Emily Koch on Stage vs On Page: Same Name, Different Worlds

If you Google “Emily Koch”, you might end up somewhere unexpected.

You might be looking for a crime novelist. You might instead find yourself watching someone belt Defying Gravity under a spotlight on Broadway.

For a while - particularly in the Twitter era - that confusion played out in real time. I’d occasionally get tagged in posts meant for a different Emily Koch: one who could actually sing.

The Other Emily Koch: Centre Stage

The Broadway Emily Koch is an American theatre actress whose career has largely unfolded on stage rather than the page.

She’s best known for playing Elphaba - the green-skinned, misunderstood lead - in Wicked. She first joined the Broadway company as a standby before taking on the role in the national tour.

That’s not a minor credit. Elphaba is one of the most vocally and emotionally demanding roles in musical theatre.

She’s also appeared in productions like Waitress and Kimberly Akimbo.

Trained at Carnegie Mellon School of Drama, she comes from that elite pipeline of performers who can act, sing, and sustain eight shows a week.

Back when Twitter still functioned as a place where strangers shouted into the void, I’d occasionally get tagged in things like:

“Emily Koch was AMAZING in Wicked tonight.”

I was definitely not.

But it was fun to occasionally get caught up in the excitement of her fans.