Brian “B” Greene remembers first seeing the 1978 movie version of The Wiz, starring Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Richard Pryor and Lena Horne, when he was a young child. He said seeing the all-Black cast was a life-changing experience.
“That was the first time I saw a cast of people who looked like me doing something that, at that time, I had never seen before. So it has been a staple in my creative journey throughout my life,” Greene said.
Now as an adult, Greene plays the role of an ancestor in the Wonder Theatre’s production of the popular 1974 Broadway musical adaptation of the original The Wizard of Oz.
The Wiz relocates the story of Dorothy and her ruby red slippers from rural Kansas to urban Harlem and changes the white teenage character to a Black 24-year-old kindergarten teacher. Instead of a violent tornado, a snowstorm transports Dorothy to the magical land of Oz and sets her on her quest to find her way home.
Ruby slippers, Ruby Bridges
For the Wonder Theatre’s version of the musical, Amiyah Oney plays the starring role of Dorothy.
Oney discovered her talent for theater when she was cast in her high school’s production of the musical Guys and Dolls. Though she preferred sports at the time and said she hated the grind of rehearsals, finally making it to the stage convinced her that theater was her thing. “That day, I decided I was going to do theater for the rest of my life.”
She is now studying theater education and pre-law at Texas A&M University in College Station but will be in San Antonio during the three-week run of the show.
Oney said the musical’s director, Darcell Andre, brought an inspiring vision to the show to help actors relate to their characters.
Andre sees the Dorothy character as equivalent to Ruby Bridges, the paragon of school desegregation who as a 6-year-old girl attempted to attend a formerly all-white elementary school in New Orleans in 1960.
He considers The Wiz to be “sacred to the culture,” and though the Oz story is fantastical, Andre said he “wanted to anchor it in something” real.
An orphaned Dorothy who doesn’t know where she’s from recalls the experiences of Africans separated from their homelands for the transatlantic slave trade. “It is a narrative within the Black community that we don’t know where we come from because of that separation,” Andre said.
To highlight decades of foundational Black American culture, Andre fashioned the three iconic partner characters to Dorothy — the Scarecrow, Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion — as a member of the Black Panther Party, a Cab Calloway-like Harlem Renaissance performer and a Rastafarian, respectively.
Be who you are
Actor Edward Burkely plays the Tin Man with Harlem Renaissance figures firmly in mind.
“I have to embody that character, that age, that year and time through the entirety of the show,” he said. “So I can’t act like I don’t have a heart. I have to be a cool, relaxed jazz musician” whose lesson is to embody integrity.
Dorian Speights plays his Scarecrow “cool and sly,” and John Bonner plays his Lion character as “very regal. He’s very tapped into his kingly side.”
The Wiz also made a lasting impression on a young Bonner, particularly his hero Michael Jackson’s Scarecrow. Now as an adult, Bonner sees the story of The Wiz as inspiring confidence to live one’s truth.
Bonner quotes lyrics in the song “Be A Lion,” “I’m a lion in my own way,” as embodying self-confidence despite negative expectations.
“People have certain expectations of you as a person, depending upon where you come from, who you are, what your skin color is,” Bonner explained. “But the moral of that story is to just be who you are and be comfortable in that, be confident in that, regardless of what people are trying to put on you.”
There’s good reason that the 1970s-era adaptation of an early 1900s story resonates to this day, Bonner said. “We can take his story of courage and bring it to 2024, to where people can see that [you can] just be who you are, be comfortable and love yourself fully.”
The Wiz runs through Sept. 8 at the Wonder Theatre. Ticket prices range from $18 to $32.
