Reimagining The Wizard of Oz

WRITTEN BY LIZ REGALIA | PHOTOS BY BRIAN PRINCIPE

Somewhere over the rainbow…

That iconic melody was the first thing the audience heard when the lights went out before the first performance of Ashley Hall’s original production of The Wizard of Oz. The piano overture, played by the show’s accompanist Anna Brock, set the tone for a familiar story. But how it would come to life in Davies Auditorium on March 3, 2023, no one could have guessed.

Last spring, the announcement of the School’s Girls With the Will global education theme came just as Performing Arts Department Chair Aimee Phelan-Deconinck was searching for a musical for her students to perform. At the time, she had a notebook full of yellow Post-it notes, all with the name of a play and a protagonist to consider.

“The word ‘will’ danced in my imagination,” Phelan-Deconinck says. “I broke it down, wrote out all of its definitions, and I asked

myself what it means to have ‘the will.’ The will… to what?” As she rearranged her Post-it notes, they suddenly resembled a yellow brick road. In a light-bulb moment, she knew she’d found her heroine.

“What I loved about Dorothy is that her will is warm and flexible, making her able to consider the needs of others,” Phelan-Deconinck says. “She can change. She grows, and she can grow because she can let other influences come in. That doesn’t take her off her course, but it’s a will aimed toward creating a better community.”

With the story chosen, the Performing Arts Department set out to reimagine The Wizard of Oz for Ashley Hall to fit our time and our students.

To transform Davies Auditorium into the flats of the Kansas prairies, Phelan-Deconinck enlisted the help of the real-life wizards at Innovative Event Services, a professional lighting, sound, video design, production, and installation company. Together, they focused on the use of projected images for scenic backgrounds and livestream video feeds to create a feeling of “new-fashioned nostalgia.”

“What interested me, from a technical perspective, in producing The Wizard of Oz, was the play’s relationship to the film as a primary source for many of us,” Phelan-Deconinck says. “With a good amount of distance in our collective memory, it opened up possibilities for situating The Wizard of Oz narrative in different media.”

Projection screens lined either side of the auditorium to display different backdrops for Dorothy’s journey to Oz, including bright green pastures, ominous dark skies, and, of course, a technicolor rainbow. The show’s technical team also utilized the method of live streaming to give the audience alternate views of the performance.

As for the stage, there were multiple. Chairs were turned to face the center of the auditorium to create half-moon audiences on either side of a wide aisle where the ensemble danced, the yellow brick road magically appeared, and Toto was carted away by the Wicked Witch. The light booth located at the back of the space was transformed into Dorothy’s farmhouse making set creation needs minimal aside from a wooden house on wheels that spun in the tornado that would send Dorothy on her journey to Oz.

The cast of The Wizard of Oz included over 70 students in grades 5-12. The ensemble alone, which included nearly 40 performers, held six different parts throughout the show including the memorable munchkins and jitterbugs to the captivating winged monkeys and Ozians. “Our ensemble, the lifeblood of the play, worked very hard on a steep learning curve to get their costume changes perfected,” Phelan-Deconinck says. They had a total of six throughout the evening, and this magical mix of both faculty and students kept the audience on the edge of their seats from one scene to the next. But the wonder and surprise created by the cast went far beyond a single performance.

From the start, Phelan-Deconinck envisioned casting three Dorothys in The Wizard of Oz, one from the Intermediate Program, one from the Nautilus program, and one from the Upper School. “Dorothy is an every-girl growing up in a rapidly changing world which is influencing her identity and shaping her sense of purpose,” Phelan-Deconinck says. “Who is she at different ages? How does she interpret challenges? Dorothy is not meant to fit into a single mold.”

In turn, each of the three performances of The Wizard of Oz starred a different lead actress. As Dorothy, the show featured seventh grader Vera Galvan ’28 on opening night, fifth grader Rosalyn Bailey ’30 in Saturday’s matinee, and ninth grader Elena Hollister ’26 for the closing performance.

Students in grades 5-8 tried out for the musical during an in-class audition unit created by Phelan-Deconinck. The unit focused on defining the skill set needed for each character, then finding the performer with that set of skills. The aim was to make the audition process inclusive and accessible and to let each performer bring their individual abilities, experiences, and views to the stage.

“When practicing, all of us saw a clear difference in the way we portrayed the character,” Galvan says of becoming Dorothy. “Elena, the oldest, conveyed Dorothy as a young woman with much knowledge of the world and more adult perspective of her problems. When Elena and I saw Rosalyn perform, we both saw a younger Dorothy. This would be logical as the gap in grades was major for us. All in all, being able to see the different ways that the two portrayed Dorothy helped me to refine my lines and acting.”

For Hollister, being one of three Dorothy characters not only enhanced her acting skills, but her leadership skills. “Being the oldest Dorothy out of the three of us was an amazing opportunity for me to work on my leadership skills because I knew I had two wonderful girls that I had to be an example for,” Hollister says. “The three of us got super close. I view them as my younger sisters, and I will always have a very special place for them in my heart.”

The opportunity to connect with students in different grades created a sense of camaraderie within the entire cast. “My favorite part of being in The Wizard of Oz this year was getting to act as a mentor to the fifth and sixth graders,” says Wynn Staples ’24 who played the Wicked Witch. “It was so cool, and it made me feel so honored knowing

that they looked up to me.” And it’s safe to say that mentorship went beyond those involved in The Wizard of Oz this year.

After the matinee performance, cast members took the time to meet with audience members and fans outside Davies Auditorium. Students excitedly waited in line for autographs full of admiration for the actresses and the characters they portrayed, no doubt being able to see themselves in both.

“We are both similar,” says Bailey of Dorothy whom she played on Saturday. “We both have a little dog, we’re both girls, and we both will always help others on our journey through life. We both have ‘PQV power.’”

“Dorothy sees the potential in everybody, and that I think speaks to goodwill,” Phelan-Deconinck adds. “Not just my will or strong will, but Dorothy’s strength of will is that it’s goodwill, and then success happens – success beyond what she had imagined. The other side of the rainbow is just her with a bigger point of view.”