Fantasy and whimsy aren’t always the easiest things to stage. Add a sprinkle of fairy dust enthusiastic young artists learning how to write, direct, and design a show, and you have a recipe for an explosion of creativity that can be a challenge to wrestle into shape. The world’s collection of fairy tales and fantasies contains a lot of crossover imagery, and you don’t want your Robin Hood to be called a Peter Pan. Thankfully, Oz as a universe is full of iconic imagery, and the talented MMP Hall of Fame Artist Janis Kunz, working as technical director, spearheaded the management of all the tech from set to costume to makeup to hair and so on with the work of many brilliant designers and artists. Let’s take a look at the building of Oz!
OVER THE RAINBOW: The Making of After Oz
Everything in After Oz was handmade and human designed. We worked to involve our younger artists in more of the design and creation of all the different elements in the show. After Oz opens with an original puppet show that retells (humorously) L. Frank Baum’s seminal book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. We decided to let youth artists take the helm on this show-within-a-show. Callie Bennett and Alice Carrube teamed up to adapt the book into a script, and Emmett Jones and Evelyn Trinkle directed the puppeteers. Janis Kunz guided the kids and volunteers to design the puppetry from spinning cyclones, pop-up scarecrows, flocks of crows, and the world’s teeniest Toto.
But that wasn’t the only way our artists got involved. We had an entire Emerald City to build inside a working library…that had to disappear after every performance. It takes a lot of thinking to make a set like this happen. Thankfully, the Wizard gave the Scarecrow some good brains to help us. Oh and the genius work of our designers and young artists.
First up was the book. In November 2024, we produced a show called Shelf Life about famous literary characters and their after-hours adventures in a bookstore. Our set was primarily a giant book, built by Michael Stallings and painted by the students in the show, to represent the portal from the land of fiction to the real world. This idea of a magical literary gateway always appealed to us, and it became the focal point of the Emerald City design for After Oz. Oz books featured travel in many ways, and we wanted a way to bring characters in and out of “Oz” by some sort of magical means. Cue the magic book. As our inspiration was the original novel (and not its popular film adaptation) and our venue in a library, reviving the book for a new show was an easy choice. Paint Boss Paige Ratliff undertook the mission to transform the Shelf Life book into the cover of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Her design echoed her design for the Emerald City backdrop with book-shaped skyscrapers and a glittery silver shoe.
As mentioned above, one of the inspirations for the Emerald City backdrop itself was a stack of books. Paige drafted the backdrop to be a series of other Oz titles, resembling a bookself. Tech Director Janis Kunz and Set Designer Chris Bennett helped shape the design into a functional and portable backdrop. With the help of our large team of artists and volunteers, we fabricated a pop-up book style set with screens, puppets, and surprises which is echoed in the program design for the show and is a spiritual successor to the Wonderlans set for Malice in Wonderland. Chris Bennett also engineered the rainbow for a funny hot-air balloon puppet created by young artist Elizabeth Brown. When guests arrive at the library, they follow the Yellow Brick Road (which we have thoughtfully placed for them) all the way to their seats at the Emerald City.
As we said, EVERYTHING in the show is handmade from a spooky tree to a spinning cyclone to the hundreds of paper pop-ups engineered into the programs. Toto himself was hand-stitched and decorated by Janis Kunz, showing the great power of human imagination.
It’s not The Wonderful Wizard of Oz without a hot-air balloon as our hilarious humbug skims the skies in the original 1900 novel. And who better to design it than the Wizards themselves? Our double cast Wizards, Chris Bennett and Orrin Covey, spearheaded the design of this iconic set piece (that also doubles as a puppet theatre for the prologue). Orrin sketched the balloon pattern and the banner while Chris engineered the basket and how the entire balloon would disassemble and reassemble each performance (It’s really easy!). They built it together, And it’s one of the standout pieces of our Oz scenery, sure to be an iconic reference for years to come. Bravo!
The costumes too receive handmade love. Melissa Crutchfield served as the Costume Designer with Hall of Fame artist and costuming legend Margit Stallings serving as the Specialty Costumer for some of our more technical outfits. For example, each lady worked on a different Glinda gown. Melissa retrofitted a Halloween dress into a pretty in pink good witch gown with roses and rhinestones. Margit reworked a dress last seen on Marie Antoinette in 2019’s Eat Cake with pink satin and sequined and bejeweled tule and organza and ribbon to make a perfect cotton candy confection of a Glinda dress. McKenna Sangren–who plays Glinda in Cast West–and Janis Kunz designed and executed Glinda’s iconic wand. Elizabeth Brown–Glinda in Cast East–served as the Jewelry Curator and made sure each character had lovely sets of accessories from bracelets to necklaces to watches to tiaras. How enchanting!
And to call our programs anything less than a labor of love would be an understatement. Drawing from experience with our remarkable rabbit hole programs for Malice in Wonderland, the programs for After Oz are a full pop-up book experience. Designed by Lead Publicist Daniel Stallings, printed at PackWrap, and with enormous assembly help from Devanne Fredette and Lore Boster, the programs contain everything from Emerald City windows to miniature cyclones to pup-up rainbows. Can you find the man behind the curtain? There’s lots of little surprises in store at After Oz!
The greatest magic is made by us, and that is evident in every stitch, staple, glue mark, sketch, swatch, brushstroke, screw of this magical show. After Oz is a wonderful tribute to our artists–young and old, newbie and veteran–at Master Mystery Productions. We want to thank all our brilliant cast and crew members who shared their experience, knowledge, time, and energy into bringing this American fairy tale to life at our beloved library. Storytelling is only possible at this scale with a team of talented souls, and these are wonderful creatives. As wonderful as any wizard could be.
After Oz closes this weekend. Friday’s performance is sold out, and there are only a few seats left for Saturday. Join us for a final romp down the road. Let’s see where the magic takes you…
See you at the show!
–Master Mystery Productions
