Ye Rin Kang, University of Edinburgh
The musical The Wiz debuted on Broadway in 1975. It was adapted into a film in 1978 and in 2015 NBC produced a live television version, The Wiz Live!. The staging of The Wiz Live! on a proscenium stage set rather than multiple studio sets demonstrates how television adapts theatrical conventions to broadcast requirements. Such technical constraints and opportunities of different media have brought changes to the ways of performing and presenting The Wiz. Film’s cinematic techniques and television’s real-time multi-camera approach each create distinct visual languages that either enhance or disrupt the audience’s sense of liveness across various genres and performance styles.
In this presentation, I will compare the different camerawork and editing strategies employed in two musical scenes in The Wiz’s film and television adaptations: ‘A Brand New Day’ and ‘Believe in Yourself’. I will explore the extent to which these visualisation techniques alter and perhaps enhance the experience of live performance, and to which televised musicals maintain theatrical immediacy or establish a distinct televisual form.
By situating The Wiz Live! within the evolving history of musical theatre on screen, this study offers insights into the broader discussions on liveness and mediation in live television broadcasts of musical theatre.
Biography: Ye Rin (Yerin) Kang is a first-year PhD student in Music at Reid School of Music, University of Edinburgh. Her research interests centre on the intersection of theatre and popular music, with a particular focus on musicals for mass media and the relationship between popular music and drama. She is currently preparing her dissertation on musicals broadcast live on television, examining their distinctive characteristics that reimagines theatrical liveness through the medium of television while creating new possibilities for musical performance in contemporary media contexts.