‘Wicked For Good’ Production Designer on Building Elphaba’s Nest

Production designer Nathan Crowley found ways to expand the world of “Wicked” in its conclusion, “For Good.”

The story of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) continues, following the choices and consequences the witches made in the first “Wicked.” In “Wicked: For Good,” Elphaba has been declared the “Wicked Witch,” thus determining her destiny.

As a result, she’s forced to hide in the forest.

“In the stage show, that’s written as a grotto. It’s a hiding place,” Crowley explains. In his designs, Crowley notes the forests were “full of circular, rotating trees. They formed fluid shapes.” One idea he had was to put Elphaba in a canopy. It wasn’t in the script, but he had the idea that the forest of Oz would have a mother tree, and that’s where she would create a nest.

“She has to make a western journey. She has to become the Wicked Witch of the West,” he says. So the forest was to the West.

To build it, Crowley consulted with his greens department to see if they could collect wood from the local forests and weave the nest together with it. “We gave them a big stack of wood from greens, and then we had a platform at the right height, and we had some scaffolding and steel departments to help with the structure,” he says, adding, “It was a very organic set. They went about twisting and weaving all these beautiful shapes.” In total, it took six weeks to assemble the set. “The windows sort of fluidly got woven into that structure.”

He also considered how cinematographer Alice Brooks could light it. “The mold-making department came up a silicone giant leaf mold that we hand-painted leaf veins on; they were transparent, so we could put them on the roof, and then Alice could get light in,” he says.

Crowley also had to make a bed within the nest. “It is branches weaving up, creating the bed. I can’t say that we knew what it was when we were making it,” Crowley smiles. “It was a sculptural piece. It’s totally an art installation.”