The Wiz: Out of town tryout (Baltimore/Detroit)

[missthemountains]

Hey everyone--

I was wondering, are there any pictures, assemblances of a script, or even audio (I doubt theres anything more than that) of the show when it was out of town? I heard there was a sideplot where they included The Field Mice from the original novel that got cut. I'm curious to know as much about this as possible.

 

[QueenAlice]

The NYPL has several early versions of the script in their archives.  Yes, the Field Mice sequence was cut; the Queen of the Field Mice was played by Butterfly McQueen, of GONE WITH THE WIND fame. She had a song called "Don't Cry Girl." When her part was eliminated, McQueen stayed with the production as understudy to Clarice Taylor, who played Addaperle, the Good Witch of the North. 

The WIZ, of course, had a lot of troubles out of town with Geoffrey Holder starting as the director, but who was fired during pre-production and replaced by Gilbert Moses (who was married to Dee Dee Bridgwater who played Glinda) who was, in turn, fired and replaced out of town by Geoffrey Holder.