It’s dusk at Demens Landing Park in downtown St. Petersburg.
And in moments an annual ritual will burst onto a stage.
For the 29th time, American Stage Theatre is hosting “Theatre in The Park.”
This year, it’s a reimagined retelling of the fabled Wizard of Oz-- The Wiz-- American Stage style.
Playing through May 4, Dorothy still starts in Kansas, gets lost in Oz and meets a group of misfits heading down the yellow brick road to ask the Wiz for help.
But things are a little different.
"Originally the play was built to be an all African-American cast," said Wiz director Karla Hartley. "This particular version in multi-cultural so you'll see all manner of shape and sizes and ethnicities out there."
In this version of the Wiz, the music is reflects a multi-cultural influence.
"It's a lot of R&B kind of riffs. We've taken a liberty or two,” said Hartley. “We've got a little Calypso in there…We want it to be sort of musically eclectic as well as visually eclectic."
Whitney Drake takes on the iconic role of Dorothy, blown into a magical world, looking for a way home.
"Along the journey she just teaches her friends that all they have to do it believe. And she learns that too,” said Drake.
Actor Sharon Scott straddles two realities in this play.
First she is the loving Auntie Em in Kansas, and then she plays Glinda the Good Witch and Evillene the Wicked Witch.
She explained her characters as all part of the same reality.
"What's it's like to feel really good in the morning, really mean in the afternoon because something got really messed up, and just kind of daffy and happy at the end of the day because it kind of worked out, said Scott. “What's that like?"
It’s life—in Kansas and in Oz.