There’s a deep funk, a groovy. Ssshh. Wait. When the lights go down and the music kicks in, you’ll know it, too. Whether this is your introduction or a return to The Wiz, you will surely feel it’s groovy.  But this groovy, this groovy right here, represents just one of the myriad versions of the story, mostly offshoots of L. Frank Baum’s classic, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Here are just a few others. 

The book that started it all! The first of 14 Oz books written by Baum himself, two of which were published after his death. Various authors contributed another 26 Oz books, which help make up what is considered the classic original series referred to as the “Famous Forty.” Baum also created several adaptations of this now legendary work for film, theater, and radio, including a 1903 Broadway musical version and a 1908 motion picture featuring Baum himself. 

One of the most beloved films ever made. It features Judy Garland as Dorothy with Ray Bolger, Jack Haley, Bert Lahr, Frank Morgan, Margaret Hamilton, and Billie Burke. Among its many achievements, it brings to life some of Baum’s vividly visual descriptions. Of Kansas, for instance, Baum writes:

When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. […] The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else. 

In the film, famously, the Kansas scenes were shot in black and white and colored in a sepia tone, while the scenes in wildly colorful Oz were filmed in Technicolor.

In his original, Baum never reveals Dorothy’s age; however, consensus places her between five and 12. Judy Garland was 16 when she started filming. The stage version of The Wiz situates Dorothy as a pre-teen thrust into Oz. This film adaptation asks, What is it to find oneself in a strange new world as an adult? Here, Dorothy is a shy 24-year old
schoolteacher —played by 39-year-old Diana Ross. And in this version, we are really not in Kansas anymore: Dorothy lives with her aunt and uncle in Harlem, where she has “never been south of 125th Street.” Instead of a tornado, she gets caught in a blustering blizzard; and her adventures in Oz take her on a journey through a re-imagined New York City that includes the World Trade Center as the Emerald City. In addition to Ross, the film features Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Ted Ross, Mabel King, Richard Pryor, and Lena Horne, with music direction (and some new songs) by Quincy Jones.

The Wizard of A.I.D.S. was conceived by Michael Barto and led to the founding of AIDS Education Theatre (now HealthWorks Theatre) in Chicago. Michael Garcia, a founding member and actor in the production, recalls: 

[W]e created […] a parody of The Wizard of Oz. We made a musical comedy about AIDS. In our play Dorothy is distraught over all the news she’s hearing about AIDS and she goes on a journey to find out more about it. She learns about safe sex from the Scarecrow, she learns how to conquer her fear from the Tin Man, and from the Cowardly Lion she learns compassion for those infected. She is continually harassed by the Wicked Witch of Unsafe Sex. And, with the help of the Wizard (me!), kills the witch with a giant condom. 

During and after the play, cast members distributed HIV-prevention literature to the audience. 

The Scarecrow of Oz dying of AIDS in Santa Monica? Uncle Henry a child abuser? Dorothy, grown old and crazy, wearing out her last days in a Kansas nursing home? This haunting, magical, wildly original novel explores the lives of several characters entwined with The Wizard of Oz—both the novel and the 1939 film.It is the story of the “real” Dorothy Gael, an orphan living a hardscrabble life with abusive relatives on a Kansas frontier settlement, and of the kindly teacher who decides to write the story of the life she ought to have had. Was is also the story of Judy Garland and her unhappy fame; of Jonathan, an actor dying of AIDS, whose intense attachment to Oz dates back to his troubled childhood; and of his therapist, whose work at an asylum also unwittingly intersects the path of the Yellow Brick Road. This version also yielded a stage adaptation, created by Chicago’s Roadworks ensemble.

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum’s classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? Wicked is a political, social, and ethical commentary set in a land where Animals talk and are locked in a battle against the government for equal rights; Munchkinlanders aspire to middle-class stability; and the Tinman is a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to be an anti-totalitarian agitator, an animal-rights activist, a nun, a nurse who tends the dying, and, ultimately, the headstrong Wicked Witch of the West in the land of Oz. Having sold nearly a million copies since its 1995 publication, the novel has enjoyed an equally successful second life as a big-budget Broadway musical.