[JERRY STARES AT GEORGE FROM ACROSS THE TABLE IN CONFUSION AND DISBELIEF FOR SEVERAL SECONDS]

JERRY: “You understand trans people?”

GEORGE: “Is that so hard to believe?”

JERRY: “I find it hard to believe you understand yourself.”

GEORGE: “But that’s kind of my point, see. When one life isn’t working out, you can just try to find one that does. You’re doing your best as Danny, things aren’t going great… [GEORGE CLAPS HIS HANDS FOR EMPHASIS]… give it a second go as a Deborah.”

JERRY: “Like a do-over.”

GEORGE: “A do-over.”

JERRY: [PICKS UP COFFEE CUP] “I don’t think that’s what’s going on.” [DRINKS COFFEE]

GEORGE: [COMPLETELY IGNORING THIS] “And I get that. I really do. Because things have never worked out for George. George has never been able to stick the landing. But Georgina? [HE CHUCKLES CONFIDENTLY] Georgina’s going places.”

JERRY: “Georgina.”

GEORGE: “It’s a work in progress.”

JERRY: “Ya know, I think that the trans community is facing enough challenges without you being in the mix.”

GEORGE: “What, are you implying they’re too good for me?”

thematically, i think in a play about the social vulnerability of women, having a character be a trans woman just makes sense as a way to provide depth to that idea. specifically, i love the concept of beatrice's view of men being informed by her own experiences as a closeted trans woman (it's amazing what people will say in front of you when they think you're one of them) and as someone later facing sexism and transmisgoyny.

usually when someone does a trans reading of this play/character, they look at beatrice's famous speech about wishing she was a man and interpret her as a trans man, which is perfectly valid! but this idea started for me with the simple thought that i wanted an out and accepted trans character to play with rather than a closeted one who cannot transition, just as a matter of personal preference at that particular time and with this particular text. but then i kept thinking.

as above, the concept of beatrice reading men for filth in the context of having lived among them is great. the "oh god that i were a man" speech is extremely disparaging of men and what they claim to be vs how they actually wield their power. what she wishes is that she had the power that men have automatically in her society--felt all the more keenly because there was a time when she was able to wield that power and she gave it up to be happy, to be herself, to be free in a different way. (here is where i sometimes imagine beatrice regretting ever transitioning, believing that her own happiness and health is less important than having the power to protect hero's happiness and health, because i love angst.) but now that the worst has happened, she is reduced to begging a man for help and it's demeaning and infuriating and tragic.

i also love turning on its head the line "i cannot be a man with wishing, therefore i will die a woman with grieving." being a trans person, dealing with internalized transphobia, knowing that transitioning will put a target on your back, wishing you could just be the gender you're born as--but no amount of wishing will make her not a woman. i think she loves herself and her gender but the play is focusing on points of conflict so that's what i'm talking about here.

in a play about misogyny, the vulnerability of women, and the hypocrisy of men, a trans woman has a unique perspective on both masculinity and femininity both as genders and places in society. (in the ideal version, i think john would be a trans man to mirror this experience, but that would require him to be rewritten to have actual depth and personality and all that is a different essay). there is also just a particular kind of strength that comes from having to carve out and defend your identity in that way which i think fits her very well.

lastly, a couple of other miscellaneous things from the text that can tie in:

beatrice recounting "a double heart for his single one" meaning both "i loved him twice as much as he loved me" and "i loved him as two people: [birthname] and beatrice"

And thinking about how this kinda works for DA2 as well because Anders isn't really making mages look good or sympathetic to the public as much as making the templars look 500x worse. Like, if I'm Sera or Fenris or your average Maker-fearing Hightown noble and don't have any particular reason to love mages, I think I'm still pissed at the templars at this point. Like, jfc, what do we pay you for? We paid you to keep those mages locked up and comfortable and out of the rest of the city where they couldn't hurt the rest of us, not to fuckin faff about and beat them and rape them and get rich selling the products of their labour and then not EVEN succeed in stopping them from spilling out into the rest of the city and causing problems? What are you templars even good for at that point? Why are we bothering to keep this institution alive?

So at the very beginning of the play there was a scene where Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are at a funeral as the primary mourners. A stretcher is carried on with a covered body. The body was notably very small. They laid flowers on it and Macbeth immediately left for battle.

Now *I* studied Shakespeare in college so I immediately knew there is one single line that implies that the Macbeths lost a child at some point. Most of the time this isn't utilized in productions; it's just a throwaway line, intended to paint just how determined Lady M is for this regicide thing to work and how furious she is that her husband has cold feet. In this production she delivers "I have given suck, and know how tender tis to love the babe that milks me" nearly in tears. She takes a moment to steel herself before saying, "I would while it was smiling in my face, have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums and dashed the brains pit, had I so sworn" and she very nearly SCREAMED this in Macbeth's face.

Also noted was how the Macbeths looked at Macduff's children. Lady M was clutching her heart, nearly breaking watching them embrace their parents. Macbeth could not even look at them.

At the end of Lady Macbeth's plot, when she is sleepwalking and sleeptalking, she is typically portrayed as speaking to no one or to her husband. However, at a certain point of her monologue she got on her knees, raised her voice to a comforting octave, and began miming tear wiping, hand holding, hair and face stroking, around a child-sized figure. "Wash your hands, put on your nightgown, look not so pale. I tell you yet again, Banquo’s buried; he cannot come out on’s grave." Then she stands and appears to take the child's hand. "Go to bed, go to bed. I can hear knocking at the gate-" then she looks down and realizes that no one is there, followed be the most heartbreaking shriek I've ever heard followed by a full minute of her just weeping while curled up on the floor before she stood up, finished her monologue and left the stage.

Most of the time when the loss of a child is utilized in a performance or adaptation, it is assumed that the child was an infant and lost some time ago. To imply that the child died IMMEDIATELY prior to the events of the play and had been cared for and loved by their parents for a few years adds such a fascinating layer to the desperation to ascend to the throne, Lady M's madness, and Macbeth's initial hesitation into "in for a penny, in for a pound" attitude, Macbeth's fury that Banquo's, not his, children will take the throne, and even Macbeth's eventual demise following a frenzied final battle.

How far will grief push you to fill a hole? How far will grief push you to desperation? And what happens when none of your new pursuits are filling the void left by the one you lost? And what happens when you realize you have nothing left to lose?

jane: ...how is this relevant to the situation at hand

mr rochester: janet please just answer me!!!!

jane:

Obviously other songs are important — No One Mourns the Wicked and the Finale reprise bookend the play, creating a full circle "doomed by the narrative" effect: the story and ending(s) are already written, and all you can do is watch, the intro ensuring that you know the ending from the offset in classic tragic fashion; No Good Deed is one of Elphaba's core turning points of losing the final vestiges of the starry-eyed girl she was in TW&I — but the Wizard and I stands out to me.

Part of this is because it is, in many ways, Elphaba's introduction. She's still a shadowy unknown figure, and while the movie fleshes out her childhood within the opening number to make it clear she was not always 'wicked,' in the stage play we only see being born as a literal (innocent) baby and nothing else: no hints of personality, no hints of kindness. When we do meet her on stage, she's often snappish and angry; on stage, TW&I is her great unveiling: this is who Elphaba actually is and wants to be, earnest and desperately wanting to belong, to matter. On screen, Cynthia's Elphaba is more reserved and resigned, dignified but always quietly disappointed; TW&I is her allowing herself to hope for things in a way that feels tangible and plausible for the first time in her entire life.

In either version, we have to understand how badly Elphaba wants to be with the Wizard: for status, for family, for love. Not only does it provide some very consistent characterization (to be his advisor is to be in service, which is what she ultimately offers to the Animals despite not materially benefitting from any of it, etc) but it also provides the basis for the rest of the play in so many ways. TW&I reaffirms over and over that she does want recognition/social affection, which is another crucial piece of her. It offers a parallel basis in her bond with Glinda ("She doesn't give a twig anyone thinks" "Of course she does. She just pretends not to") but also is the hinge upon which Defying Gravity turns. Because it's a song of empowerment, yes, but it's also a song of sacrifice: she is giving up many things in leaving, over and over again ("... what you've worked and waited for, You can have all you ever wanted" / "but if that's love, it comes at much too high a cost" and of course leaving Glinda behind).

Defying Gravity is the writing on the wall: despite being a song of triumph, there is nothing but sacrifice ahead. Elphaba is lonely, temped, and jaded throughout Act 2. And part of the reason we know this is because we know how the story ends, yes, but also because of TW&I wherein all of Elphaba's happiest wishes are undercut with cruel dramatic irony:

And I've just had a vision, almost like a prophecy I know it sounds truly crazy And true, the vision's hazy But I swear, someday, there'll be A celebration throughout Oz That's all to do with me And I'll stand there with the Wizard Feeling the things I've never felt And though I'd never show it I'd be so happy I could melt And so it will be for the rest of my life And I'll want nothing else 'til I die Held in such high esteem When people see me, they will scream

We know, all throughout act 1 and act 2, that she doesn't ultimately stand a chance; Defying Gravity is the exception, not the rule. We know, in TW&I, that she thought she did. But in the end, she does not beat her own self-told prophecy despite trying everything she could to rise above others' views of her, to Be Good and be seen for who she is, to have some semblance of what she wanted as an earnest-eyed school girl. She defies death (and gravity), but she does not defy her Narrative.