The Wiz
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American television special
- The Wiz Live! was an American television special that aired live on NBC on December 3, 2015. Produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, it was a performance of a new adaptation of the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz, a soul / R&B reinterpretation of L. Frank Baum 's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wiz_Live!
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The Wiz Live! was an American television special that aired live on NBC on December 3, 2015. [1] Produced by Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, it was a performance of a new adaptation of the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz, a soul/R&B reinterpretation of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. [2]
The Wiz Live!: Directed by Matthew Diamond, Kenny Leon. With Common, Amber Riley, Uzo Aduba, Stephanie Mills. A live production of the 1975 Broadway musical, "The Wiz," which put a modern spin on the classic "Wizard of Oz" tale with a cast of African-American actors.
- (2.6K)
- Adventure, Family, Fantasy
- Matthew Diamond, Kenny Leon
- 2015-12-03
- It Was Conceived as A TV Special.
- The Maiden Run’s Costume Designer Was A Former James Bond Villain.
- Finishing The Score Took Three years.
- “Everybody Rejoice” Was Written by Luther Vandross.
- Stephanie Mills (The Original Dorothy) Didn’T Even Want to Audition.
- The Wiz’s First Director Was Fired Before The Show Reached New York.
- The Wizwas only The Second Broadway Show to Embrace TV Advertising.
- Some Early Reviews Were Not favorable.
- It Won Seven Tony Awards.
- Phylicia Rashad Was in The Original Ensemble.
NBC is about to come closer to realizing late producer Ken Harper’s original vision than anyone ever has. During the early 1970s, Harper hatched the idea of dramatizing L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz with an all-black cast. At first, he wanted to put this concept not on Broadway, but on network TV. Harper pictured a big-budget televised extravaga...
For his work on The Wiz, Geoffrey Holder won a Tony for Best Costume Design. It was one of several that the show would bring home (keep reading). At the time, this son of Trinidadian immigrants was also a director and an up-and-coming actor who had appeared in such movies as Doctor Dolittle (1967) and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex*...
“I’d start to work at 11:30 at night, when everyone else went to bed,” lead composer Charlie Smalls told The Los Angeles Times. The musician went on to claim that The Wiz’s signature style could be described as “sophisticated funk.” Smalls also helped to write some new songs for the movie version before dying of cardiac arrest in 1987, when he was ...
Though the score was mostly written by Smalls, he couldn’t take credit for every single number. One of the show’s most popular songs, “Everybody Rejoice” (a.k.a. “A Brand New Day”) was penned by Luther Vandross, the vocalist who later wrote such Billboard hitsas “Don’t Want to Be a Fool,” “Power of Love/Love Power,” and “Here and Now.”
Mills was 16 years old when she found out about The Wiz. She hadn't yet had much theatrical success, and, according to the actress, she didn't even want to audition for the show. “I had gone out for so many things and did not get them,” she told ChicagoPride.com. Eventually, Mills’s mother persuaded her to try out anyway—and “that experience ended ...
The Wiz had its world premiere in Baltimore on October 21, 1974. Prior to the curtain’s rise that night, director Gilbert Moses III addressed his audience, confessingthat one actor was sick, another had been replaced, and that there hadn’t been time for a single technical rehearsal. Moses was dismissed shortly thereafter. Holder then took over and ...
Before 1972’s Pippin, no Broadway musical had ever mounted a TV ad blitz. After a few weeks’ worth of poorly-attended performances, The Wizfollowed suit to make up for lost time; 101 television commercial spots were purchased at a cost of $120,000. Harper and 20th Century Fox (which helped finance The Wiz) had a strong disagreement about what these...
By and large, the reviews were unkind to this bold new interpretation of The Wizard of Oz. “The quickest way to start a race riot, other than bombing the White House, is for someone to tamper with an American classic like The Wizard of Oz,” wrote critic Rex Reed. Walter Kerr of The New York Times called it “feeble at every turn.” His colleague, Cli...
The critics really ate their words when The Wiz claimedseven Tonys, including awards for Best Musical, Best Choreography, and Best Original Score. Holder’s efforts were rewarded with not one but two Tonys: Best Costume Design (Play or Musical) and Best Direction of a Musical. Finally, Dee Dee Bridgewater (Glinda) and Ted Ross (the Lion) were respec...
Wikimedia Commons// CC BY-SA 2.0 Long before she became TV’s Clair Huxtable, Rashad brought her talents to The Wiz, playing a Munchkin.
Dec 4, 2015 · The frequency and length of commercial interruptions went far beyond irritating, into the realm of destructive, making “The Wiz Live!” a live television event best seen prerecorded.
- mary.mcnamara@latimes.com
- Culture Columnist And Critic
Dec 8, 2015 · This first look video peeks behind the scenes at rehearsal and dress rehearsal of the widely anticipated musical spectacular. http://www.playbill.com/multimedia/video The Wiz Live! featured a...
- 3 min
- 177.1K
- Playbill
The Wiz Live! is several notches above NBC's other musical broadcasts thanks to bold performances and large-scale production pieces. Read Critics Reviews
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Jun 2, 2016 · From Executive Producers Craig Zadan & Neil Meron with Cirque du Soleil comes a the Wiz Live! production of the funky Broadway show!
