After 40 Years, 'The Wiz' Returns To Broadway With A Trailblazing Director

The revival of the beloved musical reflects the full “cultural impact that Blackness has had on fashion, music and dance,” director Schele Williams said.

Schele Williams is making her Broadway directorial debut this spring with both “The Notebook” and the revival of “The Wiz” ― an artistic achievement she describes as “a milestone that I wish never happened.”

As numerous outlets have pointed out, Williams, who directed Elton John and Time Rice’s musical “Aida,” which Williams also starred in for its lead role, is the first Black woman to direct a full-fledged musical on Broadway since Vinnette Carroll, who in 1972 staged “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope” at the now-defunct Playhouse and Edison theaters.

There have been other trailblazers, of course, including Camille A. Brown, who directed and choreographed “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” Broadway’s experimental “choreopoem” billed as a “play with music,” in 2022.

But given the scope and popularity of musicals like “Dreamgirls” and “The Color Purple” that highlight Black women’s experiences, Williams’ achievement is noteworthy.

“There have been so many huge, epic musicals about Black women, and the fact that none of them ― none of those teams, none of those producers ― ever went, ‘Oh, you know it would be great to have a Black woman’s voice behind the table guiding this,’ blew me away,” Williams told HuffPost. “It’s been a real reckoning for me as a director and an artist on Broadway to say, ‘You know what? No longer am I going to walk into a room and reduce myself to what I believe the room can accept of me.’”