Read more
How has
The Wizard of Oz become so popular on film, television, and stage? This book offers new insights into American identity through the special relationship between musicals and L. Frank Baum's children's novel. Drawing on personal experience, Ryan Bunch offers new readings of the MGM film (1939),
The Wiz (1975),
Wicked (2003), and other Oz musicals to reveal how the performative magic of the fairy tale musical, with its implied inclusions and exclusions, imagines an American utopia.
List of contents
- About the Companion Website
- Acknowledgments
- Illustrations
- Introduction: The Fairy Tale, the Musical, and "America"
- 1. The Man Behind the Curtain: L. Frank Baum's Theatrical Fairy Tale
- 2. My Own Backyard: MGM's The Wizard of Oz
- 3. Easing Down the Road: The Soul of The Wiz
- 4. Wicked: The Witch's Turn
- 5. "And Then There Was Oz Again": Making Believe Between Oz and Home
- Epilogue: What Have You Learned, Dorothy?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Ryan Bunch studies musical theater as well as children's music, media, literature, and performance cultures. He studied historical musicology at the University of Maryland and is completing a Ph.D. in childhood studies at Rutgers University-Camden. He is an active member of the International Wizard of Oz Club.
Summary
From the first stage production of The Wizard of Oz in 1902, to the classic MGM film (1939), to the musicals The Wiz (1975) and Wicked (2003), L. Frank Baum's children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) has served as the basis for some of the most popular musicals on stage and screen. In this book, musical theater scholar Ryan Bunch draws on his personal experience as an Oz fan to explore how a story that has been hailed as "the American fairy tale" serves as a guide for thinking about the art form of the American musical and how both reveal American identity to be a utopian performance.
Show by show, Bunch highlights the forms and conventions of each musical work as practiced in its time and context-such as the turn-of-the-century extravaganza, the classical Hollywood film musical, the Black Broadway musical of the 1970s, and the twenty-first-century mega-musical. He then shows how the journey of each show teaches participants and audiences something about how to act American within contested frameworks of race, gender, sexuality, age, and embodiment. Bunch also explores home theatricals, make-believe play, school musicals, Oz-themed environments, and community events as sites where the performance of the American fairy tale brings home and utopia into contact through the conventions of the musical. Using close readings of the various Oz shows, personal reflections, and interviews with fans, audiences, and performers, Bunch demonstrates how adapted Oz musicals imply both inclusions and exclusions in the performance of an American utopia.
Additional text
Ryan Bunch in Oz and the Musical shows how fans continue to find inspiration in timeless works of imagination.
