Land of Oz in the Ozarks

Our family and friends just finished a successful couple weeks of performing the Wizard of Oz, Jr (MGM), not to mention the several weeks of rehearsing. Here K7 gets final touch up help from best friend with his Scarecrow costume before heading on stage.

Time to go "Wow!" the audience.

Different night. The three farm hands waiting just off stage for the tornado scene, while the Good Witch is stretching and limbering up, since she goes on right after them. 

This is what it was like for me, the other stage hands, and the cast as we waited just behind the curtain before going into action.

I ran the big fog machine. Wearing gloves to handle the large amounts of dry ice. "S" painted the green Emerald City panels beyond me.

Here are the main stars during Photo night. We are so thankful to have such a great fine arts group like the STARS Foundation here in the isolated rural Ozarks. These youth have the opportunity to learn and perform in an impressively talented orchestra and theater group, and have lots of quality friends - most, but not all, are home schooled. These six kids come from three different towns spread over a 30 mile distance, and the Lion is the only one in the pic who attends public school full time (the Scarecrow attends 2 periods a day at local high school, then back to home school).
Here is a link to the STARS web page (K2 lent a hand in it's development):
http://thestarsfoundation.org/

The cast stayed and signed autographs after each night's performance. 

After the autographs came clean up! Yes, there were many late nights. This is K8 resting and drinking a soda with his back to the camera while the others work...

Best Friends: Tay was a Jitterbug Dancer and stagehand, K7 was Scarecrow, Maddie was a Jitterbug Dancer and stagehand, and Tia was the Good Witch. K8, who is "photo-bombing" this pic behind the girls, had four small roles and also showed promise as a budding actor, dancer, and singer.

The boy's Grand Parents were able to come up one weekend and enjoy the show.  We had a cold front arrive the same weekend. It got down right chilly.