The Holy Cross School spring play has always been a beloved tradition. This year, it became something more: a genuine theatrical event that drama teacher Ms. Anita Rivera is still processing, five days later, with a cup of tea and an expression that oscillates between pride and mild trauma.
The production was supposed to be ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ The sixth-grade cast had rehearsed for six weeks. Lines had been memorized, costumes had been sewn, and the yellow brick road — painted by parent volunteers on a long strip of butcher paper — had been taped to the stage floor with what Ms. Rivera described as ‘more tape than was probably necessary, but I wanted it to stay down.’
What Ms. Rivera had not accounted for was the window.
Specifically, the gymnasium window that was cracked open on Wednesday afternoon to combat the unseasonably warm spring air, and through which a sudden gust of wind, at precisely 2:47 p.m. during the final dress rehearsal, swept the entire printed script off the stage manager’s table and distributed it across the school parking lot, the nearby soccer field, and, inexplicably, the roof of the school’s maintenance shed.
The performance was the following morning. There were no backup copies. The school printer, it emerged at this critical moment, was out of cyan ink and was therefore refusing to print anything at all, a protest Ms. Rivera found baffling but was in no position to litigate. With eleven hours until curtain and no script, she gathered the cast in a circle and asked them what they wanted to do. ‘They didn’t even hesitate,’ she said. ‘They said they knew the story. They’d figure it out.’
They figured it out.
What the audience of 180 parents, siblings, and teachers witnessed Thursday morning was a performance of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ in which Dorothy, after defeating the Wicked Witch, decides not to return to Kansas. Instead — in a plot development that no one, including Ms. Rivera, saw coming — Dorothy opens a pizza restaurant in Emerald City, using a recipe she found in the Wicked Witch’s cookbook. The Tin Man, who had been an accountant before receiving his heart, becomes Dorothy’s business partner and manages the restaurant’s finances. The Scarecrow becomes the head chef. The Cowardly Lion handles customer service, which the students reasoned made sense because ‘he needed practice being brave around people.’
The Wizard, in the sixth grade’s revised telling, becomes a restaurant critic who initially gives Dorothy’s establishment a poor review but later returns, humbled, to apologize and award the restaurant three stars.
The audience gave a standing ovation. Three parents were observed wiping their eyes. One father laughed so hard he had to step into the hallway.
Ms. Rivera watched from the wings. ‘I’ve been doing this for fourteen years,’ she said afterward. ‘That was the best show I’ve ever seen.’ She has since rewritten the official script to match what the students performed on stage, which she intends to submit to the school district’s arts curriculum database as an alternative version of the classic. ‘I’m calling it The Wizard of Oz: Emerald City Edition.’ She finished her tea. ‘I think it’s actually better.’Tickets for the spring reprise performance — if it happens — will be available through the school office. The pizza recipe