The Scarecrow in breeches and a ruff? Crows in Elizabethan plague masks? The Wiz in electrified cape and collar?

Welcome to Dorothy’s dream. And Dorothy in director Robert O’Hara's OSF production of The Wiz—unlike Judy Garland in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, or other stage productions of the show—is a lover of Shakespeare, fashion and ‘70s music, and she’s plugged into the world through the Internet. When the tornado knocks her out, all the makings for a fabulous world that blend the Elizabethan with the contemporary are there in her head.

From the moment that O'Hara said yes to directing The Wiz in the outdoor Allen Elizabethan Theatre, he knew he would utilize the Tudor façade. “When you look at Elizabethan costuming and pageantry, it can be sort of Oz-like,” O’Hara said in an interview at OSF. “It’s sort of crazy-looking. You think of the get-ups that they put Queen Elizabeth in. . . . I want to use the theatre as much as possible.”

So against the Tudor backdrop, he has placed Dorothy in present-day Kansas, and her dream journey through Oz is Elizabethan. In order to create this world, he asked his design team to put themselves in the mind of a 16-year-old with these various passions.

Defining the world, shaping the world

Costume Designer Dede Ayite, who has worked with O’Hara on several projects, dove into her research, and she, O’Hara and the rest of the design team began discussions about the overall design in the summer of 2015.

“What was really helpful for me was a design conference we had [at which] all the designers were present,” Ayite says. “We walked through the show and talked about each character, the music, all aspects. We’d ask questions like, what is a scarecrow in the Elizabethan period, what does that look like? What about a crow? How do you physicalize a crow with an actor?”

O'Hara's process is highly collaborative, and there is a constant conversation among the team to see which direction he wants the design to go.

O’Hara notes, “I let the designers do their thing. But I do want options. I never feel something has to be a certain way, as long as we’re all working in the same world.”

In this production, we meet Dorothy after church on Sunday morning. “It’s her version of Sunday clothing,” Ayite explains. “She has on a fabulous layered skirt, a simple button-down shirt with a pattern and suspenders; she’s wearing fishnets and these funky, cool sneakers with appliqués. So it’s formal, but something that a 16-year-old would be comfortable wearing. As a fashion student, she would be interested in exploring different fabrics and layers. She wants sparkle, a pop of color, something not monotone and something that feels youthful.”

Ayite further explains that because this is a dream experience, Dorothy’s own fashion preferences and her love for Shakespeare will bring those worlds together in the costumes of the characters she meets along the road.

“Let’s take Scarecrow,” Ayite says. “When I started with him, knowing we wanted Elizabethan influences but the time period is now, I started with shape, or silhouette. I decided he can be in denim coveralls, but how do I ‘Elizabethanize’ that?”

So she added a bit of balloon in the pants, so they’d look more like Tudorish breeches, and chose a fabric that feels like denim but with a diamond pattern that would work for an Elizabethan costume. Then she added a brocade jacket with an Elizabethan shape, and an oversized ruff with fraying layers of organza and chiffon, creating texture that suggests straw.

The crows that surround Scarecrow wear Elizabethan plague masks, but their robes give a nod to the present with their lightweight crepe, enabling Ayite to achieve the drape and movement she wants.

As for the Tinman, Ayite’s first rendering had him looking much like RoboCop, but she felt the costume was too machine-like. She decided to refine the look and make sure the costume would allow the actor to move onstage, survive the heat and still look like Tinman. She subtracted elements and ended up with a doublet-like leather jacket with tails, with additional patches of leather and vinyl that create a texture of molded tin and metal. His short trousers not only keep him cooler on hot summer nights, but they look more like breeches. The “tattoos” on his arms and legs are a nod to the present, and his headpiece retains a bit of RoboCop, showing Tinman’s inner workings. [Click here to view how the Tinman’s costume was created.]

In choosing fabrics, Ayite thinks not only about shape, texture, drape and movement, but also about color balancing. She makes her initial renderings and sketches with her color choices, but she constantly edits the color balance through fittings and then onstage. Early in the process, the dyers might dye the fabrics to get a certain shade and tone, or add another color in the shoes or add more splash through accessories. “Lighting also helps pull it all together,” she adds, “so I’m not all on my own.”

For the green and fantastical Oz, Ayite has chosen fabrics of rich colors with loads of glitter and sparkle. Residents of Oz wear two-tone green high-top sneakers. Wigs and hair are equally green and fanciful.

The world of Evillene (Dorothy's nemesis wicked witch) is much darker, and her costume is voluminous, made of multiple brocades in red and black. The silhouette references Marie Antoinette (because O’Hara decided that Evillene and her monkeys are the French, at odds with the English/Tudor residents of Oz) with loops of skirt at the hips. Yet since it’s also the present, she wears a strapless corset and her arms are bare.

Not all costumes are a blend of old and new, Ayite says. It was a matter of finding where it felt right.The Wiz’s costume is all flash and theatricality. “His cape and collar light up. He’s putting on a production,” says Ayite. “Dorothy has dreamed him because she lives in a globalized world and has access through the Internet and magazines to know what is possible.”

The Munchkins are fantastical and funny. Because there are only three of them and Ayite wanted to fill the stage, she put the actors in blow-up nylon costumes, and as they move across the space their shapes morph from large to small, setting the stage for the startling and the strange as Dorothy heads down the Yellow Brick Road toward home.