WICKED Colour Scheme

Based on the acclaimed novel by Gregory Maguire that re-imagined the stories and characters created by L. Frank Baum in ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’, WICKED tells the incredible untold story of an unlikely but profound friendship between two girls who first meet as sorcery students. Their extraordinary adventures in Oz will ultimately see them fulfil their destinies as Glinda The Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.

The main colour scheme within this musical is rich and full of greens (hence the symbolic colourful representation of Oz being translated through the use of green).



I love how this visual aspect of the play is significantly changed within an instance by adding or applying another colour to either enhance or change the feeling/mood of a particular scene or character.

Lets take a look at some examples:


Here we have the moment when Elphaba, breaks free and 'defies gravity' - the mood translated at this moment in the play is much more powerful and some what 'darker' than what had came before. This is easily seen through the visual array of colour being portrayed here. The blue/purple lighting, enhances the green hues to reflect a cooler and more sinister feel.


In a similar essence here we have bright white light being used to depict the Good Witch Glinda in a 'good light' - the 'cleanness' of this colour softens her appearance and costume colour and reflects her as a pure, kind, innocent character.
I couldn't show this picture without commenting on the strong, rich colours seen in the sky behind. these instantly reflect a passionate, magical and all together mysterious feel to me personally. The combination of colour, set style and costume is beautifully constructed and well put together to depict such a magical fantasy story.

The concepts and design ideas in colour and set design used in WICKED I feel I could develop and delve into to gain a greater understanding to hopefully enrich my own design.
The green colour scheme I love as i feel it communicates a magical, fantasy feel to the overall set simply and effectively through a restricted palette. Say I was to apply this green palette to my set to reflect my fairytale production, I could use lighting to transform certain parts to convey a different mood.
From looking back at the script I can see there are two areas/moods that need to be depicted in different colours in order to communicate the different seasons.


Photograph below: zoomed in part of sketch model - castle garden (main features: fountain, blooming flowers, dead weeds, beautiful rose bush).



Beautiful summertime (left side of the fountain seen in sketch model) would be delivered under a yellow light - this would hopefully lighten the green and give that fresh, bright summertime feel (maybe a bit of white would be needed to be added to lighten the overall look and mood).
On the other side of the fountain blue light would reflect a much cooler and more unwelcoming feel than the other - thus portraying the same garden setting just in a different season.
Thinking about all the properties in this scene, the rose bush I feel would appear beautifully under a rich red light (obviously I would need to experiment on what a rich red light would look like on a green background as I don't want the colour to become muddy - although a brownier rose bush would reflect the essence of the bush being made of the Lion's tail well).

[Practical colour experimentation would enable me to understand and grasp this idea better - development is to produce a sample colour board for this key setting]