Orienting the 2023 Pre-Broadway Tour of The Wiz
A spoiler-free offering for the committed or the curious
Too long, didn’t read (Tl;dr)
Orienting my voice. An active thread of my life between the ages of 16 and 26 was thinking about, plotting, planning, pitching, rehearsing, marketing, playing in the pit for, performing in, or otherwise implementing productions of The Wiz. Four complete productions plus one that never was, from high school to community to college to off-off-Broadway to commercial. The Wiz is woven through the fabric of first loves, getting my drivers license, heading off to college, transferring colleges, moving from home (St. Louis) to Boston then Chicago then New York City, first marriage proposals and wedding planning, getting my dream job, leaving my dream industry, beginning to lose my grandparents, and much more.
In short, the stage version of The Wiz was a companion on my journey from teenager to adulthood. Through productions of The Wiz I began learning about how organizations and institutions work, how to manage people and projects, and how to make a way where there was no way. I have spent more hours in and around the story told via The Wiz than any other tale — on top of the general cultural exposure a black girl who loves musicals would have. After over 20 years away, The Wiz is back in my brain: I am a co-producer (via HudsonMann) of the production that is the subject of this post.
Source material and author. In 1900 L. Frank Baum wrote and published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with illustrations by William Wallace Denslow, an editorial cartoonist, under a joint copyright. PBS American Experience recently aired “American Oz,” detailing Baum’s life and career leading up to the publishing of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz when he was 44. The documentary also covers the success of the Oz universe that followed, all the way up to the musical adaptation of Wicked. You can watch the full documentary here, and I recommend it (I played it and listened to it podcast-style over the course of a morning while checking things off my list around the house). Some points I found poignant:
Baum began a lifelong thread of writing and storytelling at an early age, including for the theatre (a theater his father had built for him)
The majority of his business ventures relied on sales, marketing, and doing so through weaving a story
The expansion of the Oz world under Baum’s watch (additional books, comic strip, 1902 Broadway musical, movies, multimodal live travelog experience, planned amusement park) were heavily driven by what people reacted to at the time and were interested in engaging with (read: paying to consume), not by a strict set of world-building rules or boundaries.
Baum’s mother-in-law (as of 1882), Matilda Joslyn Gage, was a seminal American writer and activist who advocated for women’s rights, Native American rights, abolition of slavery, and freethought, among other causes. In 1893, she published Woman, Church & State, in which she argued that the church used the witch trials of the 1600s to target, control, and kill women:
The witch was in reality the profoundest thinker, the most advanced scientist of those ages. The persecution which for ages waged against witches was in reality an attack upon science at the hands of the church. As knowledge has ever been power, the church feared its use in woman’s hands, and leveled its deadliest blows at her.
— Woman, Church and State, p. 105
Gage died in the Baum home in Chicago in 1898, two years before The Wonderful Wizard of the Oz was distributed to the public.
I do recommend watching or listening to the whole documentary, or at least browsing L. Frank Baum and Matilda Joslyn Gage’s Wikipedia pages. The point being that the source material, while offered as a "modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out," is influenced by the author’s lens and experiences, along with all that was happening in America at the turn of the century. Many scholars have written about the political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the 1902 Broadway production contained explicit political references (among other plot changes meant to connect with the attention of adult theater goers at that time).
My initial takeaway after finishing the documentary was that L. Frank Baum was the OG content marketer and engagement content guru. He understood innately the essence of what marketers and advertisers and social media content makers have chased over the last two decades as technology and communication channels have exponentially evolved.
The Wiz: The Super Soul Musical "Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (original production, 1974). Ken Harper, a black man born around 1939 who grew up in the Bronx, was accepted into and entered Columbia University but dropped out to join the army where he became a DJ for Armed Forces Radio. He returned to NYC after his discharge and became a DJ at radio station WPIX-FM in the mid-1960s, including a stint as an all night DJ (“Manhattan After Hours”) and eventually becoming the Music and Public Affairs Director.
The civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the growing black liberation and black power movements, the dawn of affirmative action. It was out of this context that Ken Harper, in his late 20s, came up with the idea to create a Broadway musical (well, originally he had his sights set on TV) steeped in the black experience, showcasing and celebrating black music, creativity, talent, and wit. That in the midst of all that was the mid-late 60s the vehicle he reached for was the 1900 turn of the century “tale of wonderment and joy” with “the heart-aches and nightmares left out” feels… right on, as speaks volumes.
The 1939 MGM movie. With 10 screenwriters and 4 directors, MGM’s 1939 version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was the studio’s “prestige film” that year — a vehicle to show off the artistic and technological chops for the studio (hence the change to ruby slippers instead of the original story’s silver). That orientation as well, lends itself to the “tale of wonderment and joy.” Though it became a beloved American film (aired annually by CBS starting in the late 50s), it took over 20 years to make its money back.
Getting our bearings. A critical anchoring for orienting to The Wiz (before we even get to the current production) is that it is not based on the MGM movie. Both the MGM movie and The Wiz are based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Not first this then that then that. First this, then that and then also First this then that.
Given the saturation of the MGM movie, I can see how it might be offered as the default — especially without exposure or proximity to the experiences that The Wiz centers and was borne of. To critique character portrayals, story choices, or casting of The Wiz on the basis of the MGM movie is less critique and more accurately individual preference. To approach The Wiz primarily in contrast to the MGM film is to (dis)miss the poignancy and the specificity of Ken Harper’s core idea. The persistence of comparison between the MGM movie and The Wiz framed as critique underscores how whole cultures can co-exist without overlap.
The 1978 film version of The Wiz. For those more (or at least as) familiar with the 1978 film version of The Wiz than the 1975 Broadway production, critique is closer to fair game. There are new songs and cut songs. The possibilities of live film opened up locations (and along with that imagery and plot points) not practical for the stage. A number of iconic scenes, lines, and characters in the movie version of The Wiz were nowhere in the 1975 Broadway production. Movie star casting and the reach of the medium mean that more people likely orient to the 1978 movie than to the original telling of the story on Broadway.
But both the stage and the movie version are The Wiz: a musical steeped in the black experience, showcasing and celebrating black music, creativity, talent, and wit, realized through the story offered by the 1900 book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.
2023 Pre-Broadway Tour of The Wiz. Which brings us to the purpose of this writing: the 2023 reimagining of The Wiz.
Here’s how I describe the current production after three viewings:
The Pre-Broadway Tour of The Wiz is like a reunion with a dear old friend you haven’t seen in decades.
The anticipated hug is as warm and grounding as you knew it would be, but then it turns into the hug you didn’t know you needed.
The hug that sees you, and helps you to see and hold and connect pieces of yourself.
The hug that brings a flood of humanity, connected dots, memories, and clear visions of what’s possible.
The hug that simultaneously gives acknowledgment to what hurts and the code to heal it — through love and song and laughter and joy.
It is specific. And at the same time sweeping and enveloping.
And it leaves you changed.
For the purposes of this piece, I tried really hard to make a comparison to other fictional universes, but none of them have cultural reinterpretations, only big studio interpretations and/or spin offs (though I am betting someone reading this will give me a parallel!). The Wiz is not merely a reinterpretation of source material; rather, it’s a cultural celebration, reclamation and declaration through source material. In the midst of the mid-late 60s and the early 70s, an army veteran with his finger on the pulse of what gave (and poised to take) folks life amidst the dynamics of the world at that time reached to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as a launching point for a celebration of the black experience, black music, creativity, talent, joy, and wit.
Many hands and minds and hearts (and feet and voices!) answered Ken Harper’s invitation to celebrate the black experience, black music, creativity, talent, joy, and wit. And then millions of audience members picked up the assignment over 1,672 performances. So many more followed suit through the movie and productions of the stage version over the past 49 years.
In 2023, the producers, creative team, and cast of the Pre-Broadway Tour of The Wiz have picked up Ken Harper’s invitation anew to create a celebration of the black experience, black music, creativity, talent, joy, and wit amidst all that is happening in the world today. They have done so in full acknowledgement and celebration of the gifts of the 1975 stage production and 1978 movie – just like some of us know we do and we must when it involves venerated ancestors.
The Pre-Broadway Tour of The Wiz is like a reunion with a dear old friend you haven’t seen in decades.
The anticipated hug is as warm and grounding as you knew it would be, but then it turns into the hug you didn’t know you needed.
The hug that sees you, and helps you to see and hold and connect pieces of yourself.
The hug that brings a flood of humanity, connected dots, memories, and clear visions of what’s possible.
The hug that simultaneously gives acknowledgment to what hurts and the code to heal it — through love and song and joy.
It is specific. And at the same time sweeping and enveloping.
And it leaves you changed.
