Prosce­ni­um The­atre Com­pa­ny will pre­miere The Wiz, based on L Frank Baum's The Won­der­ful Wiz­ard of Oz on No­vem­ber 6, at Queen's Hall, St Ann's. The pro­duc­tion will be reprised on No­vem­ber 7 to 9 at the same venue.

Prosce­ni­um di­rec­tor An­drew Seep­er­sad said: "Mervyn (de Goeas) and I chose this show in Feb­ru­ary 2014 be­cause we want­ed to high­light the im­pact that Ge­of­frey Hold­er made as a Trinida­di­an on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage. His de­signs and di­rec­tion of the show was an­chored in our Car­ni­val street the­atre–telling pow­er­ful sto­ries through cos­tum­ing and move­ment. As a peo­ple, we should be so proud of his body of work and should cel­e­brate that one of our own was award­ed one of the high­est ac­co­lades for the­atre. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther Mr Hold­er's work.

"Stay­ing true to his ini­tial in­tent–we can up­date his ref­er­ences and bring the show in­to a mod­ern set­ting. This al­lows us to cre­ate the Tri­ni ver­sion with­out af­fect­ing the in­tegri­ty of the orig­i­nal work. Through de­sign, di­rec­tion and mu­sic–we will use the piece to con­nect to our au­di­ence in a new way. We feel par­tic­u­lar pas­sion­ate about ho­n­our­ing Mr Hold­er's work giv­en his re­cent pass­ing. We re­al­ly want to cel­e­brate his lega­cy and con­tri­bu­tion to the Arts."

De Goeas said: "The tim­ing of this work is serendip­i­tous, es­pe­cial­ly as we didn't even know that Mr Hold­er was ill. At one point some time ago we even ap­proached Mr Hold­er's man­age­ment to try to get him to come to Trinidad to par­tic­i­pate in this pro­duc­tion. There has nev­er been a full scale pro­duc­tion of this work lo­cal­ly. We on­ly got news that Mr Hold­er wasn't well when we got news of his pass­ing on Sun­day (Oc­to­ber 5). But, it is what it is and the show will go on. At this stage I am very hap­py and proud to be a part of it, specif­i­cal­ly for the Ge­of­frey Hold­er con­nec­tion."

In Oc­to­ber 1975, The Wiz–a com­plete re-imag­in­ing of the clas­sic The Won­der­ful Wiz­ard of Oz–opened to wide crit­i­cal ac­claim on Broad­way. It was a breath of fresh air on the the­atre scene. The pro­duc­tion fea­tured an all-African Amer­i­can cast with mu­sic that ref­er­enced heav­i­ly from that cul­ture: jazz, rhythm and blues, mo­town and gospel. The cos­tumes, de­signed by Hold­er, were heav­i­ly in­flu­enced by his back­ground.

The Wiz was so high­ly re­gard­ed that it went on to win sev­en Tony Awards in­clud­ing Best Mu­si­cal, Best Orig­i­nal Score, Best Di­rec­tion and Best Cos­tume De­sign. About the cre­ative process for the pro­duc­tion, Seep­er­sad said: "The cos­tumes for our pro­duc­tion of The Wiz will build on Mr Hold­er's vi­sion. We will be util­is­ing our in­nate Car­ni­val tal­ents and ar­ti­sans to in­cor­po­rate lo­cal el­e­ments in­to the de­sign with­out be­ing lit­er­al.

"For in­stance, the stan­dard char­ac­ter of the winged mon­key will be a ver­sion of a Moko Jumbie; the Scare­crow a ver­sion of a Pier­rot Grenade; and, the Evil Witch a ver­sion of the Ba­by Doll.

"Be­yond the ini­tial de­sign, the cos­tume con­struc­tion will utilise Car­ni­val el­e­ments, like wire-bend­ing, cane-work­ing and bead­ing. We will al­so be us­ing mod­ern jew­el­ry mak­ers to cre­ate ac­ces­so­ry pieces. The in­tent is to bring The Wiz to our T&T au­di­ence with a con­tem­po­rary ur­ban Car­ni­val tex­ture, while still hold­ing strong to our roots."

Seep­er­sad con­tin­ued: "As far as dance is con­cerned this is one area where we in­tend to ful­ly use our artis­tic li­cense. We will be in­cor­po­rat­ing our her­itage in­to the chore­og­ra­phy, in­clu­sive of el­e­ments of b�l�, stilt danc­ing, the To­ba­go Jig, all to be ref­er­enced.

"We want the chore­og­ra­phy to be flu­id and dy­nam­ic–so al­though we will be us­ing a pro­fes­sion­al chore­o­g­ra­ph­er, we will be work- shop­ping the cast to see what they can cre­ate and bring in­to the fo­rum. We will take this in­ter­na­tion­al­ly ac­claimed work and cre­ate some­thing new, vi­brant and com­plete­ly Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian."

A third com­po­nent of the pro­duc­tion, mu­sic is be­ing treat­ed in a spe­cial way. "The orig­i­nal score drew ref­er­ence from the African-Amer­i­can cul­ture in the 1970s which has sim­i­lar ori­gins to ca­lyp­so," said Seep­er­sad.

"We've been work-shop­ping with the soloists and mu­si­cians to be able to per­form the mu­sic com­fort­ably in our own voice and with­in the con­text of our own cul­ture."

(Re­port­ing by Pe­ter Ray Blood)

About Prosce­ni­umThe­atre Com­pa­ny

Found­ed in 2011, Prosce­ni­um The­atre Com­pa­ny has since pre­sent­ed three suc­cess­ful pro­duc­tions: Rent, Rab­bit Hole and Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors. The com­pa­ny is run by An­drew Seep­er­sad, a fi­nance pro­fes­sion­al with strong the­atre ties. Prosce­ni­um's in-house di­rec­tor is Cacique award win­ner Mervyn de Goeas.

Most re­cent­ly, they co-di­rect­ed the open­ing and clos­ing seg­ments for the 2014 Di­manche Gras show. Chore­og­ra­phy for the show is by Lin­da Pol­lard-Lake, dance vet­er­an who was giv­en the Van­guard Award at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Co­co Dance Fes­ti­val.

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The Wiz: Main char­ac­ters

�2 Michail­lean Tay­lor � The Wiz

�2 Tis­han­na Williams � Dorothy

�2 Mau­rice Moran­cie � Tin­man

�2 Kevin Humphrey � Li­on

�2 Au­ro­ra Tardieu, Karen Fran­cis­co and �2 Jean­nine Clarke � Three Witch­es

�2 Klye Richard­son and Justin Zepher­ine � al­ter­nat­ing as Scare­crow and Lord High Un­der­ling