Unnaturally Green (18 page)

The days after my standby audition could also have been called, How Am I Anxious About Getting a Role that I Am Simultaneously Rehearsing? Because maybe the weirdest part was that in the aftermath, I had to continue on with my daily Elphaba rehearsals, while everyone on staff agreed to act like nothing had happened.

No dramatic cross-country flight. Nope. Business as usual.

Like my ensemble rehearsals, Elphaba rehearsals were split between blocking and vocals. The main difference between this and learning my ensemble track was that the Elphaba material was approximately one billion times scarier.

My most basic gripe was with all of the high belting. It was simply relentless—one song after the other, throughout the entire show. If potato-sack lifts had tested the limits of what I could do with my body, Elphaba was its vocal and mental equivalent.

Anyone who wanted to play Elphaba, I thought, had to be (on some level) deeply masochistic.

I was making almost undetectable progress on the singing, struggling everyday to find the confidence to say, “Yes, I can do this.”

Because—honestly—I didn’t know if I could.

And I wouldn’t really know until I was onstage performing.

Like my part in the ensemble, Elphaba’s every moment had been assigned a precise location. Since I wasn’t creating the part from scratch, I wasn’t coming up with the blocking myself. Instead I inherited the work of Idina Menzel (the original Elphaba), whose blocking had been passed down a long line of successors. Kristen the dance captain led me through Elphaba’s songs, while stage manager David gave me the blocking.

Nothing was a suggestion—together they mapped out Elphaba’s every move along the stage’s grid coordinates, telling me when to turn, where, and by how many feet.

To me, strict numbers made sense when it came to group dances. After all, it was important to maintain formation, and for songs and scenes to have a cohesive, choreographed precision. But when it came to scene work—actual speak-your-lines-on-this-mark as Elphaba—I felt a tangle of marionette strings pulling me in all directions.

Meanwhile, stage manager David would speak every other character’s lines in a stirring monotone while I chased my tail around the stage, poring over my note-scribbled binder like a lost hunchback. I recited the lines as I thought I was supposed to, in a voice that seemed partly my own, partly a chorus of synthesized strains from the Elphabas who’d come before me—whom I’d studied here in San Francisco, on Broadway, or on YouTube.

They were all speaking in unison, while I lip-synced through each rehearsal.

And, ohmygod I just want to poop.

“So, regardless of how things, uh,
turn out
,” David said during one of our ten-minute breaks, “we’ll stick to the same Elphaba schedule for you.”

My ears perked up. I smelled intrigue.

How things turn out?

“Sounds good,” I said, wanting to be like,

JUST TELL ME, DAMMIT, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD!

David’s eyes darted down to his binder as he hummed, softly.

Just when I thought I couldn’t take it any longer, and that my bowels would have to be submitted for urgent medical care, I got word later that afternoon.

If I was destined to “fail,” it wouldn’t be that day. Nope. I could breathe a sigh of relief—for now.

For now, I was the new Elphaba standby.

I promptly took the longest, most satisfying dump of my life.

12. SONGS OF DEATH,
OR, MEET EDEN ESPINOSA

T
he
Wicked
casting twister was unstoppable. Soon it had steered toward Teal Wicks, who played her final Elphaba performance at the end of February. As her replacement, the legendary Eden Espinosa dropped in, with the force of a house—the latest miraculous occurrence here in the Land of Oz.

Even at her young age, Eden had become a household name: originating the title role in
BKLYN: The Musical,
closing
Rent
’s run as Maureen, and being Idina Menzel’s original Elphaba standby and the third actress ever to play the role on Broadway. A few years later, Eden had opened
Wicked
’s Los Angeles company, and now was back in San Francisco for another pass at being green. Fans and critics agreed: Eden was electrifying—her Elphaba re-imagined with unmistakable strength and heart.

As her soon-to-be standby, I had big shoes to fill. With only a couple of weeks left before my put-in, I had to make a serious push to get my voice in shape. This would mean coming to grips with the challenges before me—namely, that three of Elphaba’s nine songs gave me nightmares. These I called the “Songs of Death.”

What were these Songs of Death? In chronological order:

1) “The Wizard and I”

2) “Defying Gravity”

3) “No Good Deed”

Alternate titles:

1) “Let’s Put a Really High Song in Elphaba’s First Scene”

2) “This Isn’t a Joke, You Are Actually Expected to Sing This High While Flying”

3) “Let’s Belt Some More and Run Around the Stage, Because Why Not”

Yes, the Songs of Death were—well? The songs that made me feel like I might keel over while singing them. The doozies. The destructors. The devils. I couldn’t speak for other Elphabas, but for me these explosive, spew-your-guts Songs of Death demanded that every atom of my body spin around its individual nucleus in special, anxiety-driven hyper-speed. What’s more, they were spaced evenly throughout the show, beginning when Elphaba first took the stage, punctuating the end of Act I, then reemerging at the eleventh hour, when all hope (and energy) had been lost. For these reasons, conquering the Songs of Death would never be quick and painless, but rather slow and agonizing—the difference between ripping off a Band-Aid and plucking every body hair, one at a time.

As Elphaba, your first song is “The Wizard and I.” You perform this mere minutes after entering. Be cautioned: it’s important to start strong. If you falter (your voice wobbles, or you crack) it can undermine your confidence for the rest of the show.

If you make it, you’re in the clear until “Defying Gravity”—the most intimidating Song of Death. It falls at the end of Act I. Onstage during its climax, Elphaba must lift off into flight—a stirring declaration of strength and independence—while
belting her face
for the masses.

Leading up to this climax, you must place your prop broom in your left hand, use your right to unclasp your satchel and shake it to the floor, while crossing upstage, turning around, and gearing up for takeoff. Then, as you lift, you’ve got to bring out the vocal big guns: singing the highest (some might even say most torturous) collection of notes ever written—made that much worse because you have to belt them
as
you fly, high above the stage, waving your broom around in the air. This you do for a solid minute-and-a-half, ending the act with three sustained, vocal cord-splitting cries (
“Bring maaaa naaaa!”
).

Finally, there’s “No Good Deed.” Having been onstage for nearly two hours you have all but emptied your energy stores. But exhaustion be damned! Right before “No Good Deed” you must run (literally) offstage, down the backstage stairs, and through the orchestra pit, while wearing a thirty-odd pound dress and unpinning the back of your hair. Once in the pit, you must situate yourself inside a trap door elevator, which lifts you up through the floor in time for you to start singing. (And by “singing,” I mean letting out a primal “Fiyerooooooo!” scream at the top of your throbbing lungs.) After that, you essentially just keep running around, throwing your body in all different directions while you sing really high, conveying the ultra-intense emotionality of the song.

Sound fun?

In the weeks before my put-in, when I wasn’t rehearsing with conductor Bryan or
Where’s Waldo
Steve I was practicing on my own. I did this in the shower, in my living room, or in a dusty rehearsal studio I’d been renting by the hour.

After screaming at the top of my lungs then collapsing onto the floor, I would often wonder, What would Eden Espinosa do? She’d performed as Elphaba for years. On the YouTube circuit alone she’d become a celebrity, with some performance clips garnering over 100,000 views. Clearly she was doing
something
right. Performing beside her each night in my ensemble track, I would watch her closely. To me, it was a mixture of spontaneity and genuineness that made her Elphaba irresistible.

Did it come naturally to her? Or had she faced all the challenges I was facing?

Practicing on my own, when I envisioned Eden in those dark, dusty moments, she seemed to hover on a higher plane. Maybe one day, I thought, I’d get to ask her all my questions—all that I’d been pondering during this strange and inexplicable journey.

I yearned now more than ever for her wisdom, and often daydreamed about getting to know her. Maybe being her standby meant I could become her loyal protégé, kissing her ring while she patted my head and spoke in profound, moralistic riddles. We’d lounge in togas on large rocks, eating grapes, engaging in philosophical dialogue. “What
is
art?” I would say, and Eden would respond in song, while nearby a young boy played a flute.

Or, at the very least, we could hang out or something.

This wasn’t too far-fetched. I’d already met Eden once backstage, and before that had stalked her in a Starbucks. I spotted her getting coffee across from the Orpheum, and proceeded to watch my massive boyfriend accidentally run into her with his chair as he tried to claim a table (remember what I said about him being like Disney’s teenage Hercules?). After that, we sat in the back and stared at Eden until she left.

Nothing about this was creepy.

Whatever the case, it was comforting to fast-forward to the day when I might get to know Eden, and absorb her vast stores of ancient performer wisdom. By then, all my trials would be behind me. And, like her, I would be able to confidently say, “I am Elphaba Thropp.”

A week later and I got my first (exceedingly awkward) chance.

“Okay, Catchphrase time!” announced Annie.

It was game night at Glinda standby Libby’s apartment, a tradition newly forged by a small and dorktastic group of
Wicked
cast members. On these special Sundays we rang in the end of our eight-show week with rousing games of Catchphrase, Scattergories, and Charades, all while watching the MSNBC show
To Catch a Predator.

“Someone would please explain the rules?” said Nic, who played Fiyero (
Wicked
’s romantic lead). He wore wide-rimmed glasses and a t-shirt with a picture of an electric guitar. “How is this game played, please?”

“Awww, Nic,” said Libby.

Nic, who was French Canadian, hid his slight accent onstage, but sometimes let his foreignness creep into everyday conversation, at which point one or more of us would coo at him like he was a toddler speaking his first sentence.

“It’s like that game Password, except with teams,” began first-violinist Cary, our resident expert on everything.