What Is Shiz University? Wicked Author Gregory Maguire on the Origin of Oz's School for Magic
Wicked is streaming now on Peacock!
Ever wonder where the Wicked Witch of the West and Galinda the Good honed their magical prowess?The Wizard of Oz won't give you that information, but Wicked most certainly will. The epic, two-part adaptation of the acclaimed Broadway musical (the first installment is now streaming on Peacock!) takes place several years before Dorothy's prairie home swirled over the rainbow and into the wondrous realm of brainless scarecrows, heartless tin men, and cowardly lions.
Before they became alleged sworn enemies known far and wide throughout the land of Oz, the Wicked Witch (real name: Elphaba) and Glinda (formerly known as "Galinda") were best friends and roommates at the prestigious Shiz University, which the films will depict in great detail, courtesy of Oscar-nominated production designer Nathan Crowley (The Dark Knight, First Man).
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"This project stands as a testament to the remarkable skill and dedication of our exceptional art, locations, greens, set dressing and construction teams,” Crowley states in the production notes. "It is highly likely that I will never encounter a set of this immense complexity in my career again."
But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. First, we must answer the question...
What exactly is Shiz University?
To make a long story short, Shiz University is the preeminent college within the land of Oz. It's what Harvard is to America or what Oxford is to the United Kingdom: a grand old institution of higher learning.
The main difference, of course, is that Shiz offers more fantastical courses in the way of magic and spell-casting. Even the staff is wholly unique, with talking Animals like Doctor Dillamond (Game of Thrones alum Peter Dinklage voices the CGI goat professor) heading up the school's history department. Academy Award-winner Michelle Yeoh, meanwhile, serves as the university's Dean of Sorcery Studies, Madame Morrible, who is determined to guide the talented Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) to greatness.
"For the seriously rabid fans, I point out that in Ursula K. Le Guin’s well-regarded novel, A Wizard of Earthsea, the protagonist, Ged, attends a school for mages (magicians) on the island of Roke," author Gregory Maguire, upon whose novel the stage production and feature films are based, tells NBC Insider over email. "While I admire the novel from a clinical perspective, it isn’t one I read in childhood and is not one to which I feel warm regard, or to which I feel beholden, either. The training of a young bright spark is a traditional tale. T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, in which Wart is tutored not in magic but in the sciences by Merlin the Magician, is probably more influential, deep down. I loved that book."
Wicked author Gregory Maguire breaks down the origin of Shiz University
Whatever you do, though, don't say Shiz University was inspired by another famous school for young witches and wizards.
"With all due respect to my colleagues in the UK ... Wicked was published in 1995, before the first description of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts was published two years later in 1997," Maguire says. "Some fans of Wicked have guessed that Hogwarts inspired Shiz, but chronology doesn’t support that thesis. Philip Pullman’s alternate-reality Oxford in The Golden Compass was published about two months before Wicked, and Shiz seems to me as much like Pullman’s institution of higher learning as anyplace else."
Going off that, Maguire explains that Shiz was very much inspired by British films and literature regarding Oxford and Cambridge — mainly the works of Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited), E.M. Forster (Maurice), Dorothy L. Sayers (Gaudy Night), Virginia Woolf ("A Room of One's Own"), as well as "other depictions of Edwardian and Bloomsbury life, pre and post-World War I," he adds. "As with most of my descriptions of places in Wicked, I wanted the portrait of Shiz to be familiar enough to be welcoming to my readers, but distinct enough to be recognizable on its own merits."
When it came to finding the right name, he simply "wanted to build on the unusual syllable 'Oz,' the name of the country as L. Frank Baum gives it, in part to make the word seem less foreign," Maguire reveals. "To L. Frank Baum, in the lead-up to writing Wizard of Oz, Chicago was important to him. Evan I. Schwartz and others suspect the [World's Columbian Exposition], fully illuminated by electricity, might have inspired the Emerald City. So Shiz-Chicago makes sense. I also knew I wanted some places in Oz not all to sound so cozy and Anglo, like Far Applerue and Illswater (in Munchkinland)."
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He continues: "I took a leaf out of Tolkien's book in trying to make other places sound exotic, like his Barad-dûr and Dor-lómin (mine being Kiamo Ko, Qhoyre, and Uvvels.). About Shiz, there is the famous Persian city of Shiraz, which sounds exotic and magical, almost like sha-zaam. It too has a 'Z' on the end and an Sh' at the beginning. I have friends from the highlands of Iran and so my sense of comfort with Middle-Eastern sounding words was already established. I believe 'Shiz' came from thinking of all those considerations. Easy to read, easy to say, easy to remember, and distinctive."
If you'd like to learn more about how Shiz University operates, Universal Pictures has set up an official tie-in website, which includes a welcome brochure for new students and a guided tour of the campus.
Wicked is now streaming on Peacock!
