about how stories about
witches reflect our changing culture, this conversation will
give you new perspectives on this remarkable show.
Let's. Dive in.
(01:28):
Welcome to Witch Hunt Podcasts. Thank you both for joining us.
Before we explore Wicked, would you tell our listeners about
your work in this realm and whatdrew you to studying this
remarkable piece? Well, my name is Paul Laird.
I'm a professor emeritus of musicology at the University of
Kansas. For a number of years I've
specialized in research in musical theatre.
(01:51):
It's taken me into various corners.
The corner of interest here is I've worked extensively on the
music and works of Stephen Schwartz 2 I wrote two books
about it. One of them was on Wicked and
the other was on Schwartz's other works, with a tiny little
chapter on Wicked referring themto the larger study.
I've interviewed Stephen Schwartz a number of times, and
(02:12):
I've done a great deal of other publishing on other aspects of
musical theater. And yes, my name's Jane Barnett,
and I'm a professor of theater and dance at the University of
Kansas. My area of expertise is
adaptation dramaturgy, and I have recently written a book
called Witch Fulfillment, which is about the wishes we fulfill
(02:34):
when we put witch characters on stage.
And a couple of those chapters specifically reference Wicked.
So because it's an adaptation, and also because it features
which characters, it is definitely something of interest
to my research. And in addition, a future
project of mine is also tacklingthe question of revisal.
(02:57):
Not revival, but revisal and musical theatre especially as it
connects to the work of dramaturgical research.
And Professor Laird, could you tell us more about your books
Wicked, a musical biography and the musical theater of Stephen
Schwartz? Certainly the IT was good.
There was originally going to bejust one book on the musicals of
(03:20):
Stephen Schwartz, but as I started working on it, I came, I
came across I was given just reams of material on the writing
of Wicked. So it turned into a single book.
It was called Wicked, a Musical biography.
It came out in 2011 from Ramen and Littlefield, and three years
later I published a book on the musical theater, Stephen
(03:40):
Schwartz. These were based upon extensive
interviews with Schwartz and people that he worked with
various collaborators in reference to Wicked.
I also spoke to Witty Holtzman, the woman who wrote the book of
Wicked. I spoke to Stephen Ramos, who
was the music supervisor. I spoke to William David Brown,
who was the orchestrator, along with a few other people.
(04:00):
So I had lacked and access to a lot of primary materials,
including I I saw many scripts as they were preparing the show,
a lot of drafts of songs and it would.
And I even hadn't worked an orchestral score from the
recording, which is when you do what I do.
That's the Holy Grail of musicology.
(04:22):
Study musical theater because you almost never see
orchestrations. So they they made a great deal
of material available to me and I was able to write in in quite
a bit of detail on Wicked especially, but I know all of
his output quite well. Thank you.
And Professor Barnett, can you tell us more about which
fulfillment? Sure.
This book was in some ways a follow up to my first book,
(04:45):
which is called Adapter G, a newword that I decided should be in
the lexicon that is basically a sort of condensation of
adaptation dramaturgy. And I for a long time have been
fascinated with the ways that weframe witchcraft on stage and
the sort of differences between a fantasy witch and some
(05:09):
depictions of witchcraft that wemight see in real life.
And also, just for what it's worth, I, like so many other
people, had been obsessed with The Wizard of Oz for so long.
And when I have taught adaptation dramaturgy well
before I wrote the book Adapterjy, I used to use The
(05:30):
Wizard of Oz as a case study because it's such a familiar
story to use to think through different kinds of adaptations
in different media. But I have to say, Paul, so much
of your work was so helpful in the chapters where I talk about
Wicked because as you say, you had that incredible access that
helped us to kind of build the pre story to how we get to where
(05:55):
we what what most people sort ofthink of as the beginning of
Wicked on Broadway stage. Paul is able to really bring us
into the pre story, which of course for anybody interested in
adaptation, is a crucial piece of the puzzle.
But witch fulfillment is writtenas a ritual.
So it's basically written in theorder in which contemporary
(06:16):
witches might call circle. And so it starts, at least in my
tradition, in the East, which has the element of air.
And that is the chapter that I discuss Wicked and other Wizard
of Oz adaptations. We're going to jump in.
Bond's introduction of good witches marked a cultural shift
(06:36):
in American understanding of witchcraft.
How does Wicked further complicate the good, bad witch
dichotomy established by The Wizard of Oz?
So I'm glad that you mentioned that because I think that's an
important piece of the puzzle tounderstand how there wasn't room
really for thinking about or having iconic representation of
a so-called good witch before bomb in the American culture
(06:59):
especially. But what we see with Wicked
that's so intriguing, starting with McGuire and then of course
on the musical stage and now coming on the film is the
question of how did the Wicked witch get to be wicked?
And what does it mean to be wicked?
And is it actually wicked if what the person is doing is is
(07:21):
rooted in a desire for social justice?
And so depending on one's read and depending on one's reception
of the of both the novel and themusical, and again, coming soon
to theaters near you, the film, part of what it complicates is
this overall question of is she so wicked after all?
Can we see why she does the things she does?
(07:43):
And more frankly, maybe to the point, is Glenda so great?
In the 1st place, I think we do get some redemption, at least in
the musical version of Glenda orGlenda.
But at the beginning when we meet her, at least for me as
someone who was an outcast of myown, I was not at all.
(08:03):
I was like, oh, who is this pinkfrothy things?
So yeah, it complicates it a great deal.
Yeah. And in fact, in in in putting
together Wicked, the whole, one of the core ideas of the entire
show was dealing with good versus wicked questioning, which
is which. And Schwartz was, at first, he
(08:24):
was every song was going to include either the word good or
the word wicked in the title. He realized this was a very bad
idea. It was limiting what he was
trying to do, but that that's how far he was taking the idea.
And the the political aspects that I'm, which are very strong
in the stage version. And it's going to be fascinating
(08:44):
to see how that transfers into the film, especially now.
But the political aspects of it are, you know, they're sort of
what make, you know, is Glenda good?
Well, not really. And of course, it was Gregory
Mcguire's idea to turn the entire story on its head and
have this wicked witch actually be this kind of this person
campaigning for for social justice.
(09:08):
It the story itself, there's themusical itself is far more
complicated than most of the fans of the show are ever going
to want to admit it's. True.
Thank you. How would you answer the
question why these witches now? I'll start with that one just
because that's the what I like to call the, ER, dramaturgical
(09:29):
question. And I'm not the only one.
Most dramaturgics do call it that.
It's the question we always ask ourselves when we're putting on
a theatrical production. But of course it can be
transferred to any media. And it's that notion of OK,
fine, you want to stage a show, but why?
What does it say to your audiences?
So not only time wise, but also location wise, who are your
audiences? And one of the things to keep in
(09:51):
mind, of course, is that Broadway audiences for a long,
long time have been predominantly female.
And yet many musicals had missedan opportunity to truly focus on
female friendship and on the centring of female agency.
Not to suggest that there were none that did that, but as Paul
(10:12):
points out with much more acumenin terms of the musicality,
there's a difference here in terms of the depth of of
characterization that is allowedto occur for both Elphaba and
Glinda. And I think why this musical now
for then was certainly in terms of when Wicked the musical began
(10:32):
on Broadway and even before thatin in development.
I think that was in response to shifts that were happening, I'm
sure globally. But certainly in the United
States in terms of thinking about a new kind of era and
thinking through the sort of shift to a different way of
perhaps how we might think of what it means to be an American.
(10:55):
And then, of course, now, as we went, even more so at this exact
moment, after the election, but certainly leading up to the
election and after, in my opinion, after the decision that
the Supreme Court made with Dobbs.
I mean, I think there's just been a real awakening,
regardless of political persuasion, an awakening among
(11:16):
folks who have uteruses about the importance of really having
that agency to say what is on one's mind, but also to make
decisions about one's body. By these witches, now you know,
in in a way, I'm not trying to argue the other side here, but
Oz is timeless. Yes, that's true.
(11:36):
Oz Oz is with by far and away the most important American
literary fantasy. It it has changed more people's
lives than almost any American story I can think of.
Schwartz he he didn't, he didn'teven read the book by Gregory
McGuire. He was on a scuba diving trip in
Hawaii and somebody mentioned this book they were reading,
(12:00):
Gregory McGuire, and gave him a few sentences about it.
And he said, he says, when I hear a good idea for a musical,
a bell goes off in my head. And it went off immediately.
I mean, he didn't even have the book in his hand.
And he called up his agent and said, find out who has the
rights to this. We need this.
He just, he knew a good story, agood idea when he heard one
(12:20):
again, without having any accessto the book yet.
So I do think there's a strong timeless nature here.
That said, again, a lot of it I think has to do with the
politics in the show. The song Popular actually has
the word Great communicator in it, making fun of the great
communicator. And of course, people my age who
(12:41):
lived through the Reagan era, this is what people called him
for whatever reason. And it was a very pointed, it
was a very pointed reference. Of course, it wasn't a reference
for 2003. It was a reference going back to
the 1980s. But there were a lot of people
who remembered it. I just think what this show has
to say about politics in the United States in the last 40
years is really quite extraordinary.
(13:01):
For the moment, as Jane has already said, I it couldn't be
more timely. But I do also think that the
idea of two women in a show, 2 powerful women in a show, that
it is one of the strongest callsfor female empowerment Broadway
has ever seen. It's just fascinating.
The 1 is a quote good witch and one is quote sorry for the
(13:23):
scarecrows who scare roads but bad witch.
And then we spend the whole showwrestling on which is which.
Yeah, if I can follow up really quickly, I certainly agree that
the timelessness of The Wizard of Oz is at least from my
perspective, unquestionable. And it's truly not a surprise,
may I say, that sports had not read the the novel when again,
(13:47):
with all due respect, certainly what he ended up creating was
quite incredible, extraordinary.But as you also point out too,
Paul, in terms of the development piece, once we get
the actual singers in the room, especially Idina Menzel, but
even Chenoweth right, that starts to shape the musical, the
quality of the musical itself. And so there are a lot of us,
(14:09):
myself included, who are a little disappointed that he
missed some of the darker sides of Mcguire's novel and the sort
of arguably powerful queer undertones that are in Mcguire's
novel. Now, there are others who have
read Wicked, of course, as you well know.
For example, Stacey Wolf has a very compelling argument about
(14:31):
the the queer love story betweenAlphaba and Glenda.
And I think that's compelling, right?
But. But one of the things that is
true of every musical, but I think in some ways, especially
this one because of its fan culture, is that there's the
intention of the writers and what they may have started with,
but then there's the fan response.
(14:53):
And at this point, arguably the fan responses wholly and utterly
taken over whatever it was that they might have started with.
Yeah. 2020 years on, yeah, the fan responses is probably as
important or more important thanthe original intentions.
But yeah, I mean, I talked to both Holzman and Schwartz about
what you didn't really take the story that's there.
(15:14):
And they both said, well, yes, once you get the rights to the
story, you can do whatever you want with it.
And they essentially he took characters and made our own
story out of it. But I was completely shocked the
first time I saw the show. I was interviewing Schwartz
right after it. I read the novel and I saw the
show, and I was like, I mean, I felt at sea because it was so
(15:36):
different. But then I also have to admit,
as a musical theatre scholar, I realized that if they'd set the
exact story that was there, Elbawould have sung 16 songs in a
minor key and would have closed on opening night.
Yes, it's the adaptation here. It's a fascinating story and a
little bit beyond what we're doing here, but it also has a
lot to say about what the witches do and who they are.
(15:59):
Would you like to elaborate on that?
What how it affects who the witches are?
One of the things that I noticed, at least in terms of
versus the novel versus the musical on stage, has to do with
that origin story of why is her skin green, Who is Alpha BA And
I? I do want to acknowledge that
(16:19):
this is one of those ongoing debates in fandom, but I think
it's important in today's culture to acknowledge also that
there's this there's potential in terms of the baby being
understood or seen as potentially intersex or
otherwise just genderless. They reference the baby as it
(16:40):
and they're of course we know about the salesman with the
green potion and all of that piece of the puzzle.
But I think from a queer lens, which was in in many ways and
through line, for which fulfilment was queer theory, and
thinking through the ways that queer time and queer utopia can
help us understand witchcraft, Ithink that piece for me was one
(17:01):
of the most regrettable missed opportunities.
And there's like a moment like Iwould say not even a second, but
like potentially a half second of potential there with that
sort of storyline of that salesman with a green potion.
That then is echoed in the musicality and even the staging
(17:21):
later when we meet the Wizard, of course, for good reasons once
we discover that sort of connection.
But what wasn't there that I wasreally compelled by and
potentially, I don't know, mightit be in the film, I hope was
the sort of question of how Alphabet performs gender or
doesn't, right? Or how her performance goes up
against. It's implied because of the
(17:43):
pinkness of Glinda. It's brand new words, right?
Pinkness. It's implied, but it's not
explored to the extent that thatI believe is certainly possible
within Mcguire's novel. How does?
Steven Swartz Score musically distinguish Gwenda and alphabet,
and what does that tell us abouthow we're meant to understand
(18:03):
each witch? They have distinctive voices
they were conceived to have distinctive voices, but as
Jane's already alluded to that the people they hired to sing
the original roles made the score evolve in a slightly
different direction. For this, for Glenda Idina
Menzel, excuse me, the characterof Alphabet was always going to
be a belter. They rhythm and Blues diva sort
(18:27):
of role, which you get with my The Wizard and I, and certainly
in sections of Defiant Gravity and other songs.
And But Idina Menzel brought to the role the ability to belt far
higher on the treble staff than most singers consider advisable.
Usually you're only belting to about the middle of treble
(18:47):
staff. She could do it all the way to
the top, and it brings a keeningquality to her songs that's not
only attractive, it's just absolutely electrifying.
But so when Schwartz, she came in fairly late in the process.
They were work shopping this thing starting in 2000.
Kristen Chenoweth actually came in in two.
(19:10):
I was saying either really 2001 or late 2000.
But a couple of years before theshow opened, she was involved.
And so he was writing for her. I sorry, I got a little bit off.
Let me finish with Idina Menzel.She came in much later and a
couple of the songs got rewritten with her and mine in
subtle ways, but still, she was essentially the voice they were
(19:32):
looking for. Galinda was also going to be a
belter. And the songs like What is This
Feeling and Popular were writtenfor a a female belter, which is
a very typical Broadway sound. Kristen Chenoweth Blow is
singing in terms she's kind of afreak because she belts really
well and she also can sing very,very high above the treble
(19:54):
staff. She has an absolutely operatic
quality soprano extension in hervoice.
And she's she's a trained opera singer.
And she kept saying to Schwartz,why can't I sing soprano?
And Schwartz kept telling her, because you can't be two people.
And then he realized, wait a minute, she is two people.
We have the private Glenda, the Glenda in the dorm.
(20:17):
The Glenda talking to her friends, and we also have the
public Glenda, Glenda the good, Glenda out speaking, Linda out
being Glenda the good. So those those roles, those
songs are written for the soprano extension.
She goes, she goes not as high as she can, but pretty high in
those songs. And then the private Glenda is
(20:38):
the belter. They had to find women who can
sing this role, Schwartz said. You write it for one person.
I mean, you find this whole pileof people out there who can do
it. Obviously it has been a problem.
The show has been running for over 20 years minus COVID.
But that, so the the types of singers they were played a major
role in that. And it influenced what Schwartz
(20:58):
was doing in his score. He would have been perfectly
cabled to write songs without even considering the singers.
But when you're writing with a workshop process, which is the
way most musicals are put together today, certainly all of
his musicals are put together that way.
You're dealing with actors, and sometimes the actors are so good
in the role, which Christian Chenoweth was, that they just
keep singing the role. Stephanie Block was actually
(21:20):
going to be Alphaba, but then Idina Menzel came in, auditioned
and was and replaced her. Stephanie Block played the role
later. Paul, can I add to what you're
saying? And I want to be clear, a lot of
this is coming from your work, but also Stacey Wolf, in terms
of I was thinking in terms of that the vocal patterns that
(21:41):
they establish. What I found to be really
compelling, especially frankly in the audience, I read about it
first and then I saw it in the audience is the way that it
switches. And that in that for good,
right? Like that sort of moment and for
good where they switch is just, I did not expect to cry because
I knew it was coming. But there is something about
musical theatre that is different from regular quote UN
(22:03):
quote straight theatre, legit theatre, however you want to
make that distinction. But it truly is an embodied kind
of spectatorship, right? Sometimes we tap our toes,
sometimes it's just sort of likea vibration in our body.
But a lot of times it can make us laugh or cry.
And in that moment for good where they kind of they and Paul
will. Cross parts.
(22:24):
Thank you. All of a sudden Elpop is singing
above Glinda. Yes, and I know exactly the
moment you're talking about and it's incredibly satisfying.
Yes, electrifying. And you know what?
It's witchcraft, if I may, that to me, as someone who studies
witchcraft, was just so powerfulbecause it's a transformation.
(22:44):
So what's at the root of all witchcraft?
Transformation. And to see that happen on stage,
through stagecraft, through through music.
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
I get so excited. Well, I mean, you know it in
some ways. It's such a skillfully written
score is witchcraft. That's why you go through all of
the workshops. If the song doesn't land, why
(23:06):
didn't it land? Is it the coming up to it?
Is it leaving it? Is it something in the song
itself? There's 20 songs on the original
cast recording. Schwartz wrote parts of about 50
songs for this show. We the amount of material I've
seen of things that didn't end up in the show, including
entirely written songs. There's a table in my book that
(23:27):
goes on for pages about the various songs written for the
song placement. It's, you know, we're, we're
talking obviously about collaboration, but we're just
talking about experimentation. What works the best?
And in this score, make a bad pun.
He scored because these songs were well tested.
(23:47):
The performances were thought through by an awful lot of
people. And so when you get a song like
Define Gravity or For Good, which let's face it, high school
kids are going to be singing, high school females are going to
be singing that song in final concerts until the end of time
because there is no better expression of the idea of best
friends forever. But I also think what you're
(24:08):
talking about is dramaturgy, although it's not necessarily
common parlance, right? Of course, collaboration has
always been part of theater. Let me be clear.
And I would also say so has dramaturgy.
We just says we haven't always necessarily acknowledged it.
And one of the things that dramaturgy is strongest at is
being that sort of extra set of eyes in the room or in the
(24:29):
workshop. Who can say, oh, what I hear you
doing is blah, blah, blah. I wonder what would it make
sense to switch registers at this point to see if that helps
to solidify the way that they'vekind of switch.
Because it's also when I think, Paul, you point this out in, in
your work as well, the, the factthat there's this talk about
limitless versus limited, right?And there's this sort of switch
(24:51):
that happens in terms of who thinks they're limited and who
thinks they're limitless, right?So at first we see Elphaba
thinking that she's limited in large part because of her green
skin, but also because she's feels unloved and, and
ostracized. And eventually she gets to a
point of limitlessness, whereas Glinda comes in with this
(25:12):
feeling of complete power that does get clipped because of the
choices that she has made, arguably fairly selflessly, so
that Elphaba can can continue onin secret.
Yeah, choices that hurt her a great deal.
Yeah, the growth in her character is quite
extraordinary. She actually becomes a fully
(25:33):
realized human being by the end of the second act.
And of course, in the first act,she's just a silly young woman
in many ways. Yeah, yeah, the unlimited.
Of course, there's the unlimitedmotive that occurs in, I think
it's stated 4 times during the course of the show.
Schwartz knew early on that he wanted her to be singing
Unlimited. And then finally, Alphabet at
(25:56):
the end is singing how she's limited because she can't go on.
Her presence is not going to fixthe finish this Glenda has to
finish it. So yeah, the words limited and
unlimited take on a very interesting take for both
characters, both witches. There's also the third witch of
course too, Madam Marable. Or the 4th, Also Nessa Baum.
(26:17):
Yeah, we yeah, Nessa Rose. Oh, sorry, Nessa.
Rose, Nessa Rose. Yeah, why not Baum?
Let's just try it. Why not?
Yeah, you've already got Alphabaname for his initials, so why
not throw his whole name in there?
How do you think the casting of Cynthia Rivo and Ariana Grande
(26:38):
is going to impact the portrayals of these roles?
Now, this is a big thing, at least from my perspective, from
which fulfilment the book that Imentioned earlier, because I
have an early chapter about casting for the stage or for
performance in general, but alsocasting in terms of spell
casting and just how capacious the word is.
(27:00):
Because casting can mean fishing, it can mean a vote.
God help us. It can mean a bunch of different
things, right? But for for a long time,
American audiences have been clamoring to have a professional
black actress play the role of Elphaba.
And there's been a lot of question about why, especially
since she's going to be painted in green anyway.
(27:22):
It just doesn't, it's been very odd.
And also, frankly, in terms of the vocality, there are plenty
of black singers and musical theatre actors who can play that
role exquisitely in. Can I just interrupt very
quickly? Please.
Yeah. Absolutely agree with what
you're saying. We have to remember the model.
The way that Idina Menzel is singing through most of that
(27:44):
show comes more out of black popular music than it does out
of white popular music. 100% yeah.
And not to mention and, and here, of course, don't let me
get too far on the soapbox, but frankly, all of musical theatre
comes from that trajectory, right?
Because there's this whole history of Vince Tracy behind
it. And not to mention parts of
(28:06):
vaudeville and and gospel music.Anyway, don't get me started on
that. But I think that the casting of
Cynthia in the role of Elphaba, that there is a great power in
the representation that the opportunity to represent that
particular role on on film. It's not that Cynthia Rivo is
(28:26):
not well known because of courseshe is.
She's Tony award-winning and certainly has had fame of her
own. But I think this is a new
frontier and something that a lot of the American fandom for
Wicked has has wanted for quite some time.
I keep saying American because on the West End, they have had
some examples of black actors playing the the role of Elphaba.
(28:47):
Now we have had a a black actor in the role of Glynda, Brittany
Johnson, but there's there's another sort of layer of power
in choosing Ariana Grande for that role.
Is she playing against type? I don't know.
I'm not that into the Ariana Grande.
(29:07):
But from my perspective as someone who started this whole
quest to look at which representation, my initial sort
of pass at that book was about makeup design and also
prosthetics from the neck up. So I've been for a long time
very interested in how we use makeup to create freak or other
(29:28):
characters, things like the noseand headgear and stuff.
And I'm, I personally am quite interested in the fact that
Ariana Grande has a makeup company, R.E.M., and that this
is the person who ends up playing this role of Glenda.
And why is that important? Well, because also the very
first well known Glenda, what isher name?
(29:48):
Billy something. For.
That's right. Billy Burke had a a sort of
column about makeup in early magazines that sort of helped to
guide early, yeah, in early cosmetic history.
So there's this really interesting kind of for the real
nerds of makeup, right? There's this really interesting
(30:09):
trajectory that can be traced with Ariana Grande in that role.
Yeah, I I love what Jane just said.
All I would add is there's a long history and musical.
We have been film musicals especially of bringing pop stars
in to hope to Co opt their fan base.
And of course Ariana Grande has a very, very large fan base.
(30:32):
It's going to get an awful lot of people into seeing the movie.
I'm certainly not surprised thatsince she was able to do the
role so well that they gave it to her.
And I have nothing to add about Cynthia Revo.
I think James covered that very well.
I'd like to talk a little bit about the Wizards use of magic
versus the females use of magic.Well the wizard doesn't do magic
(30:55):
he has no power and alpha when alpha but realizes this is what
brings down bring brings about the meltdown that hazard making
have to leave after defying gravity.
The wizard only claims to have power.
He's a fraud. There are no male figures who
perform magic in Wicked. I think that's actually
(31:15):
important. The women have the power and
they not only have the magic power, they have the musical
power because as I explained in my book, it probably too much
length. The powerful people in musical
theater, the ones who were singing, and the vast majority
of the songs are sung by Galindaand Alphabur.
Both their vocal presence on theoriginal cast recordings about
(31:36):
equal actually, and the wizard sings, but the wizard had just a
couple of songs. But the wizard has no magic.
I, Jane, may have more to say about this than I do, but I
think it's very important that we don't have there is the
wizard is a fraud. Yeah, I'm.
This is such a good question, right?
Because what kind of magic are we talking about?
(31:57):
Are we talking about sleight of hand magic?
The kind of magic shows I'm going to pull a rabbit out of a
hat. Don't look over here, look over
here. That's the kind of magic that
the wizard does. He represents for me the kind of
traveling medicine show kind of magic or magician that we saw in
the turn of the 19th and 20th century, not just here in the
(32:19):
United States, but elsewhere. The fact that he's a fraud, but
also that he's a confidence man,right?
So he basically is, if you thinkit, you can do it.
And look what I have done. I think that is again, one of
these, why this wizard? Now, hopefully it's quite
obvious that that's part of an era globally that we're dealing
with in terms of strong men, confidence men, people who talk
(32:42):
a good game, people who might beperforming more than they're
doing, people whose idea of politics is in fact performance
may be full stop. But for the women, the
witchcraft that they're performing in terms of Elphaba
and Glinda, and then also Nessa Rose and Madame Horrible.
Thank you, that thank you. That magic is what I
(33:07):
distinguish, in my book at least, a kind of fantasy magic,
because we see flying, or at least like an indication that
there might be flight, and we see actual transformations occur
right in front of us. And while that is compelling and
certainly entertaining and the kind of thing that I too enjoy,
my, my deeper interest is in thekind of magic that contemporary
(33:33):
practitioners of witchcraft might might be interested in, in
creating through ritual, throughintentions, through spells and
things like that. So I do think that there's
something very important here torecognize in terms of the
different ways that magic is done gender wise, that I think
it is significant that we have afraud who's doing magic but who
(33:58):
has a whole lot of power, tremendous power, who is male
versus these women who are who are doing all sorts of really,
frankly, much more remarkable magic, but they don't have
nearly as much power. Yeah, and of course it's the
fact. I mean, and of course Alphabet
has this ability and she just, she doesn't know what it is.
(34:20):
She doesn't know how to harness it.
It's Madam Morable who sees it and tries to teach her some.
And of course the whole idea is she's teaching her so she can
bring her to the wizard, and allof a sudden the wizard would
have an assistant who really does have magical power.
Yes, the fantasy kind of magic we're talking about, but it's a
terribly important part of the story.
And as as you said, there are many different ways of looking
(34:45):
at magic, looking at witchcraft,what does witchcraft mean to
different people in different contexts?
And one thing I appreciate in Witch Fulfillment, you
acknowledge that there are stillwitch hunts going on.
There's persecutions of people accusing witchcraft, which is
something we talked about a lot on this show.
(35:07):
And how do you think we have real world examples like that?
Wicked, There's a lot of it about othering, about alpha
buzz, otherness. How do you think those two
things do that? Is there a connection?
Yeah, I don't think it's a direct connection, but let me
(35:28):
start by saying first of all, one of the things I really
admire about your show is the fact that you are bringing
attention to this. I think so few people
understand. I've been teaching in Witches in
Popular Culture class here at KUfor several years, and without
fail, the students are absolutely floored to learn that
(35:49):
that witch hunts still occur. It's a terrifying time because
I'm not sure that we're always necessarily going to be looking
at that happening so far away. Yes, there's a lot of this
happening in India and in parts of Africa and in parts of Asia
and in parts of the Americas, right?
And probably more close by than you might think.
(36:09):
And typically speaking, the kindof folks who are targeted for
witchcraft are indeed people whoare deemed outsiders for all
sorts of reasons, including their sexuality, but also
sometimes their power or their ability to heal in ways that go
against what is the status quo idea or understanding of what
(36:30):
healing is or even potentially what psychologically is supposed
to be. You know the norm.
And in that regard, I think we see some very interesting
comparisons not only with Elphaba but also with Nessa
Rose, right? Because she is an individual who
uses a wheelchair. And obviously in the musical,
(36:51):
it's not as though we get to know her as this really good
person. And I think that's I think
that's good in some ways to havesome complexity there that we
don't always want to just paint with broad strokes an idea of,
oh, here's a character with a disability.
Let's make sure that that's likethe hero.
I think we want to make sure that we have full humanity in in
(37:13):
all the cases. But I think in that family line,
there's something potentially quite interesting, especially
when you think about the potion,right?
So the notion of, again, as muchas we are to understand that the
potion was also a fraud, that itwas also a thing that was being
sold for reasons that were moneydriven as opposed to healing
(37:34):
driven. But, but when we think about
what kinds of people are targeted for witchcraft in a in
a desire to either kill or otherwise contain, we often look
at healers. We often look at people who are
using unusual ways to heal others.
(37:55):
And if you think about what Alpha Buzz project becomes in
terms of her dedication to the animals, right, and her desire
to to stop what's happening to the animals in terms of them
losing the ability to speak and them losing status.
I think in the animal class we see a little bit of a parallel
(38:17):
to what what we can look at in terms of the long history of
witch hunts. The othering issue is with with
Alpha Alphabets. It's fascinating part of the
show and she's green that there's all kinds of things that
make her different. It's made very clear in the
script and in the music that sheis another and everybody
considers her to be. So when her powers become
(38:40):
clearer, obviously she becomes even more of an other.
Nessa Rose is a problem character.
She was supposed to have a much larger part.
She had a song, the melody she keep every time she sings in the
show, she sings the same melody and that was going to be her own
song. But they just, they realized
they could not have three major female characters.
(39:01):
The story, the musical wasn't long enough.
The story, you can only do so much in a musical.
It's hard to develop character. And Nessa Rose, she just had to
be put on the back burner. It's not what they wanted to do,
but it just became absolutely necessary.
As far as her disability, the the way the disability is
treated in the show does not show any kind of forward-looking
(39:21):
thinking about how disability can be treated in a in a musical
or a film or anything else. It's pathetic really.
But it's all part of this keeping her character from being
too important, because beyond Alpha and Glenda, they simply
could not have another female that the audience was going to
be wondering much about. Is someone dancing through life?
Suggests very different world views between the characters.
(39:44):
How does Wicked use these personal conflicts to explore
larger political ideas about power and prejudice?
Oh, what a great question. Such a good question.
Where would you start with that,Jane?
I'd go straight to the music, but maybe.
We I was hoping you would talk alittle bit about the music and
because I used to play violin, but I am just not as I just
(40:09):
don't understand it in the way that you do, no.
The song Dancing Through Life was the last one that came
together for the show, and the major reason for that is it
bears such a huge plot that so much of the plot is developed in
that song. It's 7 or 8 minutes in length.
And we learned so much about Glenda.
We learned so much about Alfa. But Fiero comes in and we we
(40:32):
have this kind of dense male character, but he's the party
guy and we get that established.There's just, there's so much
going on in that song. They worked it out in the the
show ran in San Francisco in June of 2003 and Schwartz had
allowed to have a full out production.
He was hoping to have a simple production near in New York.
(40:53):
But instead they wanted, he wanted a full out production in
San Francisco, as far away from New York as they could.
But he allowed that to happen with the stipulation that they
would shut the production down for six weeks so that they could
do their rewrites. Then that six week shutdown cost
producers a million and a half dollars, keeping everybody on on
salary. So this was, I'm sure with the
producers. This was one major shouting
(41:14):
argument, but it's the way he and Lenny Holtzman wanted to
work. And it was during that summer
that he wrote Dancing Through Life and that they figured out
how they could get all the bloodthrough that.
They were still trying to figureout what Elphabus Grand Crusade
was at that point. The goat was that Doctor
Dilleman wasn't a history, as you know, he's not a history
teacher in the book. He's got some formula.
(41:35):
He's trying to prove the talkinganimals.
They wrote all kinds of materialto go with that, but they just
said it didn't make it was too hard to show on stage.
So they backed away from that made him a history professor and
you know, a lot of these decisions that were made quite
late. So Dancing through Life was it
was a a huge collaborative project through the summer of
2003. I think it does comment on the
(41:57):
politics of the show, not as much as the character of the
wizard, though. The character of the wizard, I
think, is the, if you will, the political center of the show,
because this is the leader of this country and we recognize
things about him that we know about leaders that we've
experienced in our lives, dancing through life.
For me, it's more of showing a difference of the character,
(42:19):
really showing the difference between the characters of Glinda
Elphaba and Fiero and Nessa Rose, for that matter.
There's so much character development that's going on in
that. And yes, they're witches, but
they're also young people, and they're just trying to find
their way. They're trying to fight people
they love. They're trying to find out who
they are. And for me, what what along with
(42:39):
that song is about is about whatso many of us go through, like,
you know, late high school and during college, just trying to
find out who we are. And I think that's a lot of
what's going on in that song, the music, it's got disco in it,
it's got normal musical theatre material, it's got a little bit
of everything. And that's what a musical
theatre composer has to be able to do, draw in any musical style
(43:01):
they need to. So it will be immediately
understandable to the majority of the audience.
Paul, will you remind me, is this during the big dance or
will you help me or? Yeah, the dance, the dance, the
song. Actually, Elbow begets the Black
Hat from Glenda during song. Glenda's talking with her
friends may say, oh, you don't hate anybody that much to give
(43:21):
that hat to. And she gives her hat.
And that's where Fiero comes in.And Fiero, of course, looks at
the pretty blonde and is interested in her first, as
everybody expects him to. And then he's to say, well, we
got to have a party. So we now we learn about the Oz
does Ballroom, which in the original novels ACD plays.
It's a little different when youget to it in the musical.
(43:43):
And then we have Alphabet comingin and doing the dance herself
and Glenda Deal, Glenda realizing how deep this woman is
and how deep she isn't. And it goes to her.
It's there's just, there's so much character development and
story development going on in that song.
It's hard to think of song. There are other songs and
(44:04):
musicals that do this much. This one's huge.
I'm glad that my sort of memory wasn't too far off there,
because it does. I think the song also allows us
to look at how the musical at least is, again, not necessarily
intentionally doing this, but certainly from a fan perspective
can do this is showing us the power of the patriarchy as well.
(44:26):
And even in terms of Glenda's recognition that she's not so
deep, because the way it reads, at least to me, is that kind of
the at least the beginning. The only reason she wants to
learn more about animals and do anything good is that she wants
Fiero to look at her and not to look at Alphaba.
And that sort of triangulation, for me, is an important
(44:49):
narrative that isn't always centered in musical theatre.
We certainly always have, like, boy meets girls stories.
That's basically musical theatre.
And we certainly always have love triangles.
Yeah, absolutely. But to have the sort of jealousy
and or different choices hinge on socially relevant kinds of
(45:12):
activist choices, arguably that was that.
That was refreshing. And that potentially has a
little bit of a different read. It makes, at least from my
perspective as a feminist spectator to signal Joel Dolan's
work is what that does for me isto say, oh, I knew you were
(45:33):
superficial, Glenda, but man andFiero, I just have to say how
grateful I am that he is just sodumb now.
I mean, at least that he is at least like he's just so
underdeveloped, at least in the stage musical piece of the
puzzle, because it's refreshing,frankly, to be able to objectify
(45:54):
a male on stage and to not feel bad about it, right?
I don't mean to, I don't know what I'm saying really, except
for I just enjoy that. And and typically the actors
playing that role are pretty nice to look at.
So there's like this moment of, oh, he's pretty, but who cares?
Let's get back to the girls. And yet he does grow as a
character as he grows closer to Alphaba.
(46:15):
Which I attribute to Alphaba andnot to him.
Yeah, I, I would see that. I would understand why.
I would understand why. And I can't say I'm a female
feminist watching the show, but I am a male feminist watching
it. And I I am very grateful for a
show that spends so much time with the women.
Again, it's unusual, it really is, and I'm hoping that the film
(46:38):
carries a similar message along those lines.
I don't see how it can't, but wehave seen much ballyhooed
musicals come in and just fall flat on their face.
What are you most looking forward to in the film?
Well, the score, but. That's right.
Aren't there new songs? No.
Or not new but like. No, I don't think so.
(47:00):
I think I, I, I, I haven't heardthat, have you?
I have. I've heard.
Let's put it this way, I've heard it on Reddit.
So what does that mean? I don't know.
OK, well I'm looking forward to hearing the songs I love with
the full Symphony Orchestra, which is an off.
That's an awful lot of fun. And a films because film.
Film studios use full sympathy orchestra.
You can only fit so many instruments in a pit.
(47:20):
So it opens and even if nobody knows what they're listening to,
it opens up the score in a way that it's going to sound
completely different than the show.
The other thing I'm looking forward to is seeing all the
things you can't do on stage because we can have singers, we
can have we can see their faces while they're singing.
It just did it. Everybody needs to remember that
(47:41):
film is a completely different medium and you can't just say
we're filming Wicked, you're you're exploding Wicked when
you're bringing it to a screen. So I'm looking for all those
things. One of the things that I think
is really exciting from what I've been reading and even just
some of the videos that have started to trickle out, there
are at least a couple of scenes that seem somewhat continuous
(48:04):
that they built such a huge set that there's because it's rare
in film to have continuous shots.
And there are at least a couple of them that are set in the sort
of bigger area with all the actors on set and with
three-dimensional sets that havebeen built at great expense.
And with a camera that tracing all of that more or less in one
(48:26):
shot, As far as I understand, that is very exciting because to
Paul's point, typically when we jump to film, that's one of the
things that we miss. We miss the sort of largess of
the world. Because of course, with theater,
we can always choose who we're going to look at or what we're
going to look at on the stage, whereas the camera is giving us
(48:47):
the sort of frame that tends to be much more close.
But the other thing that I thinkI'm really looking forward to,
again, as a makeup person, as someone who is both a makeup
enthusiast and a makeup artist, is I'm really looking forward to
seeing how the green skin transfers on film.
That's a very difficult color towork with other colors on stage
(49:10):
and with lighting. And then everything I've seen of
Ariana's costumes and her makeupand her hair, I'm really looking
forward to that kind of design element being much more, for
lack of a better word, consumable.
And then the final thing is someone who does theater and
wants more and more people to beinterested in both theater and
(49:32):
in witches. I, I think it's just going to
widen the possible audience for both for musical theater and for
folks who, if they're not already interested in witches or
fantasy witches, at least that it's going to widen that
audience base. Thank you both so much for
joining us today. It's been a real pleasure.
(49:55):
My pleasure. Thank you.
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Professors Laird and Barnett.
And thank you for joining us forthis episode of WITCH.
Hunt, join us every week. Have a great today at a wicked
tomorrow.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.