The goal for Winnie and me is to have a draft of the second act - book and at least the most important numbers, plus re-writes of the first act - completed in time for a reading in Los Angeles at the end of February.

This is one of the things that is endlessly fascinating to me about the writing process: how individual each writer's response to material is. Likewise, I'm sure there are writers who would not have liked the context we chose, but it worked for me. I have no doubt that there are other writers who could have made the original idea work, but I couldn't do it. Once this discovery was made, I have been able to write the number relatively quickly. Within this context, the people can still worry about the Wicked Witch arriving to spoil the celebration, and they can gossip and exchange misinformation about her, but there is immediately a more sardonically comic tone to the scene. Since we also know the character she is becoming engaged to and have feelings about him, it gives a strong forward push to the story. We decided to have the people of Emerald City gathering not simply to gossip about the Wicked Witch, but for a specific purpose - to watch the celebrities arrive for the fabulous engagement party of Glinda, who has recently been named Good Witch of the North. There was no story context, and thus the number was quickly telling us something we more or less already knew and then was simply marking time. Finally, after a long discussion with Winnie Holzman, my collaborator who is writing the book for WICKED, we discovered that it was the wrong event for the number. It kept feeling as if I had suddenly slipped into the world of children's theatre, and it lacked the subtextual richness and satiric bite that we think we have found for the first act. Yet every time I tried to write the actual number, something stopped me. I had pages and pages of lyric ideas and musical sketches. I spent several weeks compiling material for a chorus number in which various rumors and exaggerations about her would be exchanged. We want to find out how her fame, or rather infamy, has spread throughout Oz. Act One ends with the transformation of the leading character into the Wicked Witch of the West we have come to know (and love), and Act Two opens some months later. This opening for Act Two is a case in point. Perhaps that is because the story of WICKED is so intricate and complex, I have to be sure each song is telling not just a story, but the exact right story. Uncharacteristically, I have found I am often writing lyrics before music on this project. I am determined to have it finished by the end of the year, tomorrow - an arbitrary deadline, true, but one which I feel intensely enough to be sure I meet.

All of the lyrics for the number are done, and I have just a little more music to solve in the middle of the number to complete it, or at least this first draft of it. I am just finishing the opening number for the second act. But I what I like best about it is that, forced to be a shut-in, I have no choice but to do the work I have assigned myself on WICKED.

Since my house is warm enough and I have a fire going and enough food for a couple of days, this gives me a feeling of coziness and, yes, smugness. I am sitting here watching what looks as if it is going to be a record amount of snowfall white-out the sky and make a bleak but beautiful monochromatic wilderness of my yard. Here's composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz's explanation of his process:įrom issue 2 of The Schwartz Scene newsletter COPYRIGHT PROTECTED The citizens were healing from the stress of always having to be on the lookout for the Wicked Witch. 'Thank Goodness' started out as 'Happy Healing Day,' an earlier take on a second act opening number. See Lyrics below, after commentary about the origins of the song 'Thank Goodness.' About 'Thank Goodness'

For good stephen schwartz lyrics