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Once is not enough. For that matter, apparently neither is eight, nine or 10 times for Jenn Bennet. The 18-year-old Providence woman wants to watch Wicked an 11th time - well, so far.
Wicked is my favorite musical," she says. "I just love it. I can't get enough of it."
Bennet already has tickets for a show next week. She saw the show twice in one day last week. But today's another day, and, to Bennet's disappointment, she hasn't seen the show, yet.
"If I have nothing to do, which is most days, I'll do it," Bennet says.
Buying $66 to $71 orchestra seats on a regular basis is too costly for this freshman on winter break from Wagner College in New York. So Bennet just asks. Actually, she enters - the Providence Performing Arts Center, and the Wicked ticket lottery, again.
There's a drawing in PPAC's lobby 2 hours before every show, through Jan. 21. Each time, 13 pairs of orchestra tickets are sold for $25 each. On average, 45 people enter the lottery, although once earlier this week, 75 did; on this evening 40 do.
Bennet, of course, is among them, along with Bennet's friend Talia Triangolo of Providence, and Bennet's mother Joan Bennet.
"She's obsessed with it," says her mother, who has seen the show five or six times, including once by lottery. "Okay, I'll say she's passionate about it."
Bennet has a Wicked charm bracelet, T-shirts and sweatshirts, and a framed Wicked poster with all her ticket stubs inside it.
"There are people who are ridiculous," she says. "I don't think I'm that bad."
Last Saturday, Bennet came to PPAC at 11:30 a.m. for the lottery drawing for the matinee show. She won. After the show, as she was leaving the theater, she noticed the staff preparing for the evening Wicked lottery. So Bennet entered again, and won, again, and saw yet another show.
"I can definitely criticize the show because I know it so well," she says. "There are different leads, and understudies. Some shows are better than others. But it is great."
While Bennet would not want you to know this, the chances of winning the Wicked lottery in Providence are much better than in New York, where she has entered at least 20 times and never won. It's a numbers game. New York also offers 13 pairs of tickets per show. But instead of 45 people vying for them, a couple of hundred do.
On this evening, the names are drawn and announced, and the winners calmly and quietly walk up to claim their winnings. This happens again and again, through the first nine winners. Then the 10th goes beserk. It's Jenn Bennet. She's yelling and jumping as though she's never seen the show before and never won this lottery.
When Bennet leaves the theater, her mother, who seems to know her daughter fairly well, makes a prediction: "We'll be back tomorrow."
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