By Peter Lindblad
Easing on down the road brought Alan Mingo Jr. all the way to Broadway.
If it wasn’t for “The Wiz,” he might never have made it.
“I’m mainly a Broadway actor. I’ve done it for, I hate to even say how many years because it just ages me, but like for over 30 years,” said Mingo. “I’ve seen a lot of Broadway and a lot of television. But Broadway’s my first love. Live theater’s been my first love, but the reason why I’m in this business is actually because of ‘The Wiz.’”
Introduced to the electrifying 1978 movie, starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, as a kid, Mingo had a grandmother who also had a vinyl record version of “The Wiz” soundtrack, and the family wore it out on the turntable.
“You know, as a kid, you don’t know the breadth of things, right?” said Mingo. “So, for me, I was like, okay, but that’s just the record version. But then the movie version is my version.”
Mingo had no idea there was a Broadway musical take on “The Wiz” – it opened in 1975 – until he got to college. Now, he’s the associate director for the joyful, vibrant and wildly entertaining “The Wiz” 2026-27 national tour, which dances into Madison’s Overture Center Oct. 6-11 of this year and drops into Green Bay’s The Weidner June 3, 2027.
Mingo’s association with “The Wiz” goes way back, as his childhood love of the show translated into later starring as the character The Wiz in various productions, including the 2023 pre-Broadway tour, the 2024 Broadway production and the 2025-26 first national tour. For the latter, he began serving as associate director the final months of the jaunt, while also performing with the show. He’s not on the road with it anymore, now working solely as associate director, but he’s thinking of cropping up in Madison to see how things are going.
Mingo said he’s jealous the current cast and crew get to go to Wisconsin’s capitol city this time around, because he has many friends in the city. His tour didn’t stop in Madison.
Still, Mingo’s time with “The Wiz” as a cast member was special, although it took a while for him to get his opportunity. There were some false starts that made him wonder if it was ever going to happen.
“So, because I had such a connection to it as a kid, I was like, ‘I need to be in it,’” said Mingo. “I wound up getting in two different versions that were supposed to go to Broadway. And they never did. So, when this came about three and a half years ago, they’re like, ‘So we’d like to put you in the list. It’s going to Broadway.’ I’m like, ‘Sure it is.’ And then we were ready to go to Broadway. The whole thing, everyone was like, ‘You’re excited to go to Broadway? I’m like, ‘Y’all, this is not going to Broadway.’”
Mingo had good reason to be skeptical.
“I didn’t believe it until we actually touched the Broadway stage,” said Mingo. “And then, once I got there, once we reached our goal, I was like, ‘What made this different than the other two?’ Like the first version that was going to go would have the ‘Jersey Boys’ … whole team doing it. So, I was like, if the ‘Jersey Boys’ people can’t do it, what [can]?’”
Hollywood gave “The Wiz” new life as a live televised special in 2015, with Queen Latifah as The Wiz. It didn’t have a live audience, however, but with a star-studded cast and beautiful costuming, another director made a second attempt to bring “The Wiz” to Broadway. Again, it didn’t happen. So, Mingo was understandably wary that the third time might not be the charm. So, what ultimately sealed the deal? Mingo thinks it was the music that won everyone over.
“The problem with ‘The Wiz’ before was it was so centered in ‘70s slang that seemed so far removed,” said Mingo.
It felt dated, but after updating the language, Mingo said, “I feel like we made this timeless to live on for another decade.”
And while it is a “beloved musical,” as Mingo calls it, the music of “The Wiz” also had a ‘70s vibe and needed to be refreshed.
“We re-orchestrated the music, and we had… new vocal arrangements,” said Mingo. “So, some songs that were solos are now duets and trios. And that goes on. Some duets are now quartets. So, we did a lot of tweaking, and I think all that combined made this one successful compared to the other ones. Again, people still loved it … but this is why this production made it.”
This version, according to Mingo, merges elements of the movie and the Broadway show in such a way “that no fans are disappointed.”
Mingo’s own acting background has multitudes of fans, too. Mostly, he’s known for his award-winning turn as Lola in “Kinky Boots,” both in Canada and on Broadway. He won the Dora Award for Best Leading Actor, while going on to play Maura Lee Karupt in the HBO Max series “Doom Patrol.”
For a time, though, it seemed Mingo was following in the footsteps of another famous performer of stage and screen.
“So, what it was, I was The Wiz on the pre-Broadway,” said Mingo. “And me and Wayne Brady have done this in ‘Kinky Boots’ (both starred as Lola). So, I started the show. Wayne opened on Broadway. I replaced him on Broadway. And then I went on the first national tour with the show, as well as being the associate director. Then for this version that you’re going to go see, we now have a new slate of actors. I stepped down.”
Doing double duty as actor and associate director was a lot. It got to be too complicated, giving his fellow performers notes, while still acting in the show. He reached the point, he said, where he’d done everything with the character he wanted to onstage with “The Wiz.”
“I think three years of doing ‘The Wiz,’ I’ve gotten my fill, and I love the role. I’m still attached to it,” said Mingo.
Seeing another actor take on the challenge is enjoyable for Mingo, but he misses traveling with the show.
“So, it was best I should have sat down, and actually we have a wonderful new artist who’s coming in who’s going to add new life,” said Mingo. “And, because I’ve been the root of the project for the past three years, I think I’ve been the only constant. I’m the only one who’s gone through all of it, but I got to see new artists, talented people take on the role and add their own spin to it yet still remembering the legacy and the shoulders on which they’re standing on. So, for me, it’s a wonderful transition now to set up this new tour that’s heading out throughout the country.”
As associate director, Mingo carries out the director’s vision, making sure that’s how it appears onstage while out on the road. The director, Schele Williams in the case of “The Wiz,” starts the whole thing off, he said. An associate director is charged with getting things back on track and on schedule if they start to go off the rails.
“We have a rehearsal process – three weeks, four weeks, five weeks,” said Mingo. “And then we do a tag to make sure all the lights, and everything looks great. And then [the directors] go home. They begin to look for their next job. An associate holds on to what the director did. And, usually, they’re the ones who will travel every couple of weeks or couple of months to make sure the show doesn’t grow.”
By that he means, the staging shouldn’t get out over its skis.
“Because what happens is, in the beginning of a tour, everyone’s still new, so they’re minding their p’s and q’s,” said Mingo. “They will come out and hit zero like they should. Sometimes, though, an actor feels like, ‘Oh, well, I can now sing these notes even longer and hold them even.’ They start doing things that any other artist does. Things begin to change.”
Having performed in “The Wiz” for Williams, Mingo knows what she expects.
“The great thing that she has with me is I didn’t have to pick up her work,” said Mingo. “So, I’m getting… [her] version for her, keeping in mind how she created the pre-Broadway, how she created the Broadway, and how she created the first national tour.”
Mingo’s first experience as an associate director was a wild time. He took on that role for the Italian version of “Rent,” which was produced by opera icon Luciano Pavarotti.
“He wanted to take the exact Broadway show to Italy, to his own country,” Mingo recalled. “And I went to the director after a closing night party of ‘Rent,’ one of the tours, and having a couple alcoholic beverages, I said, ‘Hey, I hear you’re going to Italy. If you ever need someone to help you, you know, call me.’ And, indeed, he did. And then Luciano wanted to meet me in New York in his huge Central Park West apartment. I had no idea that apartments are bigger than houses. You know what I mean? I had no idea. I walked in there. My mouth was agape going, ‘People live like this?’”
Mingo has his master’s degree in acting, but he admits to being “young and dumb” around this time, as he also took on the role of Tom Collins, the main character, for Pavarotti’s Italian version.
“So, I know what a director does and just by being in acting long enough you know what they do, but I didn’t know what I was saying yes to, and I was just watching a legend say, ‘Can you do this?’” said Mingo. “And I said, ‘Yes.’ Then I got there the day I flew, and he said, ‘We don’t have any Black people. Can you also be Tom Collins? And we’re only doing this in Italian.’”
Mingo wanted to be a team player, so he took on the duties for both. He’d bitten off much more than he could possibly chew, but Mingo never gave up.
“Italy for seven months, and while that sounds luxurious, it was probably the most hellish experience in my life, yet the most rewarding because you’re young and dumb,” said Mingo. “You don’t understand the culture. You don’t understand when you tell the crew to take an hour break that it’s, you know, they don’t eat for an hour. They eat for five hours, do you know what I mean? Where you’re like, they come back when they want and then, it’s not my home language, so now having a translator … so it was a lot of long hours of me, waking, teaching these things through a translator, dealing with the entourage that is Luciano, which I had no idea. He’s bigger than the president. He’s bigger than the Pope there.”
Mingo remembers going to Pavarotti’s Italian estate and seeing tanks on the property.
“And I’m like, ‘What is going on?’” laughed Mingo. “At some point, the only thing I can sort of associate it with is having like CIA bodyguards.”
One time, Mingo went out to dinner with Pavarotti and his wife, along with a music producer, and they stopped at a gas station.
Suddenly, they were surrounded by five cars.
“I start screaming,” said Mingo. “Luciano goes, ‘What are you doing?’ I go, ‘This is how we die.’ I’m like, ‘This is how we’re gonna die.’”
Pavarotti told Mingo it was just his security.
“And I go, ‘Why do they surround us?’” asked Mingo.
Pavarotti said he was going to give them cash to fuel up their cars.
“And I go, ‘But why five? Like, why do we have this many? Like, why are we?’” Mingo said, with a laugh. “He goes, ‘Alan, since you entered the country, my security has been following you.’ I go, ‘I’ve never seen them.’ He goes, ‘Oh, no, they stay two blocks behind you and two blocks in front of you. When you make a right turn, oh, they’ll know and they’re going to be ahead of you and beat you before you get to the corner.’ And I’m like, ‘Wait, so since I’ve been here, I’ve had two cars on me?’ He goes, ‘Absolutely.’”
With “The Wiz,” Mingo has no such concerns. And his favorite parts of the show change all the time.
“I’m going to say that depends on the day, and I kind of say, ‘Whatever I’m singing in the shower, it seems to be how I’m feeling that day,’” said Mingo. “But some of my favorite numbers are… ‘No Bad News’ that Evilline (the Wicked Witch of the West) sang. It’s sort of a gospel number in the middle of musical theater that makes you feel good even though the words are like, ‘Don’t worry, we have bad news.’ I love the tornado scene because it’s just classic of watching people do modern dancing to represent a storm. There’s just something like thrilling about that.”
Mingo also loves “A Brand New Day” and “So You Wanted to Meet the Wiz,” as well as the part where Evamene (the Wicked Witch of The East) dies from Dorothy’s farmhouse falling on her. The scene takes on the flavor of The Big Easy.
“We turned that land into sort of like a colorful funeral march that you would see in New Orleans,” said Mingo. “Everything is colorful, upbeat, and that song we sort of reorchestrated into sort of a jazz style song so that was probably one of the songs where we really took the underpinning out of it, and we even added scatting that you would associate with sort of jazz and, of course, you always associate New Orleans with jazz.”
Different productions have taken liberties with “The Wiz.” Some people get territorial about which versions they prefer. Others seem to appreciate them all.
“Well, you know, the great thing is we have a lot of audience members who know the movie and have a connection with the movie. And then we have those purists that I would say before I started this, I was probably one of those purists, where they want to see the Broadway version that they know and love,” said Mingo. “The interesting thing of all the things I told you and how we’ve changed, some of the purists, it took them probably five minutes before they just go with our version. I saw a lot of people who knew and who saw Stephanie Mills in it and saw it, you know, in the ‘70s and the ‘80s. I would ask, ‘When did you realize it was different?’ They’re like, right away you were saying different words, but I fell right in. And then some of those same people were like, I had no idea it was different because it gave the same vibe, the same energy. Now, when I ask that question to those who saw the movie, they already come in expecting that the stage version is different than the movie.”
Adding elements of the movie, the stage version Mingo is part of is “the reimagined revival,” as he calls it. It’s a celebratory experience, through all the ups and downs. And, Mingo said, Black excellence gets its due, while the production stays true to the story of Dorothy trying to go home and finding out that she has all she needs inside of her to realize her dreams.
“What I want people to take away with it is just joy,” said Mingo. “There are not many musicals with African Americans mainly in it that’s not about Black pain … I mean, I think Stephen Sondheim said it best. ‘The Wiz’ is his favorite musical because you just come out joyous, you just come singing. It just makes you happy.”