The
Lion King: Pride Rock on Broadway
The
making of the original Lion King was one of the most difficult tasks the
people involved had faced in their creative lives, because discovering
what the film was going to be about and how we would approach the material
entailed so much complexity. The Broadway show takes the end result
of that and asks how do we take this to another place.
It was not impossible. I just needed someone with a brilliant idea. I could see Julie had a new vision for the project. She was excited by the music, by the setting, and by the opportunities for staging. She was challenged by the task of re-creating something that theater goers would know by heart, but she wanted them once again to fell in their hearts. We urged her not to feel bridled by the look of the movie and to create something wholly original from it.
The first step was to develop a script along with a staging and design concept. To maintain the integrity of my own style, while incorporating it into one of the most beloved stories in recent history, was the first challenge to contemplate. The film’s imagery is so identifiable and ingrained in the audience’s mind. With preconceptions about what the characters should look and sound like, would they accept variations on a theme?
One of the most interesting things about our approach to this musical is that none of the composers are Broadway theater people, and so we are drawing upon our varied past experiences. We are not thinking in terms of, “This is how a musical is done.” We are thinking in terms of how we want to do it. There are no boundaries. We draw on all sorts of different areas. The music for the Lion King is diverse. The biggest challenge is to put together a band that can do anything from The Circle of Life to the stampede to “Hakuna Matata.”
The challenge was to use the longer exposure of a two-act musical to expand and deepen the audience’s experience of the characters of Simba and Nala without taking away from the existing knowledge about them. The animal costumes had to portray the essence of the characters. The common factor was not hidden - humans brought the animation to the objects. The masks had to incorporate the expression that would represent the character’s dominant trait. The sculptor has only one opportunity to incorporate anger, humor, and passion of a character, to tell his whole story.
From The Lion King: Pride Rock on Braodway, by Julie Taymore