fraught outfit
adena jacobs
WIZARD OF OZ
AFTER L FRANK BAUM
BELVOIR
PREMIERED MAY 2015
★★★★ "With The Wizard of Oz, Jacobs takes her blazing, bold ideas about being a woman in the world and being a queer person trying to fold into normalcy, and pushes them out into our laps – no easy answers, no easy frameworks, no shortcuts previously constructed by an industry dominated by men. This is Jacobs’ world, and hers alone. And it’s so much better for it." CASSIE TONGUE - TIME OUT
‘Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.’ (LA Times TV listings, 1998)
This might not sound like The Wizard of Oz, but it is.
In the aftermath of a natural disaster, a young girl finds herself alone in a foreign land seeking answers from an all-powerful but unseen wizard. This tale of power and discovery on the yellow brick road has become as foundational in the contemporary imagination as Shakespeare or the Greeks. In 2015, our re-telling of the story of Dorothy and her friends are staging a dream and there is no yellow brick road.
Director Adena Jacobs’ stark re-imagining of L. Frank Baum’s narrative masterpiece is an abstract theatrical meditation. The production is not a stage adaption of the novel, rather Jacobs conjures the striking symbols at the heart of The Wizard of Oz: the trauma of exile, rites of passage, and the all-consuming desire to be someone else, and reimagines them into an immersive, surreal, dream-like fantasia.
directed by Adena Jacobs
set designer: Ralph Myers
costume designer: Kate Davis
lighting designer: Emma Valente
composer and sound designer: Max Lyandvert
dance captain: Luisa Hastings Edge
stage manager: Sarah Stait
assistant stage manager: Grace Nye-Butler
director's attachment: Stephanie Dimitriou
costume design secondment: Tyler Hawkins
sound design secondment: Katelyn Shaw
rehearsal observer: John Mccallum
performed and devised by Paul Capsis, Luisa Hastings Edge, Anca Frankenhaeuser, Melita Jurisic, Eileen Kramer,
Emily Milledge, Jane Montgomery Griffiths & Lucky Jim Cowell-Myers
★★★★ "absolutely captivating" BEN NEUTZE - DAILY REVIEW
"Jacobs offers her audience a work of startling power and depth." JANE HOWARD - KILL YOUR DARLINGS
"Oz is an outstanding piece of theatre" JESSICA KEATH - CONCRETE PLAYGROUND
★★★★ - ARTS HUB
Nominated for 3 Sydney Theatre Awards:
Best Mainstage Production
Best Lighting Design
Best Sound Design
FBI SMAC AWARD Nomination: Best On Stage
WIZARD OF OZ
After L Frank Baum
Belvoir, 2015
Photography by Pia Johnson
Trailer by Marty Jamieson