A ‘Wiz’ Panel Takes Smith Center Members ‘Behind the Seams’

The Wiz cycles through 118 costumes and 82 pairs of shoes per night onstage, with some cast members wearing as many as nine different outfits per show. And for a one-week engagement, the production typically runs about 220 loads of laundry.

Those were just a few insightful details passed along to Smith Center Members by a panel comprising four Wiz actors and Wiz Wardrobe Supervisor Tiffany Janiczek, during “Behind the Seams,” a special event on April 2 inside the performing arts center’s fifth floor lobby.

Members who donate $1,000 or more annually to the nonprofit performing arts center were invited for light bites, beverages and an up-close look at some of the musical’s colorful costumes, hung on two racks flanking a stage set up for the occasion.

Smith Center President and CEO Myron Martin led off the proceedings, explaining that his own experience seeing The Wiz as a child is “partly responsible for me doing what I do today. We’ve come full circle,” he said. “I was inspired by The Wiz as a kid, and now I get to present The Wiz at The Smith Center.”

Then Martin turned the microphone over to John McCoy, senior director of marketing for The Smith Center, who guided the Wiz panel – Janiczek, Alan Mingo Jr. (The Wiz), Sheherazade (Glinda), Kyla Jade (Aunt Em/Evillene) and Elijah Ahmad Lewis (Scarecrow) – through a fascinating discussion about the show’s costumes and the revival of The Wiz itself, which played to sold-out crowds inside Reynolds Hall from April 1 through 6.

“It takes two people to get my costume on,” Jade said of the fiery dress she wears as Evillene, “but when I put it on, something comes over me.”

The costumes for The Wiz were designed by Emmy winner and two-time Oscar nominee Sharen Davis, who has spent her career creating outfits for such films and TV shows as Dreamgirls, Ray and Westworld. Mingo called her work for The Wiz an “afro-futuristic fashion show.”

And maintaining that vision, night after night, takes considerable effort, Janiczek explained. “I jokingly say I can get a stain out of anything at this point,” she laughed.

To learn about becoming a Member at The Smith Center, visit TheSmithCenter.com/support.