Prop broom, made to be used by Elphaba in the original Broadway production of Wicked: Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

Prop broom, made to be used by Elphaba in the original Broadway production of Wicked. The straw broom has a wooden handle. Costumes for Wicked were designed by Susan Hilferty.

Wicked is one of the most popular and influential works of American musical theater of the 21st century. The musical, with music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and book by Winnie Holzman, opened on Broadway at the Gershwin Theatre in 2003, and has gone on to become the fourth-longest running show in Broadway history, as well as one of the most financially successful. The show’s plot is based on the 1995 Gregory Maguire novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, which revises and expands on the characters and mythology of L. Frank Baum's early 20th century Oz book series and the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musical film The Wizard of Oz. Wicked tells the story of a pair of witches, Elphaba and Glinda, whose become friends before their clashing personalities, worldviews, and events in their homeland of Oz force them apart. The story notably fleshes out the backstory, motivations, and humanity of Elphaba, the “Wicked Witch of the West” of Baum’s Oz series, empathetically portraying her struggle for love and acceptance, autonomy, and activism for marginalized creatures.

The original Broadway production of Wicked was nominated for ten Tony Awards in 2004, including Best Musical, Book, Orchestrations, Original Score, Choreography, Costume Design, Lighting Design, Scenic Design, and two nominations for Best Actress – for Idina Menzel (Elphaba) and Kristin Chenoweth (Glinda). Menzel won the Best Actress award, and the show also won the Tony Awards for Best Scenic Design and Best Costume Design. The show opened to mixed critical reviews, with Menzel and Chenoweth singled out for near-unanimous praise, but over time, it has been reviewed more favorably, and has become one of the most commercially popular and successful Broadway productions of all time.

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: before 2012
• maker: Hilferty, Susan
• Object Name: broom
• Physical Description: wood (overall material)
• Physical Description: straw (overall material)
• Measurements: overall: 53 in x 8 in x 3 in; 134.62 cm x 20.32 cm x 7.62 cm
• place made: United States: New York, New York
• Subject: Theater
• Subject: Musical Theater
• Subject: Witchcraft
• ID Number: 2012.0247.03
• accession number: 2012.0247
• catalog number: 2012.0247.03
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.