Boston Opera House

I went to go see Wicked.

Uh, it's here in Boston at the Citizens Bank Opera House.

I had a blast.

My friends took me out, took great care of me.

Peace and love.

Wicked is in Boston tonight at the Citizens Opera House.

Who wrote the novel Wicked that inspired the musical?

You can get this.

One light may combine several or all of these functions.

In Joseph Urban's lighting and setting of the last act of Tristan and Isolde some years ago at the Boston Opera House, a beam of late afternoon sunlight struck across the stage to the figure of Tristan lying beneath a great oak tree.

Slowly, as the day waned, the sun patch crept from the figure until, at his death, it had left him in cool shadow.

Thus, a light that illuminated, that told the time of day, that gave the figure of the singer and the bole of the great tree high relief by striking from only one side also aided symbolically and psychologically in the interpretation of the drama.

And, uh, and in fact, what's kind of interesting about this year's, uh, you know, the to-do in Salem is there are other witches in town.

The national company of Wicked, if you can believe it, uh, is still on its North American tour and just stopped at the Citizens Opera House in Boston.

Uh, E- Eric, they literally started performing tonight, the night we're recording this podcast, which is Wednesday, September 23rd.

They're gonna be there, uh, through November 15th.

Hmm.

But what's interesting about the Citizens Opera House, Eric, and this has a weird Disney tie, and I have dug down into this story multiple times, and I just can't get a straight answer.

But basically, back in February of 1950 at this very same theater back, uh, when it was the k- the RKO Keith Memorial, uh, Theater, and it was an old vaudeville house that had since become a movie palace.

This is where Walt Disney decided he was gonna hold his world premiere of Cinderella.

uh about imposter syndrome and telling your story uh and it's sci-fi related so people should check it out i i i really enjoy that talk um it's on the ted website but tedx tufts my name see that uh i've been affiliated with tedx cambridge which is now tedx new england for a number of years So what is a TEDx director? It depends on the year.

Sometimes we did things like the Boston Opera House.

Sometimes we did things in a small venue.

Sometimes we did things in a music hall.

And I hang up the phone and my kids were in the back seat, as I mentioned, and they were like, hey, mom, don't you tell us we have to do things that scare us? And don't you tell us it doesn't challenge us, it doesn't change us? And don't you tell us that life starts on the other side of the fear? And I was like, oh, no.

So I called her back, and six weeks later, I was on the stage at the Boston Opera House, gold gilded walls, crystal chandeliers, 2,500 of your closest friends, and I was giving 11 and a half minutes of probably the worst talk I've ever given in my entire life.

But...

Because it's TEDx Cambridge, you get a lot of coaching.