"I've been planning [The Elphaba Fund] for about five years, and it's just formalizing right now," explained Maguire, who created the foundation with his husband, painter Andy Newman. "The documents are actually still being drawn up by my lawyer, but it's far enough along — in terms of thinking and also funding — that it seems legitimate to announce this."
The Elphaba Fund, which will be registered with the government by the end of 2013, is dedicated to issues of women's and children's health and education — particularly in the third world — arts and literacy education, and environmental causes. A portion of Maguire's profit from the hit musical will fund various charities.
"As some people know, I spent some part of my life in an orphanage because my mother died in childbirth when I was born — just like Nessarose's mother [does in the musical] — and also, so did my children," said Maguire. "Each of my three children were given up for adoption and spent some time in children's homes… So, [The Elphaba Fund] is partly to do more for other kids that I can't actually adopt and carry home… The second thing — the education part — is particularly directed towards literacy, libraries and literature education. Wicked comes as a result of my deep engagement with the literature of childhood — the literature of L. Frank Baum and 'The [Wonderful] Wizard of Oz' and with the movie literature of the 1939 film. It was sort of the spontaneous combustion of those two miracles against my childish consciousness that was the termination of 'Wicked.'
"Literature, when it's at its best, is art, and art affects children… so that's why I support literacy efforts."
Photo by Joan Marcus |
As for Wicked's big birthday, the author will return to Oz for approximately the 50th time Oct. 30, and his last-minute preparations included a haircut for the big event.
"One of the reasons — I was joking to my son — I went to get the hair cut at the back of my neck is [because] the first time Idina Menzel walked onto the stage in San Francisco and sang 'The Wizard and I,' a hair stood up at the back of my neck, and it has never sat down for ten years," he said with a laugh. "So now I have to keep it cropped short because I look as if I'm sitting in an electric socket!"
Maguire added that Wicked — a story he created as a comment on pop culture and a riff on the magical Land of Oz — has "actually become a part of popular culture now." He has also had several inquires to adapt his 1999 novel "Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister," a retelling of "Cinderella," into a musical or opera.
"I've launched a little paper airplane," he said, "and now it's like Starship Enterprise."
For more on Wicked's tenth anniversary, click here. To read the Playbill interview with original stars Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, click here.
(Playbill.com staff writer Michael Gioia's work appears in the news, feature and video sections of Playbill.com as well as in the pages of Playbill magazine. Follow him on Twitter at @PlaybillMichael.)