at a Wicked Reading in December 2001
Michael Cole at a Wicked Reading in December 2001
Part of The Schwartz Scene back issue archives.
Carol asked me to write about my experience singing in the ensemble of the December reading of WICKED. For those of you who don’t know, a “reading” of a musical or play is when the authors hire actors to read and/or sing the material so they can better understand how it works with live performers.
The first week was mostly devoted to learning the complicated and challenging music. We arrived on day one to a large room in a rehearsal studio on 42nd Street filled with chairs, music stands and a piano. Joe Mantello, Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman were sitting behind a desk filled with sharp pencils, scripts, sheet music and cans of Ricola throat drops. Stephen and Winnie were wearing green. The singers divided into “sections,” where I found my place with the tenors.
Stephen Oremus, the musical director, kept rehearsals moving at a very brisk pace and I happily found my “rusty” chords and ears able to keep up. At one point, Steven Skybell, the actor playing Professor Dillamond, leaned over to me and said, “We’re singing in a new Stephen Schwartz musical. That’s kind of fun, isn’t it?”
Late that afternoon, Kristin Chenoweth arrived from California looking tan and blonde and sunny. Kristin already knew most of the music, so she joined us singing the opening number and added a high note to the final chord that brought the room to spontaneous applause. Idina Menzel joined us on day two. She showed up wearing green (her favorite color matches her eyes) and jumped into musical rehearsals with us. At one point she turned around and waved at the boys in the tenor section. Idina is currently starring in Aida on Broadway, so to save her voice, she vocally “marked” most of the rehearsals. Even though she was “marking,” when she sang Defying Gravity, the Act One finale, I felt a chill go down my spine.
We ended week one with an informal read-through of the entire musical for a small group of family and friends. Week two was mostly about making changes to the script. To make tracking the changes easier, each set was printed on different colored paper, so by the time we were finished inserting them, our scripts looked like rainbows! Our challenge was to incorporate the rainbow colored pages and still be able to follow the script. This was especially difficult when you would have to go from script to music and back again. My script was full of notes like, “TO SCRIPT” “TO MUSIC” or “SKIP TWO PAGES.” I noticed Kristin had a similar system, but she added stars to each note: **TO SCRIPT**
The most amazing part of the reading for me was sitting mere feet from Idina and Kristin while they were working their magic. You’ll have to wait a little while to experience these performances, but when you do, you’re in for quite a treat!
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