Anthony Warlow Lucy Jemma Durack Rix and Samantha Dodemaide
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ANTHONY WARLOW LUCY JEMMA DURACK RIX AND SAMANTHA DODEMAIDE ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER’S NEW PRODUCTION OF ALL THE CLASSICS PLUS NEW SONGS BY TIM RICE & ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER Photography by Brian Geach and Jeff Busby Jeff and Geach Brian by Photography EDUCATION KIT USING THIS STUDY GUIDE The lessons contained in this pack have been designed to complement students’ viewing of The Wizard of Oz so that they gain a deeper understanding, appreciation and enjoyment of the production. Although they have been arranged in subject order, the ideas contained in each can be used in other subjects. Teachers can use the lessons in any order or modify them to their own needs. In order to provide flexibility, some of the lessons have been designed as ready-made class activities, while others are information sheets that teachers can use to stimulate class questions or discussion. These are indicated in the contents below. Students can undertake activities before or after seeing the show. A few of the activities are available as stand alone worksheets ready to download and print from https://www.wizardofozthemusical.com/education CONTENTS Background to The Wizard of Oz MUSIC The Wizard of Oz: A Timeline Melodies – class activity Biography of L. Frank Baum Cadences and Work Songs – Curriculum materials – information information sheet sheets and class activities What’s that Tune? – class activity VISUAL ARTS DANCE Meet the Characters – class activity The Wonderful Dances of Oz – A History of Projection – information sheet class activity ENGLISH HISTORY Become a Poet – class activity The Scarecrow’s Quiz – class activity Have a Good Time with Rhyme – THEATRE STUDIES class activity Everyone’s a Critic – class activity GEOGRAPHY Professor Marvel’s Guide to Kansas Education Kit Editor: David Perry (Tornadoes) – class activity 2 TIMELINE Note to teachers: a worksheet based on this activity can be found https://www.wizardofozthemusical.com/education 1856 L. Frank Baum born in Chittenango, New York, was the seventh of nine children. 1886 Baum publishes his first book,The Book of the Hamburgs. The subject of the book: how to raise chickens. 1897 Dorothy makes her first appearance in Baum’s first children’s book, Mother Goose in Prose, a collection of 22 children’s stories based on Mother Goose nursery rhymes. 1900 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz book is published, and is a great hit, earning praise in a New York Times review. 1902 The first stage musical ofThe Wizard of Oz is produced with lyrics by Baum and runs on Broadway for 293 shows. 1904 The first novel sequel (one of 13 such sequels)The Marvellous Land of Oz is reluctantly written by Baum. 1911 Baum writes in the story The Emerald City of Oz that Ozland has lost contact with the rest of the world and therefore he cannot continue to write sequels. His child fans refuse to accept this so he continues to write sequels until the year of his death. 1919 Baum dies in Hollywood. His last words are, reportedly, “Now we can cross the Shifting Sands”. 1925 A silent movie of The Wizard of Oz is made, starring Oliver Hardy as the Tin Man. 1939 MGM makes The Wizard of Oz, starring Judy Garland, billed as “the happiest film ever”. 1942 The St Louis Municipal Opera creates a stage musical based on the MGM film. 1987 The Royal Shakespeare Company creates a theatrical adaptation based on the MGM film. 2011 The Wizard of Oz is adapted by Andrew Lloyd Webber, including additional songs written by Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, and opens at the London Palladium. 2017 The Wizard of Oz (Lloyd Webber / Rice version) Australia tour opens. 3 BIOGRAPHY OF L. FRANK BAUM. Note to teachers: a worksheet based on this activity can be found https://www.wizardofozthemusical.com/education In the original children’s story, Baum had set out to write an original American fairytale, and in this he more than succeeded, creating a story that is recognised all around the world. But who was Baum? Born in May 1856, into a wealthy family, he grew up on his parents’ large country estate, called Rose Lawn. His parents were devout Methodists and initially he and his siblings were educated at home. But when he was twelve, he was sent to a military school, where he was very unhappy. A boy who liked to daydream, he was so miserable that two years later he came home again. His father gave him a printing press and as a teenager he began to write and print his own magazines. Baum was fascinated by theatre, as a performer, director and writer. In 1880, his father built him a theatre in Richburg, New York. He wrote and composed songs for a play called The Maid of Arran, but none of the scripts, or the theatre itself, survived a fire during the run of a subsequent and unfortunately titled play, Matches. Meanwhile, Baum had met and married Maud Gage, whose mother Matilda was a famous women’s suffrage activist. Baum’s own political views would henceforth be linked to the women’s suffrage movement. His belief in equality for women was upheld in many of his books, where strong female characters lead the stories. (For example, in the first sequel,The Marvellous Land of Oz, the girls and women of Oz stage a revolt by knitting needles. They take over, and make the men do the household tasks.) Baum tried his hand at running a shop, ‘Baum’s Bazaar’, but he was no businessman and managed to bankrupt the business. He then edited a newspaper, but that failed too and he had to move with his family to Humbolt Park, Chicago, where he became a reporter on an evening newspaper. He also edited a trade paper about window displays, which extolled the virtues of mechanical and moving models in department store windows. This theme of new technology emerges throughout Baum’s stories. He was fascinated by new inventions and saw the birth of electric light, as well as predicting the computer in a later sequel, The Tik-Tok Man of Oz. By 1897, Baum was working as a travelling salesman, when he had his first success in publishing children’s literature; Mother Goose in Prose was followed in 1900 by the publication of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which was a hit. A stage version followed two years later, then three silent films, before the famous Judy Garland film of 1939. Meanwhile Baum went on to write a staggering number of books, including The Wizard of Oz sequels. Unfortunately this didn’t prevent him from becoming bankrupt again, after several ill-fated schemes. He bounced back and died in Hollywood in 1919, twenty years before the MGM adaptation of his most famous book would be a long-lasting worldwide hit, and which inspired the current production. 4 MEET THE CHARACTERS DOROTHY MISS GULCH and WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST Costume Designs by Robert Jones 5 MEET THE CHARACTERS ctd. OZ: What on earth are you? Are you animal, vegetable or mineral? TIN MAN: Well, one of each, really. The characters in The Wizard of Oz are now staples of popular culture, with allegorical references that extend well beyond their immediate portrayal on stage or screen (see Professor Marvel’s Amazing Miscellany below). Many versions of these characters from the 1939 screen version, through the innumerable stage productions and film sequels (not to mention reboots!), show a variety of interpretations by designers, directors and the actors playing them. Students can create their own 2D or 3D versions of these characters, by exploring design possibilities for each one, based on a number of considerations: • c ontrasting colour schemes: consider, for example, the use of silver for the Tin Man and how this contrasts with the browns in the Lion costume; • a feature of that character’s appearance that can be enhanced or exaggerated: for example, the straw poking out of the Scarecrow’s sleeves, or the Wicked Witch’s hat and nose; • h ow the personality of the character can be reflected in their physical appearance: think of the simple, block colours in Dorothy’s costume to show that she is down-to-earth and has nothing to hide, and Glinda’s light, shining colours that represent her power and goodness. See Appendix 3 for a list of main characters in the musical. Read below for a snapshot of what The Wizard of Oz cast members have to say about the character they are playing. LUCY DURACK, Glinda Describe your character in 4 words: Good, Kind, Fun, Bubbly Glinda is all of the above things but our director and I spoke about how she is also very smart. We refer to her vibe as ‘party pony tail with a brief case’. Glinda moves quite gracefully but when she is enjoying the music in Munchkinland she likes to bop along and have a bit of a dance: sort of how your aunt might at a wedding! I like to play characters with a ‘good’ moral compass but that can vary from character to character in many different ways. This Glinda is a more mature and wiser character than the one I played in Wicked, but she is still up for some fun when the time is right. 6 JEMMA RIX, Miss Gulch and Wicked Witch of the West Describe your character in 4 words: Strong, Fierce, Sexy, Determined All my character wants is her ruby slippers. It’s actually a simple resolve but no one will give them to her so she thinks everybody else is crazy, not her! Miss Gulch has all the same traits as The Witch but when I’m the Witch she is amplified by a thousand.