Prosce­ni­um The­atre Co's pro­duc­tion of The Wiz opens on No­vem­ber 13 at Queen's Hall, for a four-day run. Sub­ti­tled The Su­per Soul Mu­si­cal Won­der­ful Wiz­ard of Oz, The Wiz reimag­ines L Frank Baum's chil­dren's nov­el The Won­der­ful Wiz­ard of Oz in the con­text of African-Amer­i­can cul­ture.Mul­ti­ple Cacique Award win­ner Mervyn de Goeas will be di­rect­ing The Wiz. A core mem­ber of Prosce­ni­um, de Goeas praised the "ridicu­lous­ly tal­ent­ed per­form­ers" who turned up for open-call au­di­tions on Au­gust 24.In an in­ter­view, de Goeas ex­pound­ed on the mul­ti­ple pos­si­bil­i­ties that stag­ing this mu­si­cal af­fords. The call of child­hood nos­tal­gia, and the throw­back to a play­ful, en­er­getic land­scape, he said, would hold sig­nif­i­cant al­lure for the­atre-savvy au­di­ences.In an e-mail in­ter­view, founder and di­rec­tor of Prosce­ni­um The­atre An­drew Seep­er­sad ex­plained the sig­nif­i­cance of se­lect­ing The Wiz for the lo­cal stage.The play is "a clas­sic tale re­told in a mod­ern way, util­is­ing our cul­ture and tra­di­tion," Seep­er­sad said.

Artis­tic ties to T&T

He lament­ed that few know of The Wiz's artis­tic ties to T&T–Trinida­di­an art ti­tan Ge­of­frey Hold­er di­rect­ed and de­signed cos­tumes for the orig­i­nal 1975 Broad­way pro­duc­tion of the play. Hold­er's work with The Wiz earned him two Tony awards for di­rec­tion and cos­tume de­sign, in the same year. "This ac­com­plish­ment should be part of our com­mu­nal knowl­edge–no dif­fer­ent to our Olympic win­ners," Seep­er­sad said.Choos­ing The Wiz was a con­sen­sus be­tween Seep­er­sad and de Goeas, for com­ple­men­tary rea­sons. Prosce­ni­um's pre­vi­ous­ly pro­duced plays in­clude Rent, Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors and Rab­bit Hole. These se­lec­tions, said Seep­er­sad, are ev­i­dence of his in­tent to pur­sue "ex­cit­ing, cur­rent work dif­fer­ent from the sex come­dies and rou­tine stan­dard mu­si­cal the­atre fare."

De Goeas al­so lament­ed the dearth of mean­ing­ful work for the stage in this coun­try, say­ing that "the the­atre has been stuck in a rut for a long, long time."

Found­ed in 2010, Prosce­ni­um is Seep­er­sad's brain­child. De­spite a day ca­reer in the fi­nance sec­tor, he felt the need to vi­tal­ly con­tribute to so­ci­ety via this path­way. "My strengths, pas­sions and ex­pe­ri­ences made the call of the­atre so strong that I was com­pelled to it," Seep­er­sad said. The de­ci­sion to part­ner cre­ative­ly with de Goeas, was, ac­cord­ing to the pro­duc­er, a no-brain­er. "He is the best di­rec­tor in the coun­try," Seep­er­sad stout­ly stat­ed, adding, "He's my men­tor and my friend–and we work seam­less­ly with each oth­er."In their sym­bi­ot­ic roles as pro­duc­er and di­rec­tor at Prosce­ni­um, both men feel a strong sense of op­ti­mism sur­round­ing a pos­i­tive up­swing for the arts in T&T. Such good work is present­ly be­ing done, de Goeas said, that we might be able to solid­ly leave a pri­ma­ry lega­cy of "inane sex come­dies" be­hind us.

Blast of new tal­ent from UTT

He cit­ed the first grad­u­at­ing class of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go's the­atre arts de­gree as a "blast of new tal­ent," sin­gling them out as a "strong­ly com­mit­ted" group of young peo­ple who are ded­i­cat­ed to pur­su­ing a ca­reer in the arts. In April this year De Goeas di­rect­ed the fi­nal se­nior project practicum of the grad­u­at­ing class, a pro­duc­tion of Jean Genet's The Maids.One of Seep­er­sad and de Goeas' joint hopes, through reg­u­lar pro­duc­tions helmed by Prosce­ni­um, is their con­tin­ued con­tri­bu­tion to an ac­tive arts com­mu­ni­ty."A for­mal ed­u­ca­tion in the arts does not pre­pare you for the re­al and prac­ti­cal world it rep­re­sents," said de Goeas, who had his di­rec­to­r­i­al de­but at 24 with The Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show, pro­duced by the late God­frey Sealy.

A ground­ing in the the­atre's prac­ti­cal and of­ten dis­il­lu­sion­ing re­al­i­ties, de Goeas re­marked, will like­ly sep­a­rate those with fierce am­bi­tion from those who are mere­ly well-in­ten­tioned dream­ers.

Ref­er­enc­ing the well-at­tend­ed cast­ing call for The Wiz, Seep­er­sad pro­fessed to be "par­tic­u­lar­ly over­whelmed" by the re­sponse from both ex­pe­ri­enced and novi­tiate ac­tors and ac­tress­es. "The au­di­tion for The Wiz was pret­ty rig­or­ous, and we found some re­al tal­ent," Seep­er­sad added.Fac­ing a two-month sched­ule in prepar­ing The Wiz for its open­ing, de Goeas, who has more than 30 years' ex­pe­ri­ence in the arts in­dus­try, said he re­mains un­daunt­ed. His ad­min­is­tra­tion of the mu­si­cal will take a three-pronged ap­proach: at­ten­tion to sound and score; chore­og­ra­phy work, as well as hands-on di­rec­to­r­i­al time for spo­ken el­e­ments."It then be­comes a mat­ter of get­ting these com­po­nents, each vi­tal in their own way, to mesh and come to­geth­er suc­cess­ful­ly," de Goeas con­clud­ed. Prin­ci­pal read-throughs of the script are sched­uled to take place with­in the com­ing week.Who are the Beryl McBurnies and Ge­of­frey Hold­ers of our cur­rent, ac­tive­ly per­form­ing gen­er­a­tions of thes­pi­ans? Sin­gling out ex­cep­tion­al tal­ent can be a per­ilous task, but de Goeas and Seep­er­sad as­sured au­di­ences of a phe­nom­e­nal ex­pe­ri­ence in the­atre, come mid-No­vem­ber.

The Wiz Cast

Tis­han­na Williams as Dorothy

Car­o­line Tay­lor as Ad­daper­le, the Good Witch of the North

Au­ro­ra Tardieu as Glin­da, the Good Witch of the South

Michailean Tay­lor as The Wiz

Justin Zephyrine as Scare­crow/Lord High Un­der­ling

Kyle Richard­son as Scare­crow/Lord High Un­der­ling

Ste­fan Sim­mons as Tin­man

Kevin Humphrey as Li­on

Jean­nine Clarke as Evil­lene, the Wicked Witch of the West

Di­a­hann White as Aun­tie Em

Keino Swamber as Gate­keep­er/Un­cle Hen­ry

www.prosce­ni­umthe­atre.com or vis­it the Prosce­ni­um The­atre Co Face­book page.