ABSTRACT
In the early 2000s with the groundbreaking, mold shattering relationship between Glinda and Elphaba, Wicked proved that feminism also had a place front and center on the great White way. Perhaps one of the most important decisions in evolution of the Wicked creative team was the addition of writer Winnie Holzman as show’s librettist. Holzman had just finished the ABC television drama, My So-Called Life in 1995, a show that was critically praised because of the honest depiction and commentary of female adolescence. With Wicked: musicals moved from a female duet that interrupts the romance narrative to female duets that constructs the romantic narrative; from the female duet that resists the heteronormativity of 1950s integrated musical to a female duet that culminates the show’s love story. Wicked was created in a time when women had already been liberated but the ideas surrounding intersectionality and how systems of power often hold women back were just starting to be talked about openly.
