Sunday, April 12, 2009
Meanies
This weekend my family and I took a trip into the city to watch the play Wicked. It was amazing! From the beginning to the end the story kept the audience at the edge of their seats and full of laughs. If you are unfamiliar with the play and without ruining the ending, it is the story about the relationship between the Wicked Witch of the West and the Good Witch of the North before Dorothy, from the Wizard of Oz, came into the picture. Growing up, the Wizard of Oz was definitely part of my vocabulary. I remember wanting to be the Good Witch of the North one year for Halloween and those highly coveted ruby slippers from Dorothy’s feet was part of my everyday wardrobe. But after seeing this play, and learning about the friendship between the two witches, I realized that the Wicked Witch wasn’t so bad after all. In the play, Elphaba (the Wicked Witch) is very different from her peers around her. She is so different that even her own father does not acknowledge her as his daughter. But despite it all, she held her head high and fought for what she believed in while everyone laughed and talked behind her back. This got me to think about how too often, being different is hard to overcome in such a ruthless society. We forget our own voice and conform to the voices of others. Last Thursday I was coming back from class and a little person passed by me and the group of people behind me after passing her too started snickering and made the comment "dude, she will make for a good footstool”. It was completely mean and uncalled for.
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I've seen wicked as well, and read the book it was based off of, the one by Gregory Maguire. The play and the book both emphasize the struggles that Elphaba has to face, but the book takes it quite a bit farther and is rather dark and political compared to the musical. A lot of books rely on leaving out an evil doer's past to make them less relateable. This makes it much easier for the hero to kill the villain without it seeming like such a bad thing (in most cases they hero is praised for doing so). A villain with a past, or with a family, or anything that makes them seem more human can confuse an audience because they would be left with no happy ending.
ReplyDelete-Raissa
Let me just say how jealous I am that you got to see Wicked. I have been wanting to see that since it toured in LA. But I have yet to see it.
ReplyDeleteI agree how we conform to society but I think that in college, we are more ourselves than conformists. I think college lets us be more liberal, but I'm sure people still follow the crowd considering it's a new experience in college.
I wish you ended your blog on a, conclusion. It seemed to end abruptly. But I like the transition from the play to everyday life.
When I was little, I too loved the Wizard of Oz. Dorothy's magic ruby slippers and the phrase, "There's no place like home" always brought a smile to my face. It was her very own dream world that led her to realize the true blessings of life -- family and of course home. As a prelude to the classic story of the Wizard of Oz, Wicked sounds like a wonderful play. It is fascinating that the writers decided to reveal the multidimensional personality of such an infamous character as the Wicked Witch. I really like this idea. Not only in movies or plays but in real life as well, people are often stereotyped upon first encounter. There is so much complexity to each individual’s character which may be hidden by an outward disguise. The dichotomy between the cruel and ruthless Wicked Witch that we all know, and the more personable character that you describe is a great depiction of the mysteries that we keep hidden.
ReplyDeleteErika