‘Wizard of Oz’ literary arts festival will transform Charlotte into the Emerald City

The Queen City will become the Emerald City this month with Charlotte’s inaugural “Wizard of Oz” literary arts festival for all ages.

Venues citywide will host well-known land of Oz authors, illustrators, filmmakers, scholars and others during the three-and-a-half day event Sept. 26-29 called “CharlOz.” Most events are free.

The festival is the brainchild of UNC Charlotte lecturer and Oz expert Dina Schiff Massachi.

“Our goal is that every single person who comes can see themselves reflected in the story somehow,” Massachi told The Charlotte Observer.

One of the top draws at the event is ”Wicked” author Gregory Maguire, who is giving a talk Sept. 26 at Knight Theater that kicks off the festival. Maguire wrote the best-selling book that the Broadway musical and upcoming two-part film is based on.

He plans to discuss his childhood experiences of reading “The Wizard of Oz” and watching the movie, and also will delve into the inspiration, ideas and development behind ”Wicked” and its Broadway and film iterations.

Gita Dorothy Morena, great-granddaughter of L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz books that inspired the 1939 MGM movie and depicted a feminist utopian society, will share family stories. She speaks on Sept. 29.

So does Nate Barlow, who will introduce the premiere of the newly restored 1914 silent movie, “His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz.”

Barlow worked on the restoration project with Massachi. He had also received a 4k transfer from the Library of Congress of 35mm nitrate footage likely not seen in over a century, including two reels of original picture negative and three tinted reels.

‘Something for everyone’ at CharlOz

Massachi is herself an Oz author, and at UNC Charlotte, she’s a lecturer in the English Department and American Studies Program. A favorite course she teaches is about “The Wizard of Oz.”

She has been on PBS and other media outlets as an international expert on all things Oz. “We’re trying our best to have something for everyone,” she said. “It’s as multi-generational as it can be.”

“And everything I am doing is free and open to the public, and accessible along the light rail,” she said.

Only the Charlotte Symphony performances set to the 1939 “The Wizard of Oz” film require an admission fee.

Lining up the all-star cast of national Oz notables was like Dorothy collecting friends along the yellow brick road, Massachi said. And most everyone said yes.

Amy Chu and Janet K. Lee, who did a graphic novel adaptation of two of Baum’s books, also will speak at the event.

They’ll join Danielle Page, author of the young adult novel series “Dorothy Must Die” and Virginia Kantra, who wrote the new adult novel “The Fairytale Life of Dorothy Gale.” Eric Shanower, author of Marvel Comics Oz books one through six, also is scheduled to address fans of Oz.

Oz art by UNC Charlotte and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students also will be showcased.

Working her Oz contacts

The festival’s roots trace to the COVID pandemic, when Massachi had an “amazing group of students” in her “Wizard of Oz” class who called themselves “The Baum Squad.”

“We even published an article together in “The Baum Bugle,” the International Wizard of Oz Club’s journal,” Massachi said. She serves on the club’s board of directors.

“Here I was with one of the greatest classes I ever taught in my whole life, and now we’re on Zoom, and that just stinks,” Massachi said.

What can I do to show my appreciation for all of their hard work? she thought.

She and a former International Wizard of Oz Club president checked their Rolodexes for Oz authors and others that Massachi might get to participate in a student-produced YouTube video. Maguire, Morena and others readily agreed to read a chapter apiece from Baum’s books for the video.

She revisited her Oz contacts to line up speakers for this month’s festival, she said.

That included Maguire, who “has largely retired from public appearances,” according to his website. Yet he loved her student project during the pandemic and emailed Massachi “every single day” during production of the video, she said.

“The lovely thing about Oz is it’s very much a community, and people want to help, and they want to work together,” she said.

The scholar of Oz

Massachi built scholarly cred in the world of Oz.

“I think what makes me a bona fide expert is I have a ton of publications,” she said. “I have published two books. One is called ‘The Characters of Oz’ (essays on their adaptation and transformation) and the other is a Broadview Press edition of ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.’ ”

Many of her festival speakers contributed chapters to ‘The Characters of Oz,’” and the book inspired her festival, she said.

“As the book was coming together, I thought wouldn’t it be fun to bring all of these people to Charlotte and introduce them to my students and do a standard academic conference-type thing.”

She raised the idea with her mentor, UNC Charlotte English professor Mark West, whom she called “a real visionary in the world of children’s literature.”

West urged her to think bigger, “which was a terrifying thought,” she said. “My initial answer was a tongue-in-cheek ‘well fine, I’ll take over the whole city then.’ And it turns out I did actually mean it.”

Charlotte responded, she said.

“Because Charlotte is a delightful place,” she said. “And when you have an idea, and it seems to be a good one, and you have the passion and the will to get coffee with just about every single human in Charlotte to talk about your idea, people jump in.”

“This is the magic of Oz,” she said. “You have Dorothy, and she goes on her journey and she picks up the scarecrow and the tin man and the lion. And if we go to Baum’s book, there’s a couple of extra characters she meets along the way that help out, too.”

Yes, she looks like Dorothy

Massachi’s journey down the yellow brick road began as a girl in Maplewood, New Jersey, “a train stop into the city,” she said.

“I was very into stories about little girls who went on magical journeys anywhere other than the place they were, preferably with talking animals,” Massachi said. “And the fact that Dorothy looked like me was why I dressed up like her every Halloween and played her on the playground with my friends in elementary school.

“There’s a point in time they had Judy Garland in a blonde wig for ‘The Wizard of Oz,’” she continued. “I’m very glad that did not move forward. If Dorothy had been blonde or Alice (in Wonderland) had been a brunette, my whole life could have gone very, very differently.”

She said that with a laugh.

‘America’s fairy tale’

Around junior year of high school, Massachi delved into feminist literature and read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist utopian novel “Herland.”

“Gee, I’ve seen this before,” she thought. “And sure enough, Baum’s ‘Emerald City of Oz,’ his sixth Oz novel, really turns Oz into this feminist utopian society.”

“Herland” was published in 1915, five years after Baum’s book.

In grad school, Massachi thought, “all right, let’s pursue that a little bit, and I was able to back trace it to Matilda Joslyn Gage, who is the coolest member of the women’s suffrage movement that you’ve never heard of.”

In the chapter on witchcraft in Gage’s 1893 book, “Woman, Church and State,” “you can really see how Gage’s version of witches defines Baum’s version of witches,” she said.

“’The Wizard of Oz’ is America’s fairy tale,” Massachi said, or the opposite to the Disney movies based on the 19th-century European Grimm’s Fairy Tales. “A lot of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales end in marriage,” she said. “A lot of them have social climbing. A lot of them have royalty. And that is not what Baum did.

“Baum does not have marriage,” Massach said. “He has a harmless little girl who goes on an adventure. Judy Garland was way too old to play Baum’s version of Dorothy.

“And she doesn’t get married. There isn’t the social climbing. She returns right back to her farm. If you’re following Baum’s books, eventually the farm gets foreclosed on.

“In the sixth book, he juxtaposes American capitalism with Oz utopianism,” she said. “It is some interesting political commentary there.”

“Instead of the journey being about romantic love, it is about friend love,” she said. “It is about supporting your community, coming together, rising up against the thing you think you lack and supporting each other through the various trials one might go on.

“Whether they’re crazy enough to put together a huge community event, or just living their life,” she said.

Festival tickets

Most CharlOz events are free, but all require registration on the CharlOz website, CharlOz.Charlotte.edu.

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