The Wiz

My job-within-a-job at this school is one I did not see coming: set designer. A couple friendly conversations at the beginning of the year with my department head, the theater director, and I am asked to design the set for our fall musical, Dream Girls. Sure, sounds like fun, think I. Plus the design is to be a half-dozen abstract obelisks. Right up my constructivist alley, I beam. After trying to orchestrate the energetic and oh-so-untrained hands of student volunteer painters, I am smacked with the reality of just how much work I have signed up for. The "design" part only lasts a few hours in the quiet of home over a sketchbook. The sketches are consulted with a builder who constructs the pieces and returns them to me where the grunt work is done with drop cloths, paint rollers, ladders, fussy teenagers and lots of loud noise. And did anyone mention that it would take place every day after school for 2 weeks?

Reluctant to revisit the experience, I agree to help paint (but not design) the set for the Black History Month play, Joy's Story. An altogether different experience, this time I am working alone after rehearsals are done. Just an art teacher with a paint roller and some headphones. It is a completely different experience. How can it be possible that one person alone can do the work faster than 6 untrained teenagers? And does this confirm my growing suspicion that I am a sociopath?

The spring musical, The Wiz, was promised to be the biggest production yet (in celebration of our director's twentieth year and looming retirement). With complicated choreography and a raucous soul/funk score with full chorus, it was an ambitiously elaborate (by high school standards) production that required an equally ambitious set. My original design was much more ambitious than realistic, apparently. It was significantly scaled back by the budget-conscious builder and the director who was sensitive to elementary-school children who might possibly be scared off by the headless mannequin torsos on the evil witch's throne (oh, but it looked so cool in the drawings!)

So what you see below is a compromise, but that is all part of creation in collaboration, and it was an outstanding experience from start to finish. In my year at this school I have been fortunate to work closely with this team of talented professionals, and I am proud to represent the visual arts in a school with such a successful performing arts legacy. It is a kind of synergy and solidarity that may be a rare thing (my last school was quite the opposite), and it is one of the things I think of when I question why I teach where I teach.

And oh yes, the kids involved in this play were fantastic.

A special thank you belongs to H, whose invaluable assistance went largely unrecognized. Pictures and notes!:


The cornfield where Dorothy encounters the Scarecrow. (By the way - do you know what a "scary tree" looks like? In the background is my attempt to answer this request)


Kansas farm house, front.


Kansas farm house, back.


Munchkin dwellings


Emerald City gate


Emerald City gate


Emerald City (really just the back of The Wiz's throne. Original design prohibitively large)


The Wiz's throne. (Or is it Flash Gordon's throne?)


Evillene's throne. The pipes emit smoke, and the chair is a false chair that pulls back when the evil witch melts and disappears. Again: original design several times bigger and to incorporate mannequin parts and working televisions tuned to static.


Fairground columns for the good witch's appearance