Chairs ‘dressed’ in coats, bouffants on standby: Inside the Broadway backstage

For the audience settling into their seats, ‘Wicked' begins with the sort of theatrical flourish Broadway has perfected over decades. Music from the orchestral pit swells as a witch lifts into the air, a pink bubble floats in, a train rattles towards Oz and one scene melts into another so seamlessly that the mechanics barely register.

Mumbai has, in the last two years, grown used to this scale of spectacle. The NMACC stage has been hosting a steady parade of Broadway and West End heavyweights, from ‘The Sound of Music' and ‘Life of Pi' to ‘The Phantom of the Opera' and ‘Mamma Mia!'.

With ‘Wicked' now in the city, TOI was allowed a glimpse into what lies behind the world's grandest musical theatre where, just past the stage doors, the illusion gives way to something unvarnished yet fascinating. Through a network of service corridors, the backstage area opens up into a temporary village — a hive of makeshift rooms with wardrobe corners, wig stations, quick-change areas — each buzzing close to showtime.

One of the most arresting sights is a row of chairs ‘dressed' in clothes. Shirts, skirts, trousers and jackets hang over their backs as if the actors have simply evaporated. These are quick-change stations where each chair holds the exact garments an actor must slip into mid-show. On the walls above them are visual checklists showing performers in their various looks to prevent mistakes when the clock is ticking. A few steps away sits a room of wigs. Shelves hold hairpieces in every imaginable personality. Straight, curled, braided, bouffant. Next door, a salon-like space holds heads of hair, in various stages of styling but no people in sight. Out in the corridors, velvet coats and satin dresses jostle for space while actors weave through them, practising lip trills.

"We have 13 shipping containers worth of equipment and set pieces and costumes," says James Bilios, executive producer at Broadway Entertainment Group, the company touring ‘Wicked' internationally. Those containers carry everything needed to recreate Oz. Lighting, sound equipment, sets, costumes and cables that are pre-rigged so the production can be assembled in "four days".

The sets are as international as the tour. "Parts of the production were built in Romania, Britain and Australia, including hand-painted backdrops created by scenic artists used to working on opera stages." Yet for all the technical sophistication, the show still begins in an old-fashioned way. "Designers first map everything out using a miniature model of the stage where they move things around to see how it works," says Bilios.

The touring company comprises around 85 people, with each city adding local hands, particularly for wardrobe, which handles 166 wigs and nearly 350 costumes, that come from an international supply chain. "Our costumes are made in four different parts of the world… Turkey, Greece, UK and South Korea," says Bilios. "Britain makes the best army costumes. Turkey and Greece make beautiful bridesmaids, glitzy girly stuff and also great shoes. South Korea makes good funky stuff with velvet and brocades."

At the centre of it is a cast of 30 including swings and understudies. "On show day they will come in four hours before the performance, do a warm up, have prayer notes," says Bilios. There are rituals, too. "Our Elphaba likes to do a sort of dance warm up before she puts the green makeup on, which took days to perfect and 45 minutes to apply each time," Bilios says.

The cast spans teenagers fresh out of performing arts colleges to seasoned performers. And competition for those roles is fierce. "For this show we had 30 cast positions, and had 3,700 people applying," Bilios says. "We look for what we call a ‘triple threat' — performers who can sing, dance and act at the highest level." The mix has also become more diverse. "We have British Indian and African-English performers. We're not homogenous anymore and it's important to not just have white people."

Desisting from smoking and drinking to protect their voices, touring productions live a more regimented life than the versions stationed permanently in cities like New York. Despite careful planning though, touring remains a logistical gamble. ‘Wicked' arrived in Mumbai from Dubai just before tensions in the region escalated. On another tour, a truck carrying costumes was held up at the Romanian border. "They went through the costumes to see if there were any illegal immigrants coming across from Romania into the EU," recalls Bilios. If everything goes to plan, none of this is visible. For the audience, it will simply look like a witch taking flight.