Broadway: Wicked - No One Gets A Ticket…Except Me…And 24 Other Lucky People!

Those of you that know me well, know about the nasty bit of bad lucky I have had trying to see Wicked. I fell in love with the music when a friend introduced me to it my sophomore year of college. It came to Portland during my junior year of college, so I was in Provo and couldn’t see it. How wrong is that?

When I got into the internship I was happy to be going to New York, but I was even happier that I would finally have the chance to see Wicked on Broadway. Lucky me, right? Well, my friends and I tried two times to win the Wicked lottery (if you win you get front row seats for $26.25). We didn’t win. It seemed impossible. It was in July when my parents decided to buy Wicked tickets for Thanksgiving. A guaranteed chance of seeing the show….sign me up. I didn’t stop going to the lottery. I actually went several times to help friends win. I won my third try and gave my tickets to Sarah and her friend. Winning the lottery was one of the highlights of my life and handing those precious tickets over broke my heart, but only a little. After all, I did come to win for them. (This is actually a really funny story that I will have to tell you sometime.)

Three months pass. Do you remember what happened the week or two before Thanksgiving? The stagehands went on strike and all but a few of the shows stopped, including Wicked. It broke my heart. I had waited all this time and then nothing. Even when I bought tickets months in advance I still didn’t get to go see the show.

Sarah, being the sweet and amazing friend that she is, was determined to win the lottery and get me into the show. We tried every night for the first few weeks. We tried all through December and never won. It was truly depressing. On the Saturday before we were suppose to go home for Christmas I told Sarah that we should take a break for awhile. We didn’t try again until a few weeks into January. We would go on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night and try to win, and alas nothing. Leah even came once to help.

The truth is that Sarah is an expert Wicked lottery winner. She has developed a system to win and if done correctly you are guaranteed at least one win. Unfortunately for us, you need three or more people for the system to be successful. Since it was just me and Sarah we didn’t have that strategy on our side. The first time Leah came to be our third we were running late so we couldn’t do the strategy, so we didn’t win. Sigh.

I honestly don’t know how many times we have tried to win the Wicked lottery. I lost count at about 12 and that was at the beginning of January. The lottery started to become an activity for Sarah and me. We would plan on meeting at the lottery and then have something planned for after. Quite sad really.

The pressure was on when, do to unexpected circumstances, we realized that if we didn’t win Wicked this weekend, Sarah and I wouldn’t be able to go see it together. We changed our attitudes and started talking as if we were going to win. The plan was set. We would try Friday, and twice on Saturday. We could do! I knew we could. We had to. I got off work early and made my way to the theater. I knew Sarah was going to be late, but I was suppose to put my name is when I got there. As I walked to the door to go in, I was pleasantly surprised to see Leah! She had come to help! This meant that we could do it. The strategy would work. We all put our names in at the appropriate times and waited. I felt good about it. With all three of us there and doing Sarah’s plan I knew we were going to win. The lottery guy came out and started yelling the instructions and then he yelled the first name, “Leah!” I started screaming….Sarah started screaming… I think we got a little yelp from Leah. I don’t really remember, becaue I was screaming.

We did it! After all the months of trying, Leah steps in and gets the job done! Sweet Leah gave the tickets to Sarah and me and we all went out to dinner together. It was a night to remember. After trying for so long we finally got to go.

Oh, yeah the play was amazing. Well worth all the time we invested on trying to see it. Something totally interesting about the whole thing is that this will probably be the last play that Sarah and I see together (at least for a really long time), and the leading actress that played Elphaba was Stephanie J. Block. What’s funny is that she played the lead in the Pirate Queen, which was Sarah and my first show together. Isn’t it great how things work out!

Special thanks to Sarah and Leah. I wouldn’t have seen the show without you.
P.S. The title of the post was inspired by a guy Sarah and I met while trying to win a month ago. He kept singing, “No one gets a ticket!” to the tune of “No one mourns the wicked!”