New Book Explores How THE WIZARD OF OZ And Its Adaptations Reflect American Life

Ryan Bunch's new book Oz and the Musical: Performing the American Fairy Tale, is now available from Oxford University Press. This book presents a unique perspective on why Oz persists in American popular culture and offers a fresh way of thinking about musicals and the people who have made them. Using the Wizard of Oz as a national fairy tale and the musical as a national art form, Jewish people, African Americans, kids, queer people, and others have written themselves into the ideal of "America."

With The Wiz returning to Broadway in 2023 and the first of two film adaptations of Wicked scheduled for 2024, musicals based on The Wizard of Oz continue to hold sway over the art form of the American musical. The association between Oz and musicals has been part of American life for over 120 years, since The Wizard of Oz first appeared on Broadway in 1903.

"Bunch walks readers through a culturally-grounded understanding of the world of Oz as found in books, on stages, on screens, in homes, and in communities. Deep scholarship and deep engagement with fan culture create a persuasive reading of the Oz fairy tale as quintessentially American, consciously performative, and full of a kind of theatrical humbug that makes the story perpetually adaptable and reflective of our changing society." -- Dr. Jessica Sternfeld, Associate Professor of Music, Chapman University

Oz and the Musical is available directly from Oxford University Press. Review copies may be requested here.

Ryan Bunch is a scholar of stage and screen musicals as well as of children's music, media, and popular cultures. His work has appeared in The Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Musical and The Oxford Handbook of Children's Film. He is the vice president of the International Wizard of Oz Club.