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