A "Wicked" Night Out

Such fun hanging with these WickedGreat ladies. We sorely missed those of you who could not make it, and who missed the paparazzi above.

I kept the program and will keep the "Witchy Women" article inside my copy of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. A few passages stood out to me, and I thought I'd share them with you all:

"'The idea behind Wicked is that things are not as they seem,' notes book-writer Winnie Holzman. 'What you think you know, you don't really know. It is the premise of the novel that you know certain things, but you don't know the deeper story.'
"The same notion drew composer Stephen Schwartz to the project: "I'm often attracted to an idea that takes and familiar story and spins it, looking at it from another direction, like Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. I like when I see things like that, and I like to write them. For me, if you take a familiar story...and you come at it from another point of view, the tension between the audience's preconception and the approach you're taking to the stry adds an extra level of response, plus it helps to clarify the points you're trying to make.
"'The idea of taking what is one of the icnic villains of American culture, the Wicked Witch of the West - so much 'the villain' that we don't even know her name - and looking at it from her point of view, that seemed to me a brilliant concept. It was clear [that] a show about her could explore some of my favorite themes: the difference between surface appearances and what's really going on underneath, how life is more complex and has more ambiguity than we tend to be comfortable with and, certainly, that our public discourse admits to.'"

"Garrison [actor who played the Wizard] wisely suggested: 'There's a green-eyed girl inall of us...Everyone has felt like the outcast at one time or another. It's part of the show's appeal. It's not a children's show, but kids enjoy the fantasy of it, adolescents get the love story and adults see the political alegory.'"

I am confused by one thing, however. The show's program lists the "Music and Lyrics by Stephen Schwartz" and then "Book by Winnie Holzman," who is listed as a "librettist" in the article mentioned above. First, I need to look up what a "librettist" is, and then I'm wondering what book they're talking about.

Librettist: (n) writer of a libretto
Libretto: (n) 1. the text of a work (as an opera) for the musical theater, 2. the book containing a libretto

So... ?? I wonder if there's a Wicked (without the ": The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West") book, as well? I would have guessed that Holzman may have written the lyrics of the show, but Schwartz did.

Thoughts?