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- [00:05]
Tamsen Fadal
Welcome to the Broadway show Uncut, the place where we have those conversations with Broadway's biggest stars. Just a few weeks left to catch a whiz on Broadway. The magical musical has an incredible set brought to life by the Oscar winning production designer of Black Panther, Hannah Beechler. Here's Paul Wontorek with.
- [00:27]
Paul Wontorek
Your career is kind of on fire. I mean, you win an Oscar, you're really big, doing amazing Hollywood projects, but you are committing time to the theater. What brought you to Oz and to the Wiz at this point in your career?
- [00:41]
Hannah Beechler
The director, Shelly Williams, who We are from the same small town in Ohio, Dayton, Ohio. And we were kind of in the same circles. We never really knew each other. And she called me like a year ago. I mean, there wasn't even a hesitation. I've not done Broadway, I've not done theater. But the name, the memory, the iconic, you know, show that this is, how can I say no? And I remember it from when I was little, so. Because I did get to see it in the theater with Stephanie Mills, and it did have a huge impact. I mean, it's like full circle for me. And I was like, my dad was an architect and my mom and my dad took me to the theater a lot. And so it was there, right, when I was young. And I just thought my dad, my dad would be so happy. He passed away when I was working on the first Panther and never really got to see what I did. He would want this for me and I want this for me. And so there was never any other answer, but yes.
- [01:38]
Paul Wontorek
So many artists, when they attach to something like the Wiz, there's so many emotional connections to a property like this. It's not just a gig, is it?
- [01:47]
Hannah Beechler
No, it's not. This wasn't just like another job or I just want to try this, or, you know, oh, what's this about? This was based purely on emotion and my connection. What it did for me, seeing myself and Stephanie Mills, like, understanding worth and having a place and that things are possible and accessible. And so I want that for other people. I want that for young people for this. So it was. It felt like, in a way, a responsibility. I felt like a protector and nurturer of this. I wanted to get it right. I wanted to make sure that when people looked at it, they saw celebration and joy and happiness and walked away with a sense of pride and knowing that I could do this too. This is accessible to me. You know, I had to do it. I had to do it.
- [02:36]
Paul Wontorek
So I read that your dad was an architect, your mom, an interior decorator. So it seems like you sort of wound up in the perfect career, sort of combining all of that, right?
- [02:45]
Hannah Beechler
I did. I fought it for so long. You know, when your parents are like, my dad was like, who is going to carry out my legacy? And all the kids. There were six of us are like, I don't. Not us. You know, And I thought it was. I was the one. There were six of us that he would take with him on his jobs. Like, we'd go to work sites. I loved going to his office. I thought it was fabulous, you know, doing little chores and stuff like that. So he really kind of talk to me about design and help me see things in a framed out building that was half empty and learn how to visualize things from a really young age. And then, of course, my mom with the interior design, the house would change. I come home from school and the house would be completely different. I'm like, so a new color, you know, oh, we have wallpaper now. Why is my room this color? So I was always around design. And it was just a weird upbringing of. We lived on a horse farm. We lived in the middle of the woods. My dad designed this super modern house. His favorite architect was Frank Lloyd Wright, of course, and the brutalist and the Bauhaus movement. So like our dog house, he called the Bow Wow house. And he built it in the style of a bow house, dog house. Right. Like, that's how I grew up.
- [04:01]
Paul Wontorek
Wow.
- [04:02]
Hannah Beechler
So that permeates with you. And I wanted to go into fashion design, and I was determined. I went to my college for fashion design, and I sort of fell into photography, and then I fell into film, and then I went back to film school and then I pursued the film career. So my mom and dad obviously had a huge impact on my imagination and my design world. They made sure to feed us culture and feed us our culture, feed us art. My mom would have art openings at the house with my aunt was an artist and her friends being Davis, who is a big artist in Dayton, Ohio, he would have his openings there. So I was always around. And our house was art. They called it the upside down modern house. It had a bridge through the front door, and it was a fairy tale. Like, we had the bridge and, you know, it was built on the side of a hill and it was just, you know, you looked out at just woods and beauty and then the horses. And, you know, my dad worked hard, and we weren't wealthy or anything by any means, but through imagination, my mom built this World that the six of us, because there was no other kids around, you know, it's a rural area, and we had to entertain ourselves. And she would always build these moments of imagination for us. So it just was in me. I knew I'd go there somewhere. I didn't know I'd be doing what my dad did. And I don't know if he thinks that what I do is what he did, because he was always like, now, is this permanent buildings or what is this? You know? But, yeah, it was just always in my life. I think what's really important to me is, you know, giving what I'm feeling to other people. Like what I went through, what I. The imagination, all of that. I just want to give it to other people. Other young people especially, you know, that's our future.
- [05:55]
Paul Wontorek
Yeah. I mean, what's really beautiful is you got to grow up in this incredible environment, but you're able to, with your work, create environments for kids and anyone who don't have that, but you can sort of inspire people. Do you see it that way?
- [06:11]
Hannah Beechler
I do. I do. And I think that's the perfect way to explain it. It's the inspiration. Like, I think a lot of it is. You don't have to be in that to understand it. You know, it's a sense of peace. It's a sense of knowing that you have the ability to set the parameters for your life through your imagination. Nothing should be off limits. Everything should be accessible. Dreamers built this. Everything we see. Dreamers, designers, innovators. These are the people that built the world that we live in and the young people who are reimagining it. Right? There's the original, and then you take the original and you make it new. You make it unique, and you just keep building on that. And that's what I look to young designers to do. So as much as I can inspire them and help them and give them knowledge, because that's the most important thing about how to move forward in design and to believe in yourself and your confidence and your aesthetic, believe in your ideas. You can't please all the people all the time, but there is someone that you're going to impact, and that one person is so important to impact. So you can't doubt yourself. You know, designers and artists are always going to be struggling and a little dramatic, right? We were always a little over the top, and that's okay. You need that. You need your experiences, everything about your life. If you haven't laughed or cried or struggled or felt pain in the year you haven't had quite a year. All those things you take to your design and, you know, it's like what I put in. I hope people can feel that coming out. Like, the love that I put into this. I want people to walk out the door feeling the love, feeling feeling the intent, feeling the history and the pride and the joy. And that's really important to me.
- [08:12]
Paul Wontorek
What's cool about theater is, obviously, with your films, it's a very escapist, immersive experience. People sit in the dark theater, and they just sort of can get completely lost in your world. But with theater, there's a lot more imagination involved, and it's more tangible. It's right in front of people. And people interact so differently with design and theater. Is that exciting? The challenge of that?
- [08:33]
Hannah Beechler
I. Oh, it's so exciting. And, again, new to me. So I think I brought a little bit of my cinematic and filmic way of design and aesthetic design to this, which what really grabbed me was the fact that it can be a little abstract and you have to fill in the pieces. Like, we can fill in all the pieces with VFX and all the sets and all the time, but here you have to rely on people having the imagination and you helping them find. Find what you're trying to do. And that's the beauty of it. I love the moving scenery. You don't get that in film. Like, I got so excited that the scenery was moving. I'm like, we need to see it all. We need to see all the scenery move. Because I love sort of the meta of it, this idea that we're on this path that's constantly moving, this journey that Dorothy takes, and it's moving with her, and we can talk about the psychology of her journey through the environment. And I think that's so cool. And, I mean, I screamed, like, every time something new came out when we were teching, I would just stand up and scream. And these are people who have been in this business for a long time. They're like, we love your energy. And I'm like, I was so excited. I was just jumping out of my skin. Every new element was like, yes. I couldn't contain myself. And so that, to me, is just like, there's a beauty in it that cannot be seen in film or really anyplace else. Like, this is its own thing, and there is something about it. I want it to feel traditional. I want it because of the scenery. I didn't want to do a lot of video projection and stuff like that. So we worked with the Designer, the video designer, to come up with the aesthetic for what that's going to be. And I just wanted there to be textures. I wanted people to look at things and just be like, this is a different world. This is a whole nother. And I feel it and I know it, but it all works together.
- [10:28]
Paul Wontorek
So I know you are a big fan of research. You do deep research for your projects. I've read about some of the research you've done for your films. How do you research Oz? And obviously, this is such an iconic world. People have seen many visions of Oz in many different media. So how did you jump into this?
- [10:47]
Hannah Beechler
Well, I first started with.
- [10:49]
Paul Wontorek
You didn't take a trip to Oz?
- [10:51]
Hannah Beechler
I think I might have. I really immersed. Right. I fell into the rabbit hole. And I started with the original Wiz musical, and I was just looking at images and reading about the designers and where their inspirations came from. That was very important to me, to know where this original piece came from and what was the thought behind it, and what did they want to accomplish? You know, what did they feel they didn't accomplish? So I wanted to go through all that. Then I went to the movie. What are the differences between the musical and the movie?
- [11:22]
Paul Wontorek
Very different.
- [11:22]
Hannah Beechler
What were they trying to say at the end of the day? What were the two sort of different ideas, and how are they all so similar? And I studied those designers as well, and the music. And then a lot of it was also talking to Shelley about, like, what do you want for Dorothy in this piece? You know, I want to pay homage to everything. Lots of Easter eggs. Pay homage to everything. And then I started, okay, researching black American culture throughout time, which I'm very familiar with, because it's in almost everything that I do. But what are the pieces of that that then I want to bring to Oz as it pertains to this journey in this world specifically? And I specifically wanted it to be about black American culture. You. You know, the diaspora is also. There's pieces of that throughout. But I think there's a very distinct culture that had been created since the 1800s here, through food, through music, through fashion, just the history of the community, what they've been through. And how do I talk about that history without talking about the struggle and the pain, but the pieces of joy that came from that history that has made us to. So I did all that little bits of research and put that in the show, but with always in mind, what am I saying about black American culture?
- [12:46]
Paul Wontorek
A lot of theatergoers would. Wouldn't think that that much work goes into creating a set design. Right. They think like, okay, well, there's a very clear, we need it. We need a house and we need, we need the. We need Kansas and we need Oz and we need Evileen's, you know, wherever she is. And you know, there's very clear sort of. But you're putting so much emotional and historical work into what might seem just, you know, I think people take for granted a lot of. And I don't know that every designer even takes that much, but I feel like this project sort of is asking for more from you.
- [13:21]
Hannah Beechler
Absolutely. It's absolutely asking more. And I always do too much anyways, so it's like part of my personality. And I also wanted to pay homage to the original wonderful wizard of Oz, you know, the way we start the show and for people to see that aspect of the original film and the original story. So that was, you know, really important to have in there as well. And. But yeah, you know, there is a lot there. And I think that some people will recognize things. They'll be like, oh, okay, there's that little ditty right there that I'm not sure. Like, I think that's what it is. And the hope for that is that their curiosity gets to be better of them and they can let me look this up real quick, you know, and then they're going to learn something about where that came from. You know, we've got the quilt pieces. I'll tell this one little thing. And in our French Quarter Oz, which was formerly Munchkin Land, you know, it's a New Orleans celebration of the second line and how we celebrate, you know, life passing in New Orleans, which is a very old tradition throughout the Diaspora. And I wanted. And it's a joyful, it's a joyful thing. But the patches that are underneath the arch, which is representative of the Louis Armstrong Arch and the Armstrong park where people, where Second Line kind of began and Mardi Gras Indian began, which, you know, people can look that up and know and come and enjoy that in New Orleans. And the patches are from quilts From I about mid 18th century, before the Civil War that a lot of the Quakers would put outside their houses on the Underground Railroad. And each symbol represented something different that a lot of the enslaved people escaping understood what those patches were. So the symbols that I put up represents Dorothy's journey. We have the symbol that's a wrench. Basically. It looks like like a four sided wrench. And that's talking about be careful because there's danger ahead. To me, that represents the Kalitas. So then there's the middle symbol of the patch and that represents be careful on your journey and the path that you take through the woods. Well, her journey is through the woods in Oz. So I wanted to bring those little pieces. Those are the pieces of history that while I made it, you know, French Quarter and there's glitter on them and I've kind of, you know, made the symbols a little more fun, a little more maybe Tim Burton esque. They have meaning. You know, there's something there about our journey as the human race. Right. Let alone the black culture about how we need to proceed when we're on our path. The giant trees that come out, I had the thought like, well, if we're going to have a forest, it shouldn't look like a forest in the world. It should look like a forest in Oz. And what does that look like? So I wanted to make the trees have their own bark. They have a different type of bark. And so I started looking into symbols about nature and about creation. And I came upon Adinkra symbols, which are Western African symbols that are used in different patterns, are used in different stories, storytelling that represent different meanings. And so the symbols that we used were the symbols for Mother Nature and the symbol for Creator. Because really, right now I think relevant in time is, you know, these giant, beautiful trees represent not just life, not just as continuing, but they have sheltered us, they have towered over us and kept us dry. They have kept us alive. They're the oxygen that we breathe. So they're very important in the world. And I wanted them to have their own importance and their own look and feel and aesthetic. So we went in on that, but then also making it magical because we threw lots of glitter on them. I love glitter. There's glitter everywhere in the show. I was like, glitter everything. And okay, is that enough glitter? No more. So there's moments like that that you will see, but you can also look at it and it's just magical. A five year old could look at it and they're just seeing something beautiful that they haven't seen. An older person who maybe is familiar with Adinkra will look at it and know, and somebody else might look at it and say, I wonder what that is and get curious knowledge. I want to keep in continuing people's curiosity, which then moves your imagination, which then makes you more creative, which then you pass that knowledge on to somebody and it keeps going and going and going and. And that's how you change and shift and to me, that's what's important, because these things have power. The stage has power. Film has power. And that power, like Peter Parker's uncle, with great power comes great responsibility. And what you're putting into the world will come back to you. And when I leave this world, I want to leave a legacy. And I want that legacy to be of kindness, empowerment, and worthiness.
- [18:31]
Paul Wontorek
I love that. I've heard from many of your collaborators that the goal is to create a timeless production of the Wiz. I think that some of the past. I think that the original and the film were sort of very specific to periods to the 70s. So is that an exciting challenge? I mean, that sort of. That's a great roadmap, right? Cause a lot of the things you're saying are references throughout time that will still be relevant. Right? I mean, it feels like a big task, but also maybe an easier. Feels like a really great path to say we want to make something that will always sort of make sense.
- [19:12]
Hannah Beechler
And I love that when Shelley kind of started talking about that, with all the creatives and talking about, like, I really want this to be timeless. I want this to last. And that's really hard to do in 2023. And that's. That's honest. You know, there's so much technology and things of that nature that you constantly want to add, even in film, that I know it's like, you don't know in 30 years if that's gonna date it, if that's gonna. Somebody's gonna feel that, like, oh, that's the past. So we were very careful on how we kind of, you know, combine that into sort of the overall aesthetic. But I think that it's a great challenge, and I love that because I do want people to be able to look at it 30 years from now, 40 years from now, as they can many shows and feel like, okay, this still has relevance, and I still understand and feel what the creative team was trying to do or what they did do. Hopefully we're successful at it. But I think that that's really important. It is a huge challenge. It's a huge challenge. And you can either get caught up in that challenge or you can kind of say, all right, these are the absolute things that we're going to do that I feel make it timeless. And then you just have to keep sort of going forward with that and pray. There's a little bit of praying that this actually worked out in that way. You never know. And I think that the music will always be timeless. I think what Jaquel created will be timeless. And I also think there'll be some TikTok challenges. Let's be clear. I'm trying to create one. My son's like, okay, you're not doing this. And I'm like, no, it's gonna be easeondown. I'm gonna do the first challenge. He's like, no. And I think that what Sharon is doing is timeless. And I think, like you said, because we're also looking backwards to create the future, and that's the key, and it's really a hard thing to do. It's a hard thing to accomplish.
- [21:10]
Paul Wontorek
What about technology? You used a lot of technology in your film work, and theater is very different. I mean, a lot of the things that make shows run are the same techniques that have been used for 100 years, right? It's very, like, getting down to basics. That must be interesting for you.
- [21:28]
Hannah Beechler
Oh, yes, it was. I was like, where's the. No. Oh, okay. But where's the team that's doing oh, no. Okay, theater?
- [21:40]
Paul Wontorek
I mean, you had a team of hundreds of people on the Black Panther films, right?
- [21:43]
Hannah Beechler
My team alone was probably, you know, at any one point in time, because we were in three countries, and I had three teams, and, you know, we were flying 747s full of scenery, places. But in Atlanta, where we filmed mostly, I probably had about 600, 800 people in several different departments under me. So that was just like, art, you know, and then everybody else had that big a team, and then the shooting team was 400 people. So it was a lot different in that. And I think that I kind of brought some of that technology, especially in, like, the design work as far as model making, doing that digitally, using newer software to do this, because it's a little bit faster than what is previously being used on theater. I think that was new for a lot of people, like, oh, you know. But I also know how fast we can move doing it this way. So I think that's me bringing the film world here. But I think some of the interesting ways that we work on stage with the mechanics using the pulley systems that they use and how the backstage teams work together is so fabulous. I wouldn't want to see that change. I literally would never want to see that change, because for me, theater has this. I say tradition, and maybe it's because I can't think of a better word, but there's something about it that it brings up this feeling of, like, this people were sitting in a theater hundreds of years ago. They definitely weren't sitting in movie theaters hundreds of years ago. This has been in our world since the beginning of time, pretty much since there were people, there was theater. And there's something about that that I never want to see change because we can doesn't mean we should. And there's something very special about doing something the same way, because it's tradition that holds so much weight, and I think we need to do that more as a society. You know, I live in New Orleans, where they're very traditional. It's one of the oldest cities in the country, and they hold the tradition and the way that builds community and makes you feel like you are progressing. But there's preservation, and I think the reconciliation is finding how you do those two things together. How do you preserve as well as progress, and how do you stay right in that pocket? And every day, I get to wake up. I live in a 100-year-old house, and I walk through my neighborhood of Creole homes and shotguns that I knew people were there in the 1800s, in the late 1700s. It feels a different way. I feel more connected. And so to me, theater is that you feel connected in a way you never will in any other medium.
- [24:56]
Paul Wontorek
Can you tell me just a little bit about the structure of your design? Like, the actual. The way it builds and the framework and just some, like, just talk about how you actually built it.
- [25:07]
Hannah Beechler
Oh, you know, part of it was. Again, I was just intrigued with all the moving pieces. So I think for me, in theater, it was, you know, working with materials and flats that I've not worked with before and having things fly in, like learning. Like I'm learning. I'm actively learning the hangars flying in and at what speed and how they do and set lines and how the movement of that and where they come in and how big things need to be or how small things need to be to make an impact. You know, finding myself sitting at the back of the theater looking at a piece. Okay, I need to make this a little bit bigger. Okay, this needs to come forward a little bit more. I'm learning about how color works downstage to upstage to mid stage, how we sort of make it dense without actually packing it full of things. Again, filling in what I like to call critical fabric that's taking something that's true and filling in the pieces with sort of a fictional idea. So the structure of it wanted to be. I wanted to have at least a piece of scenery for us to understand in each world and then to break it down into an abstract place and Then make it so people can kind of understand the texture of that world. Color was a big thing. Color's always been a big thing with me. And a big part of the design is that from taking it away, we start out in black and white, paying homage to the original film, the wizard of Oz, because we start out in black and white in Kansas, and then when we land in Munchkin Land and the original Oz were in Technicolor, and that is one of the first Technicolor scenes in films that we have seen in the history of film, and we wanted to sort of pay homage to that. So when we land in the French Quarter, Oz, it's this beautifully colored world. And then we punch down, when we get to Scarecrow, to something. I kind of wanted to lift people up into this frenzy and then sort of bring you back to this plateau of sort of a desaturated color. We're in the blacks and the grays and the golds. So we're warming up Dorothy to meeting her very first friend, the scarecrow. And then we go deeper in the woods, and we're trying to make the woods a little bit different. So when we're in Tin Man World, I want it to have this sort of green, mossy. That might be the New Orleans in me, to have this green, mossy hue, to feel more encapsulated into the side of this forest. And then we move to Lyon, and we start to open up again, because we're gonna go to poppies. We're in the field. So it's very much about, like, you know, the forest is sort of here, and then we go to Poppy's. And, you know, I didn't just want to see a poppy field. I wanted to be inside a poppy field. I wanted to be an ant on the ground, and I wanted to feel like this whole world, it's not just that they're laying in it. They're surrounded and enveloped in it. And that was really exciting for me. I know when I said, so we're going to have giant poppies, they were all like. So I'm like, yes, 28ft tall. They're like, okay, sure, Hannah. But you know that to have that world, you know when you're a kid and you want to build a fort and you, like, go out. Well, what I did go out in the woods, and you just build this, like, encapsulating thing. So I wanted that feeling, and then I wanted to open back up again. So it's very much the structure for me is kind of really controlling color, really controlling size and shape of where you are to create the worlds and creating these highs and lows as you go through and using the space and creating this beautiful portal that we can also use to help add a little bling to the world. Because we can light it up and we can change the color of that to go with the emotion. We can drain it back out, but it's sort of always there with you. And to me, it's like a storybook frame around it. So I wanted it to be very childlike, almost using Keith Haring lines in that. You know, whenever I look into Keith Haring image, I feel like the lines are moving like an old Disney animation. And to me, that's childhood. So I wanted that portal to feel like we're surrounding and enveloping everything in this storybook. And then frame and then inside of it, you can open the book and there's this beautiful story. And each page is a different color and a different thing. Like the pop ups, you know. See, I get really weird and into it I go, like, I get so excited about it and. And I wanted that. I wanted it to be. Because it's a fairytale and I wanted to take everybody on this fairy tale journey. Like they're going through this book and understanding the world and having them connect. So that's a lot of what I did. It's a lot of color control for me too. Yeah.
- [30:04]
Paul Wontorek
So as a production designer, is there a certain part of you that's like, oh, I would love to do like a movie of this and would you love to do Oz as a movie?
- [30:11]
Hannah Beechler
Oh, yeah. You know, I'd never considered it before, but I would love to do it. I think that, oh my gosh, the possibilities. There's no producer who'd want to give me the money that I want for it. Like, I'm gonna need the budget. Like. Cause we're building. We're building Oz. I'm building the whole city. You know, I go in like that. We're gonna need all the buildings, we're gonna need all the things. And so that might be a little impossible, but I would absolutely love that and I would absolutely love to see another iteration. That's the gold about the original story. So many people can imagine it and so, so many different ways and tell different stories from that story. That story will never end. And with that you have imagination and creativity because that's what it is. That's what it is, is just being able to see something and bring yourself to it. And that's exciting to me because I want other people to have their point of view of that one piece. So, you know, this is mine. And maybe down the road there'll be someone else and maybe they'll look at my stuff and be like, okay, this is what we're. You know, this is something we're going to take inspiration from, like I did from the original and the film and be inspired by that. And to be even a part of that is awesome. So it's like, you know, I just like to throw myself in it, you.
- [31:33]
Paul Wontorek
Know, just finally tell me, what does it mean for you to be telling this story every night now? Audiences are seeing it every night. Just what does it mean to be a part of this?
- [31:45]
Hannah Beechler
It's everything. And it's hard to put into words. This morning, got here early. I was meeting with my associate, Mary Hamrick, who's been fabulous and helped guiding me through the process. But when I got here, everything was off. No one was here yet. And I'm like, oh, I'm a little early. So I'm like, let me go into the theater. And they had one light. And the Kansas House, the first Kansas House, was on the stage. And I had my headphones on and my music, listening to one of my favorite songs. And I kind walked in the middle of the theater. I'm probably going to get a little emotional. And sat down and looked at it. I'm sorry. And looked at it and just thought, you're really leaving something important and good and to see your design. I do this on every movie. I go and I want to sit and I be quiet and I look and I know that I'm blessed and I'm grateful to be able to do that. And I know my dad is looking down and watching it. It's just. There is no words for that feeling. Maybe one day, but there are. There aren't really words for that feeling. To sit there and look at that and know that you just. You left something good. In a world where that's not always true for. For anyone and. And more specifically, people that look like me, you know, and I have to just keep pushing on that to change things. That's what I want. You know, I have a son, and it's important that he sees a change and that I'm doing something that he can be proud of and something that I can be proud of. So it means the world. You know, it's just being able to leave something that I'm proud of, being able to leave something that my son is proud of and that people can look at and feel good at the end of the day. To me, being a good citizen is making other people feel good and making. Lifting anything you can off of their shoulders. You know, for everything that's going on in the world right now, you gotta be able to celebrate. You gotta be able to feel joy through it. It can't constantly be struggle and hurt. People have to be able to laugh. And the more that people can celebrate and laugh and dance and sing, the more they're gonna want that, and the more the world is gonna change. And if I can be any little part of that, I win. I win. And I can lay down at night, maybe a little exhausted, and have the best sleep ever and leave this world knowing that that's. That's my mission.
- [35:05]
Tamsen Fadal
Well, that's gonna do it for us. Until next time, I'm Tamsen Fadal, and this is the Broadway show Uncle.