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    the wiz is back

    Women wow in Theatre Under the Stars' breakthrough version of The Wiz

    Tarra Gaines
    Oct 22, 2018 | 8:50 am

    A young hero’s adventures into adulthood remains the core story of many stage shows, but in the next several months Houston will see some wildly varied versions of that journey thanks to Obie award-winning director and playwright Robert O’Hara.

    This month, O’Hara directs the Theatre Under the Stars production of the beloved classic The Wiz, giving it a new female-empowered vision. Then, in early 2019, Houston’s favorite avant garde theater company, Catastrophic, will produce a very different kind of hero’s journey in O’Hara’s controversial and outrageously funny play, Bootycandy.

    During a recent interview with CultureMap, O’Hara discussed his work’s odyssey to Houston stages, and explained how The Wiz became a path in his own personal journey as an “iconic” part of his childhood. He played the scarecrow in high school and especially loved the film growing up. Though he doesn’t usually like to direct the same play several times, he makes an exception for this musical.

    The wonderful world of Oz
    “I have a special relationship to it. Whenever I hear those songs, I sit in wonder,” he explains, believing that the show has the power to still captivate us 45 years after its first creation.

    “It surprises us with a young woman’s story of her imagination and her journey to love herself, find herself, and find home in herself, and in particular, with The Wiz, a young African-American woman’s story. We don’t have many musicals or plays that have as its protagonist a young African-American woman.”

    As a director, O’Hara sees our familiarity with the music and Dorothy’s adventure as an opportunity to give audiences a new perspective on the show.

    “When people already know the story, you can play around with it more,” he says. “I find the most interesting actors and let them do their job.”

    Playing around in this production means highlighting and revising some particularities of the original plot of The Wizard of Oz and Wiz that most audiences probably don’t often ponder.

    “I always thought the Wiz and Wizard of Oz were strange actually. It’s a girl who imagines hanging out with three men and then another man tells her to go kill a woman. That’s very interesting once you boil it down.”

    Being a lioness
    In this new TUTS production, that man to woman ratio won’t so overwhelm as both the Wiz and Lion will be played by women. O’Hara thinks the Lion (Allyson Kaye Daniel) will especially add a powerful dynamic to the way the characters interact on their trek through Oz.

    “The relationship with the Lion has always been very special because, of course, the Lion needs courage. I think we all need courage in this day and age, but to see two women sing “Be a Lion” to each other is really profound. It moves everyone every time we work on it and every time we hear it, to find in 2018 these two iconic characters singing to each other these words of encouragement.”

    He also describes the relationship between Wiz (Broadway veteran Marva Hicks) and Dorothy to have a “wondrous quality that ultimately helps her along her journey.”

    As for the arguably the most important and cutest cast member, Tot Grady — yes, a male canine will play Toto —O’Hara say in rehearsals he seems relaxed and knows his cues, though when they move from one piano to a 21 piece orchestra, they might need to make some adjustments, but so far the dog has been a consummate professional.

    Comic candy
    While The Wiz might be the perfect fall show for the whole family, Catastrophic Theatre’s production of the sometimes stinging satire Bootycandy will decidedly be for adults only. It too chronicles a journey through childhood into adulthood but O’Hara’s original hero, Sutter, a young gay, black man goes through some very different challenges, and the playwright wants the audience to have a very definite reaction. In fact he wants people to (figuratively) choke on the play.

    “My [original] work is not the type that goes down easily. Especially because it’s a comedy,” he explains, wanting the audience to have a kind of visceral reaction as they laugh. “I’m using humor to choke you. I want you to feel comfortable, but then I want you to think, to asphyxiate, and then I want you to breathe and go: oh that wasn’t that bad.”

    He does warn: “If you walk into a play titled Bootycandy, you deserve what you get.”

    "The fearlessness of Robert O'Hara's writing is both poignant and off-the-charts funny,” states Catastrophic associate director, Tamarie Cooper, explaining why the company wanted to produce the play this season. “Though Bootycandy focuses on homosexuality in black culture, the play tells a universal story about one person's journey towards self-acceptance.”

    When I asked O’Hara if Sutter’s journey towards self-acceptance is anything like Dorothy’s, he said while the shows are very different at almost every level, he does see a few similarities.

    “There is a journey and it is, I think, magical and very colorful. It’s as outrageous as a talking scarecrow, a talking tin man, a talking lion, meeting a woman, and going to kill a witch,” he describes, but admits there won’t be any witch-hunts, at least, in Bootycandy.

    ---

    The Theatre Under the Stars production of The Wiz runs October 23-November 4 at the Hobby Center.

    The Theatre Under the Stars cast of The Wiz.

    TUTS Wiz cast
      
    Theare Under the Stars Courtesy Photo
    The Theatre Under the Stars cast of The Wiz.
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    A Roman Holiday (Season)

    All roads lead to Houston museum's blockbuster exhibit of Imperial Rome

    Tarra Gaines
    Jun 11, 2025 | 3:15 pm
    ​The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times"
    Photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
    The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times" ("Statue of Trajan" Minturno, Italy, 2nd century, marble, National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

    Houston's holiday season will have a distinctly Roman feeling this year, as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston is bringing the glory of the Gladiator era to Texas. On November 2, 2025 through January 25, 2026 the MFAH presents the monumental new exhibition “Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times.”

    Featuring 160 objects of antiquity, including marble sculptures, frescoes, mosaics, delicate glass vessels, and exquisite bronze artifacts, the exhibition will transport visitors back in time to the Roman Empire during a flowering of art and architecture. The MFAH partnered with the Saint Louis Art Museum to organize the exhibition, which will showcase many pieces that have never been on view in the U.S.

    While Emperor Trajan might not be the most famous — or in some cases, most infamous — of the Roman emperors, he ruled between 98 and 117 C.E. during the empire’s height and was the second of the so-called “Five Good Emperors” of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty. He was also the first emperor born outside of present-day Italy, in what is now Andalusia, Spain. During his reign, he granted citizenship and rights to some peoples from conquered lands. The exhibition will explore how this time period expanded what it meant to be a Roman and how art reflected Rome’s power and promoted the empire’s values and ideals.

    \u200bThe Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times"
      

    Photo courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

    The Museum of Fine Arts Houston presents "Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times" ("Statue of Trajan" Minturno, Italy, 2nd century, marble, National Archaeological Museum, Naples)

    From statues of prominent men and women of the era, including Trajan, to vivid frescoes and furnishing from the villas of Pompeii, the objects in the exhibition will tell fascinating cultural and political stories of life in imperial Rome. To add context to the artworks and objects of antiquity, the MFAH will recreate a section of Trajan’s Column, which was a towering pillar with a spiraling narrative frieze, one of the few monumental sculptures to have survived the fall of Rome.

    “Art and Life in Imperial Rome: Trajan and His Times” brings such a wealth of objects to Houston thanks to unprecedented loans from the renowned antiquities collections of Italian museums including Museo Nazionale Romano, the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, the Parco Archeologico di Ostia, and the Musei Vaticani. It would would likely take months of travel across Italy to see this much art.

    “This is truly a rare opportunity for U.S. audiences to experience spectacular objects from this glorious era of the Roman Empire,” said Gary Tinterow, director and Margaret Alkek Williams chair of the MFAH, in a statement. “We are enormously grateful to our colleagues in Rome, Naples, and Vatican City for lending these treasures to us and broadening the appreciation of Italy’s cultural heritage.”

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