An audience with Gregory Maguire

Q: In the musical, Fiyero's surname is given as 'Tiggular'. Where did this come from?
fabala

That is the invention writer of the musical, Winnie Holzman. I didn't invent it, but it is so good, it's so correct as his last name that I have asked her for permission to borrow it back in the new books.

So, in the next book, when we look back at his family a little bit, that will be his family name. So in some small way the musical is affecting the novels.

Q: What is the significance of the carp in the well at Kiamo Ko in relation to Madame Morrible?
fabala

Gregory Maguire: (Laughs) What good readers you have! I believe, I'm not sure, it could be an accident. But I think Madame Morrible was, in her own way, a witch and the karp was something that was used as kind of a spy.

Q: What one question would you ask L. Frank Baum, if he were still alive?
fabala

Gregory Maguire: Do you hate me (laughs)? I think L. Frank Baum would be so happy to realise that his little moral story continues to pose moral questions 108 years after he wrote it.

If a ghost was to come back to me and say that 108 years after the publication of Wicked! somebody is writing about your characters, I would cry ghostly tears of joy.

Q: Who is Yackle (or is this better left to our own interpretation)?
fabala

Gregory Maguire: Yackle is to be disclosed in a Lion Among Men.

Q: On many occasions you have declared your love for the musical adaptation of Wicked!. I am interested to know if there are any parts or themes in the original novel you wish were included on stage but were omitted?
saintaelphaba

Gregory Maguire: One small thing, and it's very small, but it's important to me; I wanted to make a truly complex yet magical land like the land in which we live and I was just a tiny bit disappointed that, for instance, in the dance scenes, there are no men dancing with men.

And, even though it's a small, small tweak, one of the things I wanted to do with Oz, that you don't see in Middle Earth, you don't see in Narnia and you don't see in other famous magic lands, is the fact that magic lands can be as complex and multi-balanced as the world in which we live.

Q: What is your opinion of the musical's finale, which is in direct contrast to one of the main themes in your novel?
saintaelphaba

Gregory Maguire: Well, if you go back and read my novel, you'll see that there are a number of ways to interpret the last, say, seven pages. That said, certainly the presentation strikes one as being absolutely opposite.

I was initially suspicious and sceptical. I loved the whole play but when I saw the finale, it's the only time where I thought 'Oh no'.

But, in the five years that the play has been running and within two weeks of the time that I first saw it, I saw that ultimately it doesn't matter because since the main relationship in the play is between Glinda and Elphaba, when they are torn apart, they never see each other again and it's like a death.

If you're never able to see the person you love most in the world, it's like a death and so the fact that the character isn't physically dead, doesn't mean they don't suffer the same sense of loss. So I decided the end of the play would have a bitter-sweet feeling in the sense that once again you are reminded by art to cherish every aspect of your life and relationships.