The Wizardry of Oz : Program Seeks to Work Magic by Casting Youths in Musical

Three weeks before the opening, the cast lost its scarecrow--a pint-size 16-year-old who had to go into hiding after two carloads of gangbangers came looking for him.

The police told his sister, one of the best dancers in the show, she had better take a powder, too.

All this happened after one of the yellow bricks (as in road) showed up with knife slashes on his back. He was jumped on the way home from rehearsal. “He couldn’t dance for like six days,” director Ruth Ashton Blake said.

Despite the real-life drama, the curtain rose this week on one of the most unusual federally funded summer job programs in the Southland--Inglewood’s production of “The Wiz,” the black stage version of the L. Frank Baum children’s classic “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

For 50 low-income youths who were paid $4.25 an hour to put on the play under the tutelage of professional singers and dancers, the experience was every bit as magical as Dorothy’s journey to Oz. Few had ever seen a play, let alone been in one.

“Lion, stop blinking,” ordered the Tin Girl, played by 14-year-old Tyronda Long, as a makeup man readied her and the cowardly cat for a dress rehearsal.

The lion, 17-year-old Gordon L. Jackson, responded meekly: “Well, I haven’t ever put makeup on before. I don’t know what to do.”

Inglewood started the summer theater program last year, modeling it after one in Stockton. Officials in Stockton decided many years ago that it made as much sense to have at-risk youths learn to entertain the community as it did to have them answering telephones and sweeping sidewalks for 10 weeks in the summer.

Staging the performances, however, is no small task.

After working with one scarecrow for seven weeks, Blake had to find and train a new one in three weeks. School district police at Morningside High School, where the play is in production, told Blake last month that the presence of the first scarecrow and his sister, apparently the targets of gang members, might endanger the rest of the cast.

Blake also had to tailor the play, originally written for an all-black cast, to a stage company that includes many Latinos. That’s why Addaperle, the feel good girl, became Addaperle, the feel good senorita. And the Tin Man became a Tin Girl when the most suitable person for the part turned out to be female.

Then there were the accidents that can befall any production. Torri Robinson, 14, was sidelined temporarily after she fell during a rehearsal and hurt a hip.

“She had to take a week off,” said Blake, a professional dancer who was in the original touring company of “The Wiz” and owns a dance school in Inglewood. “She’s my lead dancer, the eye of the tornado.”

For the cast, though, the difficulties have been overshadowed by the lessons learned.

“It taught me to read scripts and everything, ‘cause I wasn’t into memorizing,” said Thomas Windley, 16, who plays the assistant to the wicked witch Evillene. “It teaches you discipline.”

It also taught him about teamwork, according to other cast members. Shortly after rehearsals began, Windley and another player, Dameond Fields, got into a fistfight. Now, they’re good friends.

On Tuesday, the cast performed a dress rehearsal for children in the city’s summer day camp. On Thursday, they performed for Inglewood senior citizens. The public is invited to see the free show at 8 tonight and Saturday.