VIDEO: DIRECTOR INVITES ALL TO “SUNDANCE-IFICATION” OF OZ

SUNDANCE — As an editor and reviewer for Utah Theater Bloggers Association, I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Chase Grant, a professor of directing at Utah Valley University and the director of Wizard of Oz, the next show being produced at Sundance’s Outdoor Amphitheater. He generously allowed us to film the following interview in his home. It is transcribed below and edited for length and clarity. The entire interview is available to watch on our Youtube channel, here:

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UTBA: Hi, Chase, thanks so much for doing this interview.

Grant: Of course. Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

UTBA: I wanted to start off this interview talking a little bit about the show you’re directing in July, The Wizard of Oz, and how you first became connected with the show and working on this production.

Grant: Yeah! Well, UVU has had a pretty long partnership working with Sundance and producing their summer theater. As the lecturer of directing in the department, I was kind of in a good position to be considered to direct for them. And I had the opportunity to perform at the summer festival last year in Newsies where I got to play Pulitzer. As I get grayer, I get older parts. *laughs* 

It’s a beautiful venue, and I’ve performed all over the place. I’ve performed at the Globe in the UK, and it’s one of my very favorite things to perform outside. There’s something super magical about hiking, (it’s kind of hike in from the parking lot, and it’s a moderate hike, but don’t worry, even folks like me can make it.) It’s very transformative. As you go through the trees, you’re all of the sudden in this beautiful outdoor amphitheater that has mountain backdrops and tall pine trees and quaking aspen. It’s just – it does a lot of the heavy work for you in terms of transporting. So, being able to perform there was a really great opportunity to get connected more to the space. And then, they asked me to direct this year, and it was a no brainer.

“If we do our job right, and we tell the story truthfully, it resonates beyond just children.”

UTBA: So talking about the outdoor kind of aspect of the process and of the space, how has that changed your directing style? I imagine everything else you’ve kind of done has been indoor mostly.

Grant: You know, interestingly, my background is in Shakespeare. My degree is from the University of Exeter in England, and my particular degree is about staging Shakespeare in all sorts of unconventional places. So my background actually lends itself to the less traditional performance spaces. Although Wizard of Oz is a show that is easier to stage indoors because it’s got a lot of different set locations, and typically you fly in set pieces and they don’t need to be built to withstand outside. So it’s a challenging piece to stage outdoors. But we’re excited about what we’re doing to meet those challenges and produce it out in Sundance. 

UTBA: I love that connection that you made there. Speaking about Shakespeare versus Wizard of Oz, some people might see those as opposites on the [theatrical] spectrum. Do you have any thoughts about how your background in Shakespeare has influenced this show?

Grant: Yeah. So interestingly, this particular version of Wizard of Oz, which is the one that’s the most produced overall and is a musical, was originally adapted by the Royal Shakespeare Company in England. It was a late 1980s production, and their whole concept was to take the iconic film and try to recreate it for the stage. This script was adapted by the most prominent Shakespeare Company of the world, and you can clearly see it in the text. So, a lot of the work that I do on heavier text, like Shakespeare, actually lends itself to this particular script because it was adapted by Shakespeare folks.

UTBA: Oh, that’s amazing. I would never have guessed. Speaking about adapting the movie to the theater space, I’ve been thinking about the story of Wizard of Oz and how well-known it is. Even with Wicked becoming more popular recently with the movies coming out, how do those previous adaptations affect the story that you’re trying to tell?

Grant: Yeah. One of the things that I think makes a director important in modern theater is their concept. Arriving at a concept for me involves a lot of research in the text itself. And then for previous versions, we have a wonderful dramaturg, Doctor John Newman, who works at UVU. He’s kind of our resident expert on all things about other iterations. So he’s been a really great resource at showing us lots of different kinds of adaptations and the history behind it. 

But in terms of coming up with the concept, I did a lot of initially looking at it and thinking, this is going to be really, really hard to do in some way, like at Sundance because, like I mentioned, lots of different set pieces, lots of different locations. And logistics are hard. We’re up in the mountains. So building the set, getting it up there – tricky. When I first was going through it and doing my preparation, I was like, I don’t know how we’re going to do this! But I started to change from feeling like, “We can’t do this,” I started thinking about how we can leverage what’s at Sundance and what makes Sundance special and merge that with what makes us special.

And, so my concept revolved a lot around instead of resisting what felt like challenges leaning into them. Our design is very much about how do we make this particular version of Oz make sense in the mountains? A lot of our scenic design and props and costumes are nods to the Sundance culture and the experience that you get when you go to Sundance.

What we thought initially were going to be really big challenges actually opened the door to really innovative and really exciting staging solutions that I think are going to set this particular version of Oz very much apart from other productions that are even going around right now, and certainly in the past. It’s going to be Sundance’s version of Oz. And we’re very excited.

UTBA: I love that concept of making the venue an integral part of the story, especially in such a unique space. When I hear the word “Sundance” normally, I think of the Sundance Film Festival, and I think it’s amazing how much Sundance does for all parts of the arts community, especially theater. How has your experience been working with Sundance as a whole?

Grant: You know, it’s funny. I have some family that are diehard Sundance people. That’s their faith. They love to go to Sundance and go to the different cafes and restaurants that they have. And they say Robert Redford was really onto something because it’s a pretty unique place. It’s not just a ski resort. It’s not just some film festival. It’s kind of its own little land. And that’s part of where that concept came from, is that there’s just something really unique about going to Sundance and sort of being in the mountain air, and you’re like, kind of in the woods, but it’s really cozy. And that has been a big influence on how we want people to feel when they watch the show. It’s not just that you’re going to see a play, but you’re going to see the “Sundance-ification” of Oz, which has been really cool. It’s been really exciting to make that play nice with the text.

“It’s not just that you’re going to see a play, but you’re going to see the “Sundance-ification” of Oz…” 

UTBA: Yeah, I see that excitement by just talking to you right now. I’m getting excited to watch it! We worked on a show together a couple of years ago. I observed then that your directing style is very intentional and involved, especially with the students that you are working with. How might that have changed with the wide variety of cast that you get, in a production like Sundance?

Grant: It hasn’t really. *laughs*

UTBA: Oh, okay. *laughs* Yeah.

Grant: No, I mean, it scales up. If anything, I just have more help. I have amazing choreographers, Nathan and Susie Balser are working together, so just incredible, incredible pieces of choreography where we’re kind of expanding aspects [of the show]. So there’s gonna be some surprises for this production. It won’t just be the same nostalgic show. It’s certainly [still] Wizard of Oz, right? The characters are all there and very much who they are, but there are the tweaks and the kind of additions that we’re making to elevate the story that are really exciting. Especially our choreography, it’s really great. So there’s just things that are keeping it fresh without taking away what people are going to expect. It’ll be your nostalgic Wizard of Oz with a lot of new, fun things. It’ll be interesting to both veteran audience members and young kids that have never seen it. 

We also have a wonderful music director, which is just another example of how my team expands as a director when I do a bigger show like this. And it really just allows me to focus in pretty narrowly on the acting. When I know our singing and dancing are covered, I can dive even deeper with the actors. And what we’ve found is, I think because it was adapted by the RSC, there’s more substance with the text that sort of stands up to the kind of exercises that I like to do. I really dig into the text and discover more than just the surface level. For example, we’ve found a lot of humor where I wasn’t expecting comedy to be, and a lot of opportunity for some pretty heartfelt moments that are not just sort of sappy and sentimental, but are rooted in something that I think is deeper. And that’s part of why the narrative, the core narrative has persisted and enchanted people for so long. He originally wrote the story in 1900, and we’re still doing adaptations of it, because the themes at the core of the story are so universal, interesting and timely.

UTBA: Yeah, I love that answer. I just went and saw another production of The Woodsman, a different adaptation of Oz.

Grant: Oh, that show is so good.

UTBA: It’s great, right? There’s so many different stories out there that all go back to the central themes. On that, I have kind of a funnier question for you, if there was any character in The Wizard of Oz musical that you would play, which one would it be?

Grant: At my age, it would be the Wizard at this point. *laughs* But a dream role in Wizard of Oz? Well, yeah, probably the Wizard! He’s the titular character. He is The Wizard. We just actually did some character work with the Wizard and discovered that, you know, he is kind of a traveling snake oil salesman a little bit, but with a heart of gold. He’s a really, genuinely good person. And one of his one of the best lines, I think, in the play is when Dorothy says, “You’re a very bad man.” He responds, “I’m not a bad man. I’m just a very bad wizard.” And I think that’s great. I think that would be a lot of fun to play. But our Wizard is definitely better than I could be. *laughs*

UTBA: I think you would do great. Well, that’s pretty much all that I have for you. Is there anything that you wanted to say that you didn’t get to?

Grant: Just that, I think that if you’ve never made the hike up to go see a show at Sundance, this is definitely the one to go to. And if there’s the feeling like well, The Wizard of Oz is just a kid’s show… It is. It is a show that’s made for children, for sure. That’s how Frank Baum wrote it. He was particularly interested in telling stories that were happy stories, especially given, you know, how sometimes fairy tales are dark and they’re cautionary tales to keep the little ones safe. But Frank Baum wrote Wizard of Oz specifically to be a happy story that children could turn to and feel good about. I think that if we do our job right, and we tell that part of the story truthfully, it resonates beyond just children. And it makes for a story that a really broad demographic can watch and enjoy. And that’s why it’s persisted for so long.

Also, it’s outside. The sun sets as you watch the show and then you’re transported into a totally different place. It’s amazing.

UTBA: That sounds amazing. I’m very excited to see it. Wizard of Oz runs from July 13th to August 9th. It’s going to be a night to remember, and you won’t want to miss it.