Good News?

From 2005 to 2012, in the midst of my tenure as an usher for Seattle Theatre Group, I saw at least two rotations of touring casts with the Broadway musical Wicked. Who knows how many performances I’d seen of it and other repeat productions like The Lion King and Mamma Mia. Don’t get me started on the billion-shows-per-day of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular tours. Perhaps unfair, I approached the present run of Wicked at the Paramount with a reluctant sigh. I felt convinced that nothing about this tired old show would surprise me because I could recount all the choreography, costumes, sets, and staging by heart.

I love a good surprise, though, particularly when my preconceptions turn out to be wrong.

A week prior to the sensory-friendly matinee (link to read my other post on the subject), I didn’t need to solve patrons’ ticket problems or give directions to the restroom—but I nonetheless steered someone away from an emergency exit during intermission…can’t quell those usher-esque reflexes. While “on duty,” albeit in a new(er) position on STG’s accessibility services team (as of earlier this spring), I sat through the 3ish-hour performance with a different game, a different objective.

An Audio Describer in preparation mode is neither audience nor customer service, and yet both simultaneously.

I sat amongst avid Wicked fans on my own observational scavenger hunt for stylistic factoids and plot-advancing gestures, props, etc, to help “usher” low-visibility audiences into the world presented on stage. With limited air time to deliver AD between lyrics/dialogue and loud bursts of applause, I have to discern the most critical visual storytelling points so that everyone across the broad spectrum of visibility gets the same information, ideally in real time, as the performance unfolds.

Throughout the process of preparing my words, I simultaneously ate my words.

Color me pink with surprise! I felt like I’d attended Wicked for the first time. I noted un-remembered details about a show I’ve seen numerous, numerous times. Turns out, a ten-year hiatus from repeat proximity to the production and soundtrack offers a fresh perspective, particularly of the design work. The costumes, scenery, lighting, soundscape, and special effects interwove well together in their creation of a rich, dynamic Oz-ian aesthetic, which seems very Steampunk. The scenic machinery cogs and gears, wooden-metal-leather props, and top-hatted costumes perhaps didn’t stand out to me in the earlier tours, possibly because I was breathing the Steampunk pop-culture air of the early 2000s.

Furthermore, a mere four days after the 2024 U.S. election, I was floored by the re-cyclical relevance of the (novel and) show’s material. Maybe my projection: the cast seemed keenly aware of the loaded lines they exchanged, which rang with double entendres and thick symbolism of the week’s unfolding events. I wondered if an energetic shift rippled through the crew backstage earlier in the week, and if anything changed for the performers’ approach to their choicest words. Were they rattled by the plots and character arcs about power, manipulation, prejudice (and more)? Well, it all clobbered me into sobs through the end of Act One. During an intermission respite, I remembered that Wicked was created in the Bush, Jr. era—with xenophobia and racism, plus myriad problems like authoritarianism, immigration restrictions, fear mongering…in all ways disguised, subtle, and overt. On the way home, I questioned whether our country has actually changed (learned?) throughout the past twenty years of the musical’s existence since the same issues are very real and alive today. If not the same-same, then at least replicas, or contemporary variations of the previous themes.

My work day at a Broadway matinee became a refreshing, disorienting, then heartbreaking not-so-fun-house. And let me tell you, while the production used a LOT of smoke, the show felt like a giant mirror illuminating the audience, exactly as theatre was intended. …But don’t take my word for it (link to read actor Joel Grey’s NYT op-ed).