Before Wicked opened on Broadway in October 2003, the musical’s production team took the show to the Curran Theatre in San Francisco for what’s called an “out of town tryout.” The five-week run allowed the producers, writers, and director to work out the kinks ahead of the show’s Broadway debut.
During the San Francisco run, University of Southern California film student Jon M. Chu happened to be home for the weekend visiting his parents, who owned a Chinese restaurant called Chef Chu’s in Los Altos, California, just outside Silicon Valley. Chu was the youngest of five children growing up in a family that spent their free time playing instruments or going to the ballet, the opera, musicals, and the movies. “It was the time of Michael Jordan on TV, and Steven Spielberg movies,” Chu recalls. “Michael Jackson videos were like mini musicals.”
Chu was raised on what he calls “this beautiful idea of story,” and went to film school with an inner theater geek driving his desire to learn the craft. So it wasn’t a surprise when his mom, Ruth, suggested they catch the show at the Curran.
Also at the show was Marc Platt, Wicked’s producer, who spent those five weeks in San Francisco putting the finishing touches on what would eventually become one of Broadway’s biggest hits.
