Photo by Victoria Hernandez.
Just over twenty teens are scattered across the first three rows in the auditorium of South Oak Cliff High School Thursday, Sept. 18. But there’s no one performing.
Instead, just below the spotlights black chairs are filled with three guest speakers to discuss what the theatre students have been studying during the first few weeks of school.
The energy of the room is electric. You can tell that no one is bored by the topic, the passion is clear. Although the guests are one person short of the expectation from the audience the event is undisrupted.
Over the past few weeks, right as the semester started theatre teacher Tyne Thompson got to work. Her students studied the production of The Wiz, in collaboration with Broadway Dallas, with a STEM forward approach, education program manager at Broadway Dallas Lauren LeBlanc said.
She was joined by swing dance captain and Wiz understudy Jesse Jones and Tiffany Janiczek from wardrobe. The two cast members joined LeBlanc to answer questions about everything from theatre etiquette to the inspiration of African dance in the show. Jones was quick to pop up and demonstrate the perfect tendus and ballroom voguing.
“It’s always nice to do a show in an area with a predominantly Black and Latino group because you get to see yourself on stage,” Jones said. “You don’t always get to do that. And when you do, sometimes get to do it, it’s one. I’ve been a token a lot.”
The collaboration included a classroom curriculum that explored Afrofuturism’s influence on the theatrical production, understanding how science and technology shape show design to deepen the students’ understanding of both STEM concepts and cultural storytelling, according to Broadway Dallas.
Through eight different lessons, students learned about different versions of the production, working on character units, and recently got to see the performance live earlier this week.
“They were able to do the measuring and do the costumes, that look at the wig, they were excited to do that,” Thompson said. “So it allowed us to build a curriculum that’s inclusive, and we can grab them from the (start), if you don’t have any knowledge. Yeah, (we) can meet you where you are, and if you have extensive knowledge they can build upon that.”
A total of 6,800 students participated in the 2025-2026 School Year Program with Broadway Dallas, and the production of The Wiz was especially special for the students at SOC for its celebration of Black excellence.
Photo by Victoria Hernandez.
“Just having a representation of myself on that stage and gives me something to see that I can do following up because we have a world, in a professional world that is so closed off to our culture, that I can look at one thing and it’s like ‘oh, but what if they don’t accept me? And what way can I just do this? But seeing that perfect piece of color that we have on that stage and then the representation of our home lives, like the Lawry’s joke, it was very funny,” junior Iyana Richardson said.
The production is not only an aspect of the classroom. It’s something that can just be taken with him and inspire his career in the future, Richardson said.
Their completed projects are currently on display at Music Hall and The Wiz completes its run in Texas Sunday, Sept. 21 with tickets still available here.
