My connection to the wiz is well I've watched it as a child. It was really special to me not just because of how amazing the music was and how big the stars were right like Diana Ross Michael Jackson but the fact that it like

represented New York you know Emerald City they're on the Yellow Rick Road big

city and bright lights and being that I'm from New York, you know, it resonated with me.

It made me almost feel like a little kid.

I'm 61 now and to see it at 61. I'm making myself older because I'm not

because I ain't 61 to November, but it's very good. I felt good. I feel like

uplifted. All I ever wanted to do was be a musical theater star. My mother

introduced me to the whiz and it changed my life.

I have wanted to see this show since I was like 15 years old.

And the fact that it's here and the fact that it was as gorgeous as it was,

I'm just so grateful. So big fun. It's notes from America.

It's notes from America. I'm Kai Wright. Welcome to the show.

The Wiz. I'm tempted to put it in the category of if you know you know.

Not because it's particularly niche at this point, but most fans and there are a whole lot of us have such specific emotional relationships to this show, often tied in some way to growing up black. For me it is

almost impossible to think about being a little kid without flashing to an image of

myself parked in front of the TV in my grandmother's

din watching a VHS of the movie version for the umpteenth time which

immediately brings me to the image of my uncle, walking through the door

from the garage, interrupting the movie with his big mouth, and my aunt teasing

him about one thing or another, and it just opens this emotional window into people who have gone to glory but live on in my heart.

That's what this show does for me. The whiz. It began on stage in Baltimore in 1974 before going on to win seven Tony awards

as a Broadway show with the incomparable Stephanie Mills as Dorothy. Then came the 1978 film with Michael Jackson

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