Cecelia Ticktin

All I ever wanted was to be an Elphaba Standby. Not the principal Elphaba - specifically, the standby. It took me 15 years of dreaming and six years of actively auditioning for me to earn my dream job. During those six years of Wicked auditions I locked into the idea of being the standby because, the way I saw it, the job would be like being paid to learn. I love learning; I love being a student, maybe more than anything else. I love highlighters and raising my hand and making discoveries (sound like a certain green girl we all know?); but I could never afford to take acting classes. I always imagined that being an Elphaba Standby would allow me the opportunity to learn not just the show, but how musicals work - from how actors sustain themselves for eight shows a week, to how the sound engineers mix a show, to how a makeup supervisor... well, supervises. And I was right, by the way. That is the exact perk of being a standby - you get to see everything.