Jackie Raye, a former Georgian and a member of the national touring cast of “Wicked” coming to Atlanta, knows what it’s like to be booed.
Her father, Tommy Raye, was a Georgia Tech football coach in the early 2000s. When he stepped away from coaching, the family moved to Athens, home to the University of Georgia. On the first day of fourth grade, she recalls, the teacher introduced her to her Dawg Country classmates: “This is Jackie. She just moved here from Atlanta where Georgia Tech is.”
“And they all went, ‘Booooo!’”
She laughs. “What did I do to deserve that?”
It was around the same time that Raye began to dream of performing on Broadway.
July 5 will mark the sixth time that “Wicked” opens at Atlanta’s Fox Theatre for an extended run — and this time, Raye will be onstage as part of the cast. She’s both an ensemble member who plays various characters and an understudy to Glinda the Good Witch (who isn’t always so good) and Nessarose, the Wicked Witch of the East.
The fourth longest-running show in Broadway history, “Wicked” has been performed in 16 countries and translated into six languages.
For the uninitiated, Tony Award-winning musical was originally a novel by Gregory Maguire, who took the public domain characters from “The Wizard of Oz” and invented a wildly divergent story. In his version, the Wicked Witch of the West is a misunderstood heroine named Elphaba.
Stephen Schwartz’s “Wicked” songs about young people defying authority to realize their destiny have helped create a fandom for the musical that can sometimes be described as fanatically devote.
Credit: Courtesy of Jackie Raye
Credit: Courtesy of Jackie Raye
Raye, who is 29, first saw “Wicked” as an adolescent when it played the Fox in 2006 and fell in love with the show. By then, the theater bug had bitten her, though she faced internal obstacles.
“I saw a high school production of ‘Annie’ when I was going to elementary school in Atlanta. I really liked it, but I could never visualize myself onstage. I was an introvert,” she said.
Hunter Ashley Raye, her younger sister who lives in Atlanta, was taking tap and jazz classes in preschool and kindergarten, which encouraged her.
It wasn’t until eighth grade in Athens that she got busy.
“I was a late bloomer. I started dance at 14, which is very late. But I was in taekwondo and got a black belt, and I was also a cheerleader in middle school so that helped,” she said. “It’s never too late if it’s meant for you, and it’s never too late if you put in the work. I put in a ton of work.”
At North Oconee High School in Athens, “I was dancing after school probably five, six nights a week.”
As for overcoming her introvert nature, Raye said it was a “process of aging” and “watching my sister succeed … watching her be brave” onstage. “It pushed me out of my comfort zone,” she added. “I got more confident in who I was in front of others onstage until it wasn’t really a mental block anymore.”
When she graduated from high school, she auditioned for several college musical theater departments and decided on Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.
“When I was 18, I was a little snobby. I wanted to go to New York right away, not Texas,” she said. “‘I don’t belong there,’ I thought. ‘I belong in New York.’ But I was so grateful I was there for those formative years.”
Finally in New York with a still-fresh degree in 2016, she did the usual breaking-in work before auditioning for the national touring company of “Wicked” in 2019.
She had applied to audition and got rejected, but another actress dropped out. Raye got a call the night before, saying she could come in to audition if she was ready.
“I had been prepping this material behind the scenes,” she said. “That’s what you do in life: You prep for what you want.”
As an understudy to Glinda and Nessarose for four years, Raye has had many opportunities to step into the bigger roles.
“You do a lot of homework, and you make sure you’re ready to go on at a moment’s notice. Sometimes I know weeks in advance, and it’s on the calendar. Sometimes I get a text that morning. It even can be in the middle of a show,” she said.
“The show’s got to go on.”
THEATER PREVIEW
“Wicked”
July 5-30. $43-$193. Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta. 855-285-8499, foxtheatre.org.
