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

60 • Camera Obscura
and validate each other’s expressions of vulnerability. Girls’ active
fandom and their insightful use of musical theater should urge
us to take their tastes seriously and to value that space of girl
bonding as a queer social practice, not merely as a stage to be gotten
through and that only exists to lead up to heteronormative
adulthood. Girls’ writings on the Web adhere culturally; the Web
becomes a public/private place for their thoughts and feelings,
interpretations and affiliations, expectations and desires, experiences
and fantasies. As Anita Harris writes, “The web is simultaneously
there and not there. This capacity to be present and absent,
public and private, reflects the position of young women today as
both too visible and not visible enough.” 86 Moreover, when girls
shriek and applaud the appearance of the injured Idina Menzel on
her final night, or when they wait outside the stage door for Kristin
Chenoweth’s autograph, they model how to be a musical theater
spectator. By creating an intense relationship with the divas in the
performance and with their peers, girls and their responses to and
uses of Wicked offer hope for the energetic continuation of musical
theater in our culture.
Notes
I would like to thank those who gave me opportunities to present this
work in its early stage: particularly, Tracy Davis and the American
Music Theatre Project at Northwestern University; Elizabeth Crist
(now at Princeton University) and the Musicology Symposium at the
University of Texas at Austin; and Sue-Ellen Case, Gary Gardner,
and the Department of Theater at the University of California, Los
Angeles. For sharing their ideas about Wicked, girls, fandom, and
the Web, I would also like to thank Ray Knapp, Mitchell Morris,
Dee Michel, Holley Replogle-Wong, and the University of Texas
Performance as Public Practice Program students Chase Bringardner,
Zachary Dorsey, Michelle Dvoskin, Kristin Leahy, Shelley Manis,
Sarah Myers, Erica Nagel, Meg Sullivan, and Christin Yannacci, as well
as the Plan II student Jamie Lippman. I would also like to thank Adam
Roberts for musical help; Jordan Haynie, Michael Kackman, and
George Reddick for technological help; Beth Kerr for research help;
Jeffrey Solomon for arranging tickets; Laurie Beth Clark, Michael