Generations of children have loved "The Wizard of Oz," but Tina Marie Casamento Libby felt a stronger connection than most. She identified with "The Wizard of Oz" and the actress who played Dorothy. She wanted to be an actress herself, and she became fascinated with reading about Judy Garland — up to a point. When poring over Christopher Finch's "Rainbow: The Stormy Life of Judy Garland," for instance, she would get to where "The Wizard of Oz" happens — and then she would reread that section rather than continue forward onto the rest of Garland's life.

She remembers thinking of that up-to-"Oz" Garland story, "'Oh, this will be a great musical someday. I can't wait to see it.' I was thinking it was an obvious idea; somebody would do it ... I was just so fascinated by this period of her life that nobody ever talked about — her sisters and the father and the mother and the family. I don't know, it just always felt like a musical to me."

And Casamento Libby had life experiences in common with Garland's Oz character.

"Dorothy was a girl living with her Auntie Em and her Uncle Henry, singing 'Over the Rainbow,' and I kept thinking: Where were her parents? Why was she living with her aunt and her uncle? As a young girl, I lost my mother, and I lived with my aunt and uncle for a year after she died, so I think I just connected with that part of the story," Casamento Libby says.

The notion of a musical based on Garland's childhood always simmered in Casamento Libby's mind, with the kernel of an idea starting with her imagining Garland's father singing "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" as his anthem in the show.

A little over seven years ago, Casamento Libby — who had become an actor and director — began pursuing her idea of a musical in earnest. She approached a music publishing company that had songs in its catalog she wanted to use. At first, the people there weren't too interested. She eventually won them over.

"Everybody talks about the middle and the end (of Garland's life), but nobody talks about the beginning," she says.

In developing the show, she took a cue from something Garland had said: that the history of her life is in her songs. So Casamento Libby thought about using the 1930s tunes that Garland performed as a girl to tell her story. "I'm Just an In Between," for instance, reflects how the Garland was feeling in her early years.

Casamento Libby assembled a team to create this, the first show she conceived and produced. Her husband, David Libby, adapted the music. Marc Acito, whose credits including writing the book for "Allegiance," which starred George Takei on Broadway, did the book. John Fricke, a renowned Judy Garland historian and author, served as creative consultant and historian.

The result is "Chasing Rainbows: The Road to Oz," which is playing through Nov. 27 at Goodspeed Opera House.

Before joining forces with Acito, Casamento Libby had worked with other writers, but they were all only "interested in going to dark, sad Judy," she says.

Acito and Casamento Libby both connected to "The Wizard of Oz" in a similar way.

Acito says, "I, too, had a childhood experience with great loss — one very young, childhood, like Tina Marie's, and one adolescent experience involving loss, all of which I processed through my understanding of 'The Wizard of Oz.' From the time I was 3-1/2, I associated going 'Over the Rainbow' with going to heaven."

"Which was my pitch," Casamento Libby interjected.

Acito says he has that personal mythology and had never before met anyone who shared that experience and felt the same about "Over the Rainbow."

"Allegiance," like "Chasing Rainbows" was a show that Acito inherited that had been in development for several years. In both cases, he worked with the existing outline and material and expanded upon it.

With this piece, he says, his big concern was the "ratio of rainbows to rain." The show does talk about loss, but it's not just about that.

"Much in the way that I've been able to do with 'Allegiance," which is about the Japanese-American internment, to be able to find the joy, the uplift among those people — I was fascinated by this," he says.

When Acito came onboard, there were nine demos with Libby's music and Casamento Libby's insight into how to make it part of a musical theater story.

"David, being a jazz musician, understood the period songs from the inside out," Acito says. "He has that internal kind of vibe. And I'm the son of a jazz musician. I know it when I feel it or when I hear it because I grew up with it. On the flip side, the book numbers had a timeless musical theater sound to them, leaning toward contemporary — but that makes it sound like we're doing the hip-hop Judy Garland. There was a character to it that just got the hair on the back of my neck to stand up, which is always a good sign for me."

Libby says he didn't want to make these songs unrecognizable. Rather, he has been faithful to the melody and has employed harmony and rhythm as "the colors which I can use to shift the perspective on the melody."

The "Chasing Rainbows" group was invited to the Johnny Mercer Writers Colony at Goodspeed in January 2014. That, they say, is where they really coalesced as a team.

And then Casamento Libby found Ruby Rakos to play young Judy Garland. She says Rakos, who was in "Billy Elliot" on Broadway, had raw talent and a voice reminiscent of Garland's, not to mention a physical resemblance.

"She just fell from the heavens," Casamento Libby says.

"Chasing Rainbows: The Road to Oz," Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main St., East Haddam; through Nov. 27; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Wed., 7:30 p.m. Thurs., 8 p.m. Fri., 3 and 8 p.m. Sat., and 2 p.m. Sun.; also 2 p.m. some Thursdays and 6:30 p.m. some Sundays; tickets start at $29; (860) 873-8668.