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This is from http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/10/11/1065676215665.html
Mane attraction
By Michael
October 12, 2003
Anything is possible in theatre, which is why it is not that surprising to see an elephant sashaying up the aisle, guided by a platoon of pachyderm-wranglers, or, just behind you, a wall of gazelle heads, staring with equal detachment into the middle-distance in the direction of a set of hanging ostriches.
Somewhere above dangles a 5.5-metre giraffe and somewhere else (possibly stored in a spectacle-case) is a 12-centimetre mouse.
Welcome to the stage of the Capitol Theatre: a tense jungle in the midst of the urban jungle of inner-Sydney, and the home of The Lion King.
This estimated $20 million musical, adapted from the Walt Disney animated film of the same name and masterminded by extraordinary designer and director, Julie Taymor, is one of the most ambitious, expensive shows to be staged in Australia since the days of the mega-musicals of the early ‘90s, with their crashing chandeliers and barricades stormed nightly and twice on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
The Lion King tells of the cub, Simba, driven into exile after the death of his father and who returns, after various adventures, to conquer his uncle and reclaim the kingdom.
This universal theme of triumph over adversary, told via the music of Elton John and the words of Tim Rice, is taking shape on stage as two actors, dangling in mid-air, are learning to fly while various aspects of the African savannah rise and fall, appear and disappear on an otherwise unremarkable Thursday spring morning.
It’s three weeks away from opening night, and the auditorium is jammed with at least a dozen production desks, covering all aspects of the show from stage management, hair and make-up, costumes and wardrobe, puppet supervision, technical (lighting, sound, etc) to a special desk for the 54 radio microphones worn in the show to a special desk for the production executives.
Computer screens, control panels, keyboards, telephones, headsets are everywhere. Is this a theatre or mission-control? By the time The Lion King opens on Thursday, all these desks, apart from a huge technical set-up ranked across the back of the stalls, will be gone. In their place will be the audiences that, it is hoped, will fill the Capitol performance after performance and ensure the musical runs for at least two years. Not for nothing has the show been marketed vigorously and obviously for more than a year before the first-night roars.
The logo, a stylised lion head, can be seen on sides of buses, posters, billboards and attached to the roofs of most Sydney taxis.
Including Australia, there are nine productions of The Lion King running throughout the world: Broadway, London, Toronto, Hamburg, Chicago, Tokyo and Japanese and American touring productions.
For a show with a simple story, its technical and economic complexities are so demanding, so expensive, that any version — in English, German or Japanese — is a risky enterprise, even if the magic name of Disney is behind it.
In this country, The Lion King is produced by Disney Theatrical Production (Australia), set up to stage Disney’s Broadway musicals. DTP’s managing director, James Thane, whose pedigree includes running Cameron Mackintosh’s and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Australian operations, and managing director of Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Company in London, is under no illusion that these are hard times to attract audiences.
"It’s always a risk," he says. "You’ve got to re-create it every time it goes somewhere. It’s not a cookie-cutter show, but one with its own personality. It would not only be arrogant but foolish to think it’s indestructible. The Lion King comes here with a great pedigree, but we still have to do our jobs in every area of the show at the absolute top level. It’s selling very well and we’re very happy, but it’s a long road."
Most of the budget — "the lion’s share", says Thane, unintentionally — goes on the production: costumes, props, puppets, masks, scenery, technical equipment. Apart from the 232 puppets, which are made in Canada for all Lion King productions ("You cannot reinvent that wheel," says Thane), all the costumes and scenery have been made in Australia.
Bringing The Lion King to Sydney began in December 2001, when Thane investigated where to stage it, how much lead-time it would require, and how to cast it. Here was another problem. Not only did the producers and creative team have to find the right actors, they had to find ones who could operate and, more important, relate to, their animal alter egos.
"Our casting director would pull people off the street to come and audition. He went all round the region — Philippines, NZ, Fiji, Samoa, all over," says Thane. "That is one of the challenges of the show. There are 54 in the cast, including four sets of children. In the theatre, it takes around 150 people to make each show happen. There are about another 100 to 150 in other areas: ticketing, advertising agency, in the Disney office,"
James Thane finds it hard to explain the experience of The Lion King. Even the musical version’s genesis appeared curious. "The image of Disney on the one hand and Julie Taymor way on the other hand must have been a hard thing for people to get through their heads; but it was the most inspired idea imaginable." It is also very different from the animated film, which, says Thane, is in about a million Australian homes.
The production’s associate director, Jeff Lee, takes me backstage with the enthusiasm of a child let loose in a toyshop. And such toys! He unhooks a mask from its rack. "Here, grab a gazelle," he says. It weighs practically nothing. "It’s moulded carbon graphite. Incredibly light for the actors to wear, but it also gives, has some breathing room." The same material, Lee says, is used for military aircraft.
Continue past the gazelles and the elephant-vertebrae used in the graveyard scene, turn sharp left and you enter a long, narrow changing room parallel to the stage which is just there, in front of a backdrop. Here, says Lee, the other show happens. "The ensemble, coming off stage having played a giraffe or a bird or something, have to change costumes and character. There are up to 10 to 15 changes each performance. They have to get changed, put on new make-up and, at the same time, contribute offstage vocals before they go back on stage as someone else."
Each actor has his or her own space, with costume and props and shoes, and, if the actor is away or ill, everything has to be changed to reflect the understudy’s measurements.
"At any one time backstage, there are 50 cast members, 25 crew and 18 dressers all there to make it happen."
Then there are the puppet problems. "We don’t hire puppeteers: we hire dancers, singers, actors who have to learn how to articulate a puppet," says Jeff Lee. "You can have someone with all the capabilities, and put an animal into his hand and he immediately freezes. No good. Or you can have a brilliant puppeteer who’s not a good actor."
In the end, the cast, reflecting the essential racial and technical requirements, is an SBS of performers: from Australia, but also New Zealand, Samoa, Lebanon, South Africa, Brazil, Greece, North America, Britain, China, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Korea and the Philippines. "This contributes to the mood of the show, which deals with the different sorts of animals you find in the kingdom," says Lee.
The Lion King kingdom also has its sense of family and continuity of spirit and involvement. Jeff Lee, for example, was originally its stage manager, then a senior supervisor, before becoming associate director. He has been responsible (with Taymor) for directing the show in Tokyo, Osaka, London, Toronto, LA.
After Sydney, he goes to Amsterdam to direct the new Dutch production, then to Toronto to run in a new cast (such is the exhaustion factor, casts are changed, on average, once a year).
One of the guiding geniuses behind The Lion King is the co-designer of its masks and puppets, Michael Curry. With Taymor, he devised all the animals. They are not conventional puppets but designed to reveal as much as they conceal. "You only see as much as necessary," says Curry.
"Every one is a minimal symbol so the actor is not superseded by the animal. They are as much costumes as puppets.
Especially the principals, where the actor is part of it and not artifice. Puppetry uses hidden actors; I never do that,"
In the beginning there was the temptation, offered by the technological wonderment of Disney, for Curry to use audioanimatronic animals, with rolling eyes and the works, taking the actor away entirely. "I think the show would have suffered," he says.
"It must have that raw, tribal quality. Also, the puppets must be real, have character before the actor uses it."
Although the show is the same wherever it is performed (language differences apart), Curry does see subtleties that come from where it is being staged. "We’re letting the actors take more liberties," he says. "This makes it more invigorating. In London, the actors are almost too content, too analytical, with the story."
The Lion King opens at the Capitol Theatre, Sydney, on Thursday.
Mane attraction
By Michael
October 12, 2003
Anything is possible in theatre, which is why it is not that surprising to see an elephant sashaying up the aisle, guided by a platoon of pachyderm-wranglers, or, just behind you, a wall of gazelle heads, staring with equal detachment into the middle-distance in the direction of a set of hanging ostriches.
Somewhere above dangles a 5.5-metre giraffe and somewhere else (possibly stored in a spectacle-case) is a 12-centimetre mouse.
Welcome to the stage of the Capitol Theatre: a tense jungle in the midst of the urban jungle of inner-Sydney, and the home of The Lion King.
This estimated $20 million musical, adapted from the Walt Disney animated film of the same name and masterminded by extraordinary designer and director, Julie Taymor, is one of the most ambitious, expensive shows to be staged in Australia since the days of the mega-musicals of the early ‘90s, with their crashing chandeliers and barricades stormed nightly and twice on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
The Lion King tells of the cub, Simba, driven into exile after the death of his father and who returns, after various adventures, to conquer his uncle and reclaim the kingdom.
This universal theme of triumph over adversary, told via the music of Elton John and the words of Tim Rice, is taking shape on stage as two actors, dangling in mid-air, are learning to fly while various aspects of the African savannah rise and fall, appear and disappear on an otherwise unremarkable Thursday spring morning.
It’s three weeks away from opening night, and the auditorium is jammed with at least a dozen production desks, covering all aspects of the show from stage management, hair and make-up, costumes and wardrobe, puppet supervision, technical (lighting, sound, etc) to a special desk for the 54 radio microphones worn in the show to a special desk for the production executives.
Computer screens, control panels, keyboards, telephones, headsets are everywhere. Is this a theatre or mission-control? By the time The Lion King opens on Thursday, all these desks, apart from a huge technical set-up ranked across the back of the stalls, will be gone. In their place will be the audiences that, it is hoped, will fill the Capitol performance after performance and ensure the musical runs for at least two years. Not for nothing has the show been marketed vigorously and obviously for more than a year before the first-night roars.
The logo, a stylised lion head, can be seen on sides of buses, posters, billboards and attached to the roofs of most Sydney taxis.
Including Australia, there are nine productions of The Lion King running throughout the world: Broadway, London, Toronto, Hamburg, Chicago, Tokyo and Japanese and American touring productions.
For a show with a simple story, its technical and economic complexities are so demanding, so expensive, that any version — in English, German or Japanese — is a risky enterprise, even if the magic name of Disney is behind it.
In this country, The Lion King is produced by Disney Theatrical Production (Australia), set up to stage Disney’s Broadway musicals. DTP’s managing director, James Thane, whose pedigree includes running Cameron Mackintosh’s and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Australian operations, and managing director of Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Company in London, is under no illusion that these are hard times to attract audiences.
"It’s always a risk," he says. "You’ve got to re-create it every time it goes somewhere. It’s not a cookie-cutter show, but one with its own personality. It would not only be arrogant but foolish to think it’s indestructible. The Lion King comes here with a great pedigree, but we still have to do our jobs in every area of the show at the absolute top level. It’s selling very well and we’re very happy, but it’s a long road."
Most of the budget — "the lion’s share", says Thane, unintentionally — goes on the production: costumes, props, puppets, masks, scenery, technical equipment. Apart from the 232 puppets, which are made in Canada for all Lion King productions ("You cannot reinvent that wheel," says Thane), all the costumes and scenery have been made in Australia.
Bringing The Lion King to Sydney began in December 2001, when Thane investigated where to stage it, how much lead-time it would require, and how to cast it. Here was another problem. Not only did the producers and creative team have to find the right actors, they had to find ones who could operate and, more important, relate to, their animal alter egos.
"Our casting director would pull people off the street to come and audition. He went all round the region — Philippines, NZ, Fiji, Samoa, all over," says Thane. "That is one of the challenges of the show. There are 54 in the cast, including four sets of children. In the theatre, it takes around 150 people to make each show happen. There are about another 100 to 150 in other areas: ticketing, advertising agency, in the Disney office,"
James Thane finds it hard to explain the experience of The Lion King. Even the musical version’s genesis appeared curious. "The image of Disney on the one hand and Julie Taymor way on the other hand must have been a hard thing for people to get through their heads; but it was the most inspired idea imaginable." It is also very different from the animated film, which, says Thane, is in about a million Australian homes.
The production’s associate director, Jeff Lee, takes me backstage with the enthusiasm of a child let loose in a toyshop. And such toys! He unhooks a mask from its rack. "Here, grab a gazelle," he says. It weighs practically nothing. "It’s moulded carbon graphite. Incredibly light for the actors to wear, but it also gives, has some breathing room." The same material, Lee says, is used for military aircraft.
Continue past the gazelles and the elephant-vertebrae used in the graveyard scene, turn sharp left and you enter a long, narrow changing room parallel to the stage which is just there, in front of a backdrop. Here, says Lee, the other show happens. "The ensemble, coming off stage having played a giraffe or a bird or something, have to change costumes and character. There are up to 10 to 15 changes each performance. They have to get changed, put on new make-up and, at the same time, contribute offstage vocals before they go back on stage as someone else."
Each actor has his or her own space, with costume and props and shoes, and, if the actor is away or ill, everything has to be changed to reflect the understudy’s measurements.
"At any one time backstage, there are 50 cast members, 25 crew and 18 dressers all there to make it happen."
Then there are the puppet problems. "We don’t hire puppeteers: we hire dancers, singers, actors who have to learn how to articulate a puppet," says Jeff Lee. "You can have someone with all the capabilities, and put an animal into his hand and he immediately freezes. No good. Or you can have a brilliant puppeteer who’s not a good actor."
In the end, the cast, reflecting the essential racial and technical requirements, is an SBS of performers: from Australia, but also New Zealand, Samoa, Lebanon, South Africa, Brazil, Greece, North America, Britain, China, Japan, Papua New Guinea, Korea and the Philippines. "This contributes to the mood of the show, which deals with the different sorts of animals you find in the kingdom," says Lee.
The Lion King kingdom also has its sense of family and continuity of spirit and involvement. Jeff Lee, for example, was originally its stage manager, then a senior supervisor, before becoming associate director. He has been responsible (with Taymor) for directing the show in Tokyo, Osaka, London, Toronto, LA.
After Sydney, he goes to Amsterdam to direct the new Dutch production, then to Toronto to run in a new cast (such is the exhaustion factor, casts are changed, on average, once a year).
One of the guiding geniuses behind The Lion King is the co-designer of its masks and puppets, Michael Curry. With Taymor, he devised all the animals. They are not conventional puppets but designed to reveal as much as they conceal. "You only see as much as necessary," says Curry.
"Every one is a minimal symbol so the actor is not superseded by the animal. They are as much costumes as puppets.
Especially the principals, where the actor is part of it and not artifice. Puppetry uses hidden actors; I never do that,"
In the beginning there was the temptation, offered by the technological wonderment of Disney, for Curry to use audioanimatronic animals, with rolling eyes and the works, taking the actor away entirely. "I think the show would have suffered," he says.
"It must have that raw, tribal quality. Also, the puppets must be real, have character before the actor uses it."
Although the show is the same wherever it is performed (language differences apart), Curry does see subtleties that come from where it is being staged. "We’re letting the actors take more liberties," he says. "This makes it more invigorating. In London, the actors are almost too content, too analytical, with the story."
The Lion King opens at the Capitol Theatre, Sydney, on Thursday.
