Hannah Owens, director Dan Watson of the Missoula Children’s Theatre, Camille Conley and Amelia Davenport, from left, rehearse a scene from “The Wizard of Oz” at Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences.If You Go* What: “The Wizard of Oz.”* When: 6:30 p.m. tonight and noon Saturday.* Where: Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences, 865 E. Third St.* Admission: $5 donation.* Information: 209-5816 or 209-5812.
The large theater inside the Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences is empty, but onstage, seven CSAS first- and second-graders are learning to be Winkies, clawing at the air and eeking.
The two girls and five boys are learning to be menacing characters from “The Wizard of Oz,” a combination of the flying monkeys and the Winkies (the Wicked Witch’s guards, who knew?). They have a hard time looking anything but angelic, though, because of the constant smiling and giggling.
Over the next 90 minutes they learn such lines as “Nope, nope, nope,” “Yup, yup, yup,” “Woooop” and a few more complicated ones about not messing with the witch, along with a song celebrating her fate. No spoiler here.
Also onstage are director James Scotland IV and two older CSAS students, one playing the Wicked Witch of the West and the other a fourth-grader named Owen. As assistant director, it fell to Owen to read the lines of Dorothy, Glenda the Good Witch and the other main characters in “The Wizard of Oz,” who were rehearsing in the school’s auxiliary gym with Dan Watson, another Missoula director.