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Telling and Selling: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz

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The Road to Wicked

Abstract

This chapter chronicles how Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman adapted Gregory Maguire’s dark political novel to the Broadway stage. We discuss their initial attraction to the tale, their discovery that the show “was about two Witches instead of one,” and the initial critical reception of Wicked: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz in the context of Oz’s profound place in American culture. We then turn our focus to Nancy Coyne’s and Marc Platt’s marketing strategies, analyzing the crucial role they played in Wicked’s unprecedented success.

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Correspondence to Kent Drummond .

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Drummond, K., Aronstein, S., Rittenburg, T.L. (2018). Telling and Selling: The Untold Story of the Witches of Oz. In: The Road to Wicked. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93106-7_6

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