The Wizard of OZ HD

Adapted by Kevin Frisch from a marionette staging by Nicholas Coppola Original music composed and performed by Steve Frisch Musical Selection: "Where the Grass is Greener" ©2018 frisch101music Puppets & Scenery by Kevin Frisch Costumes by Alix Frisch Puppeteers : Kevin Frisch , Jamie Elizabeth Moore, Honey Goodenough ABOUT THIS PRODUCTION: In 1900 when Frank Baum wrote the “The Wonderful Wizard of OZ”, America was recovering from one of the most painful chapters in its history, the Civil War. The Civil War brought an end to slavery, making it a crime. This was the beginning of the nation fulfilling it’s promise of “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. The American Revolution freed Americans from Europe but the Civil War freed Americans from Americans. Out of the painful past of slavery the first truly American cultural art form was taking shape, American music was being born. The slaves who arrived in the new world were seized from their homes and brought here in chains against their will. They did not immigrate seeking opportunity as others did who came to America. Even though they were forbidden to bring any possessions with them, they did bring one thing with them that would influence American culture more than anyone could have imagined - their songs. THE MUSIC: Most of the music you will hear in the Frisch version is designed to parallel the lineage of America’s musical cultural development as the story progresses. Some musical styles you will hear include: The Spiritual sung by Aunt Em, the Blues sung in variation by the Straw man, Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion, Ragtime as Dorothy and friends travel down the Yellow Brick Road, Dixie-jazz sung by the Wicked Witch of the West, and the Funky metropolitan sounds of the Great OZ. THE SETTING: The FRISCH version places Dorothy in NICODEMUS, KANSAS. The story of the WIZARD of OZ is of course fantasy but Nicodemus, Kansas is a real place. After the Civil War and Reconstruction, freed Americans found that in many places they were unwelcomed citizens. In the south fraudulent practices of sharecropping left many freedmen disenfranchised. In the north the competition for jobs often turned violent and always lurking in the shadows of the post-war climate were the lynch-mobs. At this same time the west was just being settled but it was not easy for them to obtain land until...... THE EXODUS TO KANSAS: An ex-slave named Benjamin “Pap” Singleton became the leader of the “Exoduster” movement. Singleton advertised through flyers and mass meetings the promises of Kansas as a freedom land, the Kansas of Old John Brown. “Pap” Singleton was soon known as the “Moses of the Kansas exodus”. Between 1877 and 1881 about 60,000 African-Americans moved into Kansas and settled in the Oklahoma Indian Territories in search of social and economic freedom.