Milton Theatre’s ‘Wizard of Oz’ to feature multimedia display

Those who go to Milton Theatre’s upcoming presentation of “The Wizard of Oz” will get a complete multimedia presentation.

For the show, which began running Dec. 1 and will run through the first two weekends of December, Milton-based artist Mal Meehan created an experience that features an LED display and computer-animated backgrounds while the actors perform. 

Theater director Fred Munzert said, “We’ve been looking for ways to do bigger shows in a small space. We decided to bring an LED wall in. For ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ you really need to be able to portray these epic locations.”

Meehan spent his career in the visual arts. Over a period of months, Meehan made watercolor drawings of each background for the show, then scanned them into his computer-editing suite where he added effects to make the drawings come to life and edited them together to make transitions seamless. This created an animated background that will play on the theater’s 17-by-10-foot LED video board. 

“For me, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ has always been one of my favorite movies,” Meehan said. “It’s just such an amazing fantasy story. Originally, it was going to be a projector, but as soon as we got the LED wall, it made sense to do it as animations.”

Munzert added, “It really creates this amazing backdrop for the actors to perform in front of. It really brings the story to life.”

A native of London, Meehan has worked in the corporate world for years doing multimedia art; he’s had exhibitions at Seville Expo ‘92 in Spain and done work for publishing company Scholastic making computer-animated children’s books. But doing the backgrounds for “The Wizard of Oz” production was something new. 

“I had never taken on a commission like this. Every scene has multiple backdrops to add some effects and dramatize what is going on. I’ve done a lot of digital stuff in theater and corporate video. But I’ve never done this kind of analog thing. How do I keep a consistency throughout the whole thing? We had to keep the same palette of colors. Some of it is digital. I didn’t have to do the skies. I wanted the painterly look, but I wanted that attention to details,” Meehan said.

Each background drawing took 15 to 16 hours to complete, then a day to digitally convert the drawings and add effects. All told, the project took 12 weeks to make.

“When you see it open up into the animation, it’s a whole other world of storytelling,” Munzert said. “The audience is going to feel like they’re watching this 3D movie in front of them.”

For more information on tickets and showtimes, go to www.miltontheatre.com.