Unscripted
A prose poem that reimagines the Broadway musical "Wicked" as a delightful chaos.
This poem is part of the NaPoWriMo 2025 challenge to write a poem a day in April. This is the prompt for April 21.
Sawako Nakayasu’s poem “Improvisational Score” is a rather surreal prose poem describing an imaginary musical piece that proceeds in a very unmusical way. Today, try your hand at writing your own poem in which something that normally unfolds in a set and well understood way — like a baseball game or dance recital – goes haywire, but is described as if it is all very normal.
Ok. Is it my imagination, or are these prompts getting more and more unconventional and—dare I say—difficult? I didn’t finish this piece in the wee hours of the morning as usual; I needed a couple of cups of coffee to dive back into the world I had created. Then, I felt the prose should follow the story—too long. Snip! Snip! I cut a lot. The prose poem below is the result.
The stage is set, yet everything is askew in this world where emerald cloaks billow like storm clouds.
The curtain rises not with a flourish but with a gentle yawn as if the very fabric of the theater had taken a moment for itself.
Poised and proud, Elphaba seems to miss her cue, an unhurried pause stretching like a cat waking from a nap. She stands, not casting spells but pondering the color of her own soul, while the audience leans forward, intrigued by the unexpected lull.
Instead of playing the familiar overture, the piano hums an old folk tune, half-remembered and slightly off-key.
A restless breeze seems to have choreographed Glinda’s movements as she twirls with abandon in her sparkling gown. Her laughter echoes in the air, a sound that both invites and confounds, as the ensemble joins her not in harmony but in a series of quirky movements—an elbow here, a knee there, an impromptu conga line that spirals out into the aisles, scattering popcorn and astonished gasps alike.
Words tumble from the actors’ mouths, not with the precision of rehearsed dialogue but with the fluidity of thoughts chasing their own tails.
“You know,” Elphaba muses, “I once thought I would fly, but now I wade through a sea of socks.”
The line hangs in the air, buoyant and bewildering as if the very essence of the story had taken a detour down a rabbit hole.
The set transforms, not through the magic of stagecraft but through the sheer force of imagination. The backdrop shifts from the Emerald City to a whimsical land of mismatched furniture and singing teapots, where gravity is merely a suggestion, and the laws of physics take a holiday. In the delightful chaos, the audience claps along, their rhythm a heartbeat matching the unscripted score.
As the final scene approaches, Elphaba and Glinda find themselves atop a giant stack of oversized books, their feet sinking into pages of forgotten tales. They share a glance, a knowing smile that says, “Isn’t this just the best kind of wrong?”
At that moment, the audience understands that it’s not about the notes or the lines; it’s about the joy of being lost together in a world where every misstep becomes a dance, every silence a song waiting to unfold.
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