Back in the 70’s, a lot of Broadway bound shows used to preview in Philadelphia before heading to New York. It was a great chance to see the shows in their raw form, usually with the original casts before prices skyrocketed as they hit New York and collected respective awards or sometimes closed before ever making it there. One such show that previewed here before moving to Broadway was “The Wiz” a soulful adaptation of “The Wizard of Oz”. My parents took me to see it in a half empty theater. We and the rest of the audience were blown away by the colorful costumes, the catchy tunes and the powerhouse voice that came out of the tiny body of Stephanie Mills playing Dorothy. The cast received a long and well deserved standing ovation at the end. My parents, enthralled by the show, were determined to help fill seats and called everyone they knew, including Philadelphia’s own Trudy Haynes (the first African American TV news reporter for KYW) and rallied enough people to fill 3 rows of seats. It was a moving experience and a glimpse at how different adaptations of a well known story can have an impact on certain communities.
Following in that vein, author and scholar Ryan Bunch has penned a new book,” Oz and the Musical: Performing the American Fairy Tale”. Bunch is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Childhood Studies at Rutgers-Camden. As a musicologist, he’s focused on the study of stage and screen musicals. On the personal side he’s been a singing teacher, a community theater music director, and a puppeteer, and has taught courses in childhood studies, children’s literacies, music history, and music appreciation at Rutgers, Temple, and the Community College of Philadelphia. He’s also the Vice President of the International Wizard of Oz Club, and the co-founder and co-chair of the American Musicological Society’s Childhood and Youth Study Group.
His new book delves into the many iterations of “The American Fairy Tale” and how the story has been reworked and reclaimed by LGBTQ+ and other Americans in expanding the visions of American utopia and belonging. The book offers new insights into the way the land of Oz has permeated the fabric of society and allowed people to find their own meaning through the music and words of this American staple.
I understand that you’re a Southern fella.
Yes, I grew up in Northeast Louisiana. My father was a cotton farmer and I grew up on a farm in the country. I was the youngest of 4 siblings, but the next oldest to me was 11 years older than me so in some ways I was like an only child. So I spent a lot of time alone, using my imagination.
Tell me a little more about it.
I lived in a part of the world where hunting was a big part of the community; it was very church oriented, in fact a little country church is where I got a lot of my first musical experiences. As a kid who was interested in all different kinds of music and books, I felt very different from a lot of the people around me. I had to figure out for myself what kinds of activities I was into. Skipping ahead, when I founded the International Oz Club it was a really important outlet for me. It was a way to connect with people who had similar interests.
Your father was a cotton farmer; what did your mom do and how would your folks have described you as a kid?
She was a homemaker, she took care of everybody, still does. I think they would say that I was quiet, shy, creative, and imaginative.
Did you ever get bullied for being different?
Yeah, especially around the middle school years. I was lucky in that I never got beat up, but it was smaller things, I was spit on, or would have bullies knock the books out of my hands and just generally harass.
When did you leave Louisiana?
I left to go to a little liberal arts college called Hendrix, which is in Arkansas, just outside of Little Rock. That was a really good experience for me. It was a relatively selective school and it attracted people from the surrounding area in the South who were kind of like me, misfits in the place where they came from. We all sort of found each other there. It was known for being a school for eccentrics at the time I was there. I remember someone said they never met so many people who lived like they were in a musical until they came to Hendrix. There was a community there that I was able to connect with. I was a music major and I sang in the choir, and I knew a lot of people in the theater department. That’s when I was able to begin to have a lot of the experiences that most people typically have in high school, deeper and more meaningful friendships.
When did you come out?
I came out that first year of college. Soon after I got to school in September, I got involved in a number of campus activities. National Coming Out Day was in October, and I decided that it would be a good time to tell my parents. [Laughing] I took a trip home and very awkwardly relayed that I was gay. I actually put it off until just before I was driving back. But I’m glad I did it then instead of putting it off. College is where I first connected with other queer people and began finding community in that way too.
When did you begin to focus on children’s music, and why?
I think children’s music is how I got interested in music in the first place. I always loved music, especially on the few occasions that we’d have it in school. We didn’t have a legit music program, but they would sometimes have people come in and sing with us. I also loved musical films. When the film version of “Annie” came out, I was 7 and I was crazy about it. I had the record and I would sing the songs everywhere. It was my first musical obsession. Disney movies, which always had a lot of music, and Sesame Street were really formative for me. And because I became a serious Oz fan when I was 10, I would get the journal of the Oz Club which came out 3 times a year. Around then is when I began cultivating an interest in children’s culture. I didn’t even know it, but in a way I was already beginning to be a scholar even though I was still a kid in a world where most of the people that I connected with who took the Wizard of Oz seriously were adults. I did a lot of work with youth musical theaters, and fast forward to now where I’m getting my PhD in Childhood Studies and doing my dissertation on children’s music.
Do you remember your first record as a kid? What did you play it on?
I had a lot of vinyl records, and we had one of those big wooden stereo consoles. I think the oldest records were from the read-along books, like the old Golden Books, I seem to remember “Peter Pan” or “Alice in Wonderland”. And for musical records, I had “The Great Muppet Caper” album which I loved. I also recall getting my first cassette player; I was in kindergarten at the time, and the first tape I got was the Sesame Street Christmas special. I remember sitting in the corner of a room by myself and being aware that I had this big grin on my face, listening to a tape for the first time! I really loved it.
I actually put out a CD of children’s songs called, “Rainbow Sprinkles”. When I would pick my nephew up from daycare, I noticed that all the kids were rambunctious, but when the teacher would put on a record, they would all stop to respond to it. I realized the power and meaning that music had for kids, but I also realized that singing about the farmer and his wife might not reflect the lives of all the students, so I did songs about having two dads and a gay aunt, etc. As adults we know how music inspires and moves us, but we often forget how important it is for kids. Why do you think that is?
I think there are a couple of things, one is a tendency to think of children’s music as trivial which is something that applies to children’s culture in general. I can say as an academic, there’s surprisingly very little scholarly work that’s been done on the kind of children’s work that I’m interested in which is music written for and/or given to children, like nursery songs or Sesame Street songs. I think that there’s also an attitude that it is what it is and because it’s universal, it doesn’t need to be talked about. But as you pointed out, with “The Farmer in the Dell” which I also talk about in my dissertation, the music does have certain representations and is worthy of our attention and study. So it’s a case of either thinking it’s not important or thinking that it’s something sentimental or nostalgic that we don’t want to ruin by studying it too much. But by doing that, we can learn to make it better.
[Laughing] I’d hope so, because the flip side to that is that a lot of the nursery rhymes are pretty violent and twisted when you actually listen to the words. Cutting off blind mice tails with a carving knife, Jack breaking his crown, and Ring around the Rosie, which I understand is about the plague.
Yeah, I think there’s some kind of desire to subvert the safety of childhood with those songs, they can be a little bit violent. A lot of popular children’s songs also originated in blackface minstrel songs, “Oh Susanna”, “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad”, even “Mary Had a Little Lamb” has a tune that came from a minstrel song. [Laughing] There’s a very checkered history when it comes to children’s music!
Okay, back to you, what brought you here to Philadelphia?
I got my Masters degree in historical musicology at the University of Maryland shortly after finishing my Bachelor’s, and while I was there I met Micah Mahjoubian, the person who is now my husband. He had been to college at American University and we met when he was visiting DC. I finished my degree after we started seeing each other, and at the time I was also interested in puppetry. Instead of going right into a PhD I decided to go into puppetry and found an internship in Norristown with the Renaissance Artists Puppet Company. I took that as an opportunity to move to Philly with Micah and I’ve been here ever since! Puppetry is great; maneuvering a puppet is almost like playing an instrument. It’s really cool.
Speaking of cool, let’s talk about your book. Why was it important to you to write this?
The book comes out of my interest in both Oz and musical theater. I’ve noticed over the years that there were a lot of musicals based on “The Wizard of Oz” which is often called, “The American Fairy Tale”. I was interested in what it was about the musical version that helped to perpetuate the circulation of Oz in American culture. I wanted to explore how different people have adapted it to express a utopian version of America and who is included in that. That’s sort of the main analytical objective and I looked at four of the most popular versions of the musical: the original Broadway version in 1903, the MGM film with Judy Garland, and the Broadway shows “The Wiz” and “Wicked”. I grew up at a time, as I’m sure many of the readers did, when we didn’t have movies on demand or DVR or even VHS decks, so when “The Wizard of Oz” aired once a year on television that was your only chance to see it, and it became a big event, almost a national holiday for kids. For me it was like a religious ritual! In between airings your only option was to reenact it yourself which a lot of people did. I interviewed people who would sing the songs and do the dances and put on their own shows. And of course there were a lot of local theaters that did productions as well. Interestingly it was a wide range of people staging the shows, Jewish people, Black people, Queer people, and for me one of the common threads was a strong desire for utopia often for people who are misfit or marginalized. So it’s a hopeful vision of a more inclusive America.
Let’s get back to you, tell me about your wedding to Micah.
We had been together for 6 years when Micah proposed to me. A year later we got married, we exchanged rings with Bert and Ernie on them which was reflecting both my interest in childhood but also because we kind of think of ourselves as Bert and Ernie. And of course there’s the subtext that Bert and Ernie on Sesame Street are a couple. At the time, Micah was working for Mayor Street and we were able to have the ceremony in City Hall. Because the mayor offered to officiate the ceremony it became somewhat of a news item. Mayor Street had come a long way when it came to gay rights and we were proud to have him participate. At that time it wasn’t actually legal, so it felt like we were breaking the rules a little bit plus it felt nice to have such a public expression of our love. We had family and friends and it was really lovely. We became legally married in Delaware when that became available. So we have multiple marriage dates and anniversaries!
Now for some random questions… who’s your favorite muppet?
I think about this often, I think it would be Miss Piggy. She’s a diva, she’s a strong woman, she was also a part of my past. When I was a kid I had Miss Piggy, Kermit, and Gonzo dress up dolls. If I have another muppet show favorite it would have to be Gonzo.
Did you have a piggy bank as a kid?
I had an Oscar the Grouch bank.
What keeps you optimistic?
The people you encounter in life who are kind and compassionate, that’s what I look for and what I try to be. I think that those values are things that people are trying to pay attention to and to cultivate, Young people especially, are getting tuned in to it. To go beyond tolerance of others and into celebration of difference in both work and private life. I’m really encouraged by a growing ethos of compassion and accommodation and I hear it more from teachers and in the academic world and that they’re thinking about it when they design their classes despite the divisiveness that we often see. I think we’re moving in a new direction where people are thinking about that. I see a lot of concern for the collective good.