College alumni Marc Platt, class of '79, and David Stone, '88, once numbered among the ghostly figures wandering out of Annenberg at 12 a.m. on a Wednesday night from rehearsal.
They were two of the seemingly insane theatre fanatics who always appeared to be shouldering a heavy schedule, all for the reward of a weekend spent in intense stress and heavy oil makeup.
The proliferation of club theater at Penn provides some sort of student performance every week and succeeds in monopolizing most of the free time of its devoted members.
This commitment to an activity which will never yield a credit may seem ludicrous to some, but take one look at Platt and Stone's most recent success, Wicked, and one begins to see the logic behind such insanity.
In January, the musical broke the record for the highest week-long box office gross of any show in Broadway history, raking in over $1.6 million. Since opening in 2003, the show garnered three Tony Awards and six Drama Desk awards.
The show has already sold out multiple-week runs in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C. and Toronto. Wicked will begin its Philadelphia run at the Academy of Music on March 22.
But the musical does not mark the beginning of the producers' rise to fame.
Platt produced Legally Blonde, Josie and the Pussycats and TV's Empire Falls. He was also an executive at Orion, TriStar and Universal Pictures. Stone is recognized for his work on numerous Broadway productions, including The Graduate and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.
Both Stone and Platt said they owe much of their success to their experiences in club theater. Stone was involved in Quadramics and on the board of Penn Players, and Platt participated in Glee Club and Quadramics.
The two seem to share a number of Penn memories, but in reality Stone graduated nine years after Platt.
"It's a coincidence," Stone said from his New York office. "We didn't even realize it when we met, that we both did extracurricular theatre at Penn."
Nonetheless, their memories seem to parallel each other.
Platt directed one Spring Fling musical, and Stone participated in another Spring Fling musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
"I got to direct, produce, act," Stone said.
It's this sort of multi-faceted involvement which seems to characterize both men's experiences in Penn theater.
"There's so many groups, everyone gets to be involved. I think that's really where you learn the practice of doing theatre," Stone said. "It actually makes a lot of sense because we both sort of came up the same way, by doing theater, rather than reading about it in a book."
This hands-on, dedicated approach to theater is typical of many Penn alumni who work in Hollywood and Broadway.
In his senior year at Penn, Platt directed a production of Godspell at the Prince Theater. He remembers the production as "great fun" with a reminiscent tone.
"Of course, the irony there is that Godspell was composed by Stephen Schwartz, who I'd go on to collaborate with for Wicked," Platt said of the show's composer. "I got most of the education for what I do now outside the classroom. I was always directing or performing something with Penn theater."
Platt recalled his time working on shows as a way to be "involved with what I always knew I wanted to do, which has always been to produce."
He said that he received a "great liberal arts education" as a Sociology major, but the pre-professional base for his career came from outside the classroom.
The impact of Penn theater on Platt's life was such that he and his wife Julie decided to make a gift to the student community at Penn in September 2005 -- a new space which will serve as the center of operations for the Office of Student Performing Arts and member organizations of the Performing Arts Council.
The Platt Student Performing Arts House will feature nearly 13,000 square feet of office, rehearsal and performance space in the lower level of Stouffer College House.
"My experiences with theater groups were so valuable to me in my career, and with the overwhelming participation of so many students in the performing arts and the lack of centralized facilities, it just felt like the perfect gift for us to make to the university," said Platt, who now lives in Los Angeles.
Platt also said the he actually "look[s] especially to hire talented Penn people," of which there are many both in Hollywood and on Broadway. The "Penn mafia," as David Stone described it, has been rapidly gaining members, particularly in the field of production.
Although production may not be the first thing many people think of in connection with a Penn degree, the influence seems to be growing. While Penn isn't likely to outstrip the influence of UCLA in the entertainment industry, the prevalence of Penn grads is noticeable.
Other famous producers to come out of Penn include Harold Prince, who produced musicals such as West Side Story and Phantom of the Opera, and Robert Cort who produced films such as Jumanji and Runaway Bride.
There are a variety of interpretations of this development. Platt thinks it's simply the characteristics of the type of student Penn attracts.
"I think in a creative business like film or theater, it's about smart creative people, and certainly Penn has its share," Platt said. "I also think that Penn produces very interesting people, [who] tend to be varied in their interests."
David Stone added that the nature of club theater at Penn is "second to none," explaining that members tend to have a natural instinct for production.
"We learned it together by putting up shows, and I think that's empowering," Stone said of the university's theater education. "It gives everyone who worked on extracurricular shows a sense of 'we can do this, and I think there's a drive that we all have that translates into our professional lives."
Penn theater professor David Fox said that these "producers with good judgement" are invaluable, and their success bodes well for future Penn grads who may join the growing Broadway and Hollywood mafia.
He pointed out that "Penn has a very pragmatic student body," and the innovative and confident production of Wicked is evidence of how far that pragmatism can go.
Stone and Platt have indeed put their Penn pragmaticism to use.
Both men had been eyeing the book Wicked by Gregory Maguire as something that would make an excellent project, but until a mutual friend introduced them, they had never met.
Initially, Platt had acquired the rights to the novel and was developing it as a screenplay, but said "after several drafts, I still wasn't really satisfied."
It was after being contacted by Schwartz, who composed the music, about the idea for a musical Wicked that "the lightbulb went off ... it suddenly became clear to me that this is a story that wants to be musicalized."
That's where Stone came in. Despite his formidable experience in film production, Platt was looking for a helping hand to navigate Broadway.
Platt invited Stone to the first read-through of the show. Stone recalled that Platt "basically said, 'We're ready to do a reading, and you should come.' Of course I did, and then he turned to me and said 'Now what?' So, I came in and we started talking about putting up this show."
With that, the musical was born and soon took off. The production's originality and innovative music and plot have secured a devoted fan base in theater-goers, young and old.
Winnie Holzman -- who wrote television's holy grail of teen angst, My So Called Life -- wrote the script for Wicked and gave the show a more modern voice than most musicals.
Holzman's work captures the drama of adolescent injustice, and the show is an elaboration on the basic "girl who just doesn't fit in" scenario.
Catchy songs from Schwartz like "Popular" and "Defying Gravity" are the backbone of the musical.
Since its debut, a seemingly endless stream of people from pre-teen girls to middle-aged theater critics appear willing to line up around the block to take in the spectacle of dancing, singing, multi-colored inhabitants of Oz.
As the show's touring company gears up to visit Philadelphia, Penn students are helping to fill the Kimmel Center.
"Everybody loves The Wizard of Oz, and it's just such an interesting twist on it. It makes you look at it from the Wicked Witch's point of view ... except she's not wicked," said College freshman Dianna He, who is a fan of the musical.
The show's popularity at Stone and Platt's alma mater is evident through a Wicked facebook group where students proclaim their devotion in the ultimate shrine.
Dianna He raves about the show calling Schwartz "a genius" also describing the "wonderful, incredibly talented" actors.
A recurring point of enthusiasm among the show's fans is the comedic element. Wicked fan and College junior Matthew Wolf sees the show as part of a new movement on Broadway -- a style which appeals to a younger audience with a more modern sensibility.
"Producers are finally hitting on ... that comedic style," Wolf said, listing Avenue Q and The Producers as other musicals which "have all done well with our age group" for that reason.
Both Wolf and He are involved with performing arts groups, following in the footsteps of Wicked producers.
"What's exciting is that most shows don't get younger audiences, girls and boys in high school, in college and in their 20s," Stone said. "For most shows, the audience is much older than that."
Fox pointed out that "by and large musicals had passed their point of interest, are seen as a very middle-aged medium, either that or family. But [Wicked] has captured youthful interest and done so in a very different way, not so much because of politics like Rent did, or West Side Story before it."
But the show is more than just a teen phenomenon.
"Obviously it couldn't be selling out every single performance all over the country with just one segment of the audience," Stone said. The show's appeal, he said, can't be broken down into a single factor.
"You can appreciate the Wizard of Oz connections ... all in the alternate reality of the Oz story. You can also appreciate the story of acceptance and this outsider who becomes accepted, the popular girl who becomes good-natured. I think the younger audience might respond to that."
Platt and Stone want to continue to produce more hits that fans will appreciate in the future. The two are already working on another project together. Their next Broadway show is a drama starring Julia Roberts called Three Days of Rain.
But in the meantime, they are still riding out the success of their first collaboration.
"Frankly, we were pretty sure we were going to have a success," Platt said. "But I don't think anyone could have imagined just how big it was going to be."
