They looked the picture of innocence. But behind the scenes of The Wizard of Oz, the actors playing the munchkins were said to be indulging in drunken orgies. Now Irvine Welsh has turned their story into a play – and sparked a storm

It’s often difficult to identify the genesis point of any piece of work. In the case of Babylon Heights – the new play I’ve written with my screenwriting partner Dean Cavanagh, set in 1930s Hollywood – it probably began with one of those throwaway conversations he and I are prone to having about our favourite films. Always high on the list is The Wizard of Oz. This modern fable now seems an indispensable part of our cultural heritage in the west. I’ve been enthralled by it since I was a kid, and still am. The more we discussed it, the more obsessed we grew by all the contradictions that surround it.

Frank Baum’s original book had an agrarian socialistic message, yet it spawned a lavishly expensive MGM production, at a time when the big studio system of film-making dominated Hollywood. The film was made during the Great Depression, at a time when people were desperate – not to succeed and thrive, as is the assumed cultural lexicon in America, but simply to survive. The more we delved into Ozlore, the more it looked like fertile ground for dramatic conflict.

The first problem we had was that we immediately saw this as a stage drama. Neither of us have anything against theatre, but my experience of the theatre world from the inside is negligible and Dean’s is non-existent. So we needed help. We approached friends in San Francisco. They were keen to put on a small-scale production at the city’s Exit Theatre. We felt, for historical and sentimental reasons, that such a play should have its world premiere in California.

Babylon Heights, the play, focuses on the performers in The Wizard of Oz, people who were arriving in Hollywood for the first time, intent on realising their dreams. Los Angeles is still packed with hopefuls waiting tables and valeting cars. Few will make it, but the allure is always present, perhaps now more than ever. From our perspective, this was where the most compelling drama lay.

We decided that Babylon would be about the “little people” of Oz, the munchkin performers. There is an old myth that in the film’s original print, during the Tin Woodsman scene, the small shadowed figure you can see is actually a dead munchkin hanging from a tree. The official line was that it was a dead bird. Our starting point was to take this myth as a reality.

Babylon Height’s munchkins are all self-reliant people, using their own devices to get through a very grim and desperate period in their lives. One of them is a pretentious but proud thespian who defeats a strong man in physical combat, another is a drug addict wiseguy with a heart of gold, yet another is an idealistic dreamer with green fingers.

During filming, Judy Garland and Wizard of Oz producer Mervyn Le Roy commented on “dwarf sex parties” and “orgies and drunkenness” among the munchkin actors. Well, what else were they supposed to do? The small people, billeted separately from the other performers, were under de facto house arrest in their Culver City hotel. They were taken from there directly on to the studio set, and then taken straight back. The actors have since claimed, in accounts of that period and biographies, to have been paid far less than the other actors, even less than the dog playing Toto.

The munchkin actors were largely young people, many of them away from home for the first time and thrown together in a pressure-cooker environment. The fact that they happened to be of restricted growth is almost irrelevant. They did what they did, which in the case of the play is what we imagined most people in that position would do. What we see in Babylon Heights are human beings in a state of relative powerlessness, trying to cope as best they can.

We decided not to use persons of restricted growth as actors. Instead, we opted to deploy regular-sized performers and outsized furnishings and fittings. This was the hardest call, and it took a lot of soul-searching. But we decided we didn’t want to have a situation whereby sensationalist elements of the media might portray the experience as a bunch of “normal-sized” people sitting in a theatre watching “dwarfs” perform. Crucially, we wanted the audience to feel empathy with the performers, to feel that they, too, were small and locked into an outsized, inhospitable space with larger, often menacing figures lurking outside.

Last week, a disability group representing people of restricted growth attacked the production, which is very disappointing. I am sure that if they see it, they’ll change their minds. The play certainly doesn’t ridicule small people. Anybody turning up expecting to see Mini Me from Austin Powers, or the “baby” star of the current hit film in the US, Little Man, will be highly disappointed; none of the characters evoke these tired stereotypes.

The play resolutely attacks the spirit of discrimination, including the type actively practised by the studio at the time. It does this not by painting the characters as perfect and virtuous, but by making them real people. We have assumed that they have a sexuality, are influenced by carnal needs and experience the drives common to most human beings. I have yet to see any dramatic representations of persons of restricted growth that acknowledges this very basic fact.

Babylon Heights wasn’t principally intended to flag up issues of discrimination, although in the end that’s exactly what it’s done. It was certainly not produced to pander to a sniggering herd mentality by ridiculing any group of disabled people. Audience feedback from the San Francisco shows has suggested quite the reverse; that it has increased people’s empathy with the munchkin characters and their plight.

We loved the San Francisco version of the play. In Dublin, where I now live, I was fortunate enough to become friends with Graham Cantwell, a director from the Attic Studios, and to meet a theatrical producer, Marie-Louise O’Donnell, who expressed interest in putting on a production of the play. Graham and I searched for venues, but they either were too large to keep the claustrophobic intimacy the piece demanded, or too cramped for our staging. Then we found the new state-of-the-art Mill Theatre in Dundrum, 20 minutes from town on the tramline. The site was immaculate, and the stage was perfect.

Now we’re looking forward to seeing what the Dublin production can do. It reminds me of what sparks me up about theatre and, indeed, all collaborative art: if you put enough talented enthusiasts together in one room, anything is achievable. I’m more excited about this than I’ve been about anything in a long time.

Guardian
Thursday July 20, 2006