(Kristin Chenoweth) and Elphaba - Camera Obscura: Feminism ...

Wicked Divas and Internet Girl Fans • 47
of loyal and close female friendship, while she also becomes, as a
single woman, a public leader.
Wicked reinvents the Broadway diva for the twenty-first
century and for twenty-first-century girl fans. While drawing on
well-established (some might say well-worn) conventions of musical
theater, the show injects a contemporary sensibility that transforms
the typical Broadway diva from a larger-than-life force to an everyday
girl. By presenting an ordinary personality in an extraordinary
singer, Wicked invites young female spectators’ identifications and
attachments. Glinda and Elphaba experience the typical challenges
of adolescence — of identity formation, of social acceptance, of success,
of loneliness, of loyalty and the challenges of friendship — all
issues to which girls readily relate. 27 Yet it is the practice of performance
that truly confers divadom in Wicked. Each character sings,
and the actress who plays her sings. Whatever the situation in the
musical itself, the performer transcends that place through singing.
Whatever the problems in the character’s life, the performer
makes that character into a heroine. Audiences assimilate these
layers of performance at once; this is the pleasure of musical theater.
Girl fans’ discussions of Wicked’s divas demonstrate the ease
with which they move among analyzing these characters, relating
to them, and performing the diva themselves.
Interpreting the Everyday Diva
Girl fans first approach the diva through interpreting her character.
28 They see how Glinda performs the diva who always plays
to her audience — from the awestruck citizens of Oz to her giggly
entourage of schoolchum fans to the crowd that cheers her brash
imitation of Evita (as one girl fan complains knowingly, “Why does
no one ever get the Megan/Evita pose; I think it’s hysterical”). 29 In
the Jerry Herman (Dolly Levi, Mame) tradition, she is a cheerful
meddler. 30 Her solos are funny and character oriented.
Even as fans observe Glinda’s sparkly gown, blond curls, and
her frequent, hilarious malapropisms, they read her as an everyday
girl, and they judge her accordingly. On one thread, for example,
they look closely at her troubling self-centeredness. “Is she Wicked?”