Nikola Tesla, that rascally genius inventor, is still wreaking havoc, even more than half a century after his death.

Fictionally speaking, of course.

Tesla is at the heart of Thin Air Theatre Company’s new original show, “The Wizard of Oz Colorado,” loosely based on L. Frank Baum’s Oz stories. The show and annual Christmas olio opened Nov. 25 and run through Dec. 31 at Butte Theater in Cripple Creek.

Playwright Chris Sorenson sets his script in 1896 in Cripple Creek, where a schoolteacher named Dorothy invites Tesla to speak to her class. While demonstrating one of his inventions designed to control the weather, he accidentally sends Dorothy through a time twister to the Land of Oz, where she enlists the help of a scarecrow, tin man and lion to find her way back to Cripple Creek before Christmas is canceled.

“It’s (‘The Wizard of Oz’) such a classic,” said Thin Air’s artistic producing director Chris Armbrister, who’s also directing the new show. “Even though it’s not a Christmas movie, it’s always out at Christmas time. It’s become a Christmas staple for a lot of people.”

Tesla, who inspired the name of Elon Musk’s electric vehicles, had a lab in the Knob Hill area of the Springs from 1899 to 1900 and worked there for eight months. In his research, Sorenson found a reference to Tesla going to Cripple Creek at one point, so he found a way to incorporate the famous life-changing tornado into his storyline.

“It’s not impossible, but tornadoes are not common in the Rockies,” Armbrister said. “He had to figure out a way to keep the tornado element and have it also be believable.”

Though the two-hour play features some singing and dancing numbers, it’s not a traditional musical. The 15-member cast of professional actors comes from all over the country, and includes local kids as Munchkins, the Wicked Witch of the West’s henchmen and Dorothy’s dog Toto, who’s played by a 6-year-old girl.

In addition to Tesla, a few other parts of the original story have been changed — the lion is a cowardly mountain lion; the Wicked Witch of the West is the Wicked Witch of the Wild West and wears a duster instead of a cape; the scarecrow is stuffed with sheet music instead of straw.

Finding a way to put a Cripple Creek twist on classic stories is important to the theater company, which is owned by the city of Cripple Creek.

“It’s a way to connect to the history of the region — there’s such a rich history with gold mining on the western slopes here,” Armbrister said. “It’s a way to take a traditional story and make it new and fresh. People watch ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ every year — they love those stories — but it gives it that uniqueness.”

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