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Yeah. :lol: I've known him a long time. I didn't even know he had the script until a few weeks ago. He teases me with pictures of it. :lol:
This one's my favourite page he's shown me so far. :lol: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...KoB/Image4.jpg
I have returned! :D The show was awesome, as usual :lol: There were lots of tech issues tonight though. Naughty sound techs... they were leaving mics on for some reason and we heard some gossip from some of the female cast members during the little interlude right before TLiY.
As for the cast, there were two major cast changes from the last time I saw this company. Mufasa and Banzai. Both were pretty good. Geno is officially one of my top Mufasas. :lol: He has a really deep voice. It actually shocked me when he said his first line. Loved his delivery of the "Nobody messes with your dad" line. And best of all... he has a Bachelor's of Science! :D So do I! :lol: The new Banzai really didn't impress me, but he wasn't bad. Kevin Grey has been promoted from a 3 on the Scar Scale (tm) to a 7. All because his mic wasn't on during the very beginning of Be Prepared, yet he managed to project and still be audible. Huzzah for formal training. Tim McGeever has also been promoted on the Zazu Scale (tm). Both of these two were brand new in the cast last May, so it's good to see that they've grown into their roles a little. :) Ta'Rea and Wallace were their usual awesome selves. I think Wallace may have a little bit of a stuffy nosey because he was a little more nasally than usual. And I heard him sniffle during one of the many mic mishaps tonight.
There was also a pretty big blocking/set change addition this time around. During the stampede, when Mufasa and Zazu enter on stage right, they usually just walk out from behind the arch. This time, there was a huge wagon platform with a tree cut out, similar to the one that Simba hangs from. They were rolled on instead of just walking out. It freaked me out. :lol: Some of the dances looked a little different to me as well. The lioness hunt was the same, but some of the choreography in the battle sequence seemed different. I don't know, maybe I was just distracted :p
It's late and I'm tired after that drive, so I'm off now. Tootles! :D
Wow, that sounds so awesome Amanda!!! I'm so happy you got to see Gino, I saw him in Shanghai and I definitely think he is the best Mufasa ever, even better than Rufus Bonds which I didn't think was possible. The ONLY time ever They Live in You gave me the chills his singing voice and delivery was so good.
Great that you got to see Wallace too, nice to see he's still going strong, he's been with the tour now since mid 2005 so almost two years now! Hope he has at least another left in him, he's one of the best Simbas on the planet, I've seen six different ones. Did you gather up the courage to go to the stage door this time? Maybe he would remember you from San Antonio?
I remember Ta'Rea from Portland, she had just started earlier that year at about the same time as Wallace, and she was very good also.
I was shocked at the many changes I noticed the last time in Orlando, and I guess they're always tweaking with stuff - and it's pretty safe because 99.9% of the people in the audience are seeing the show for the first time (or at least that cast/company is the first one they've seen)
so no one would notice. I'd have to see that wagon cart with the tree that does sound really weird.
Tech problems... guess they were asleep on the job. The worst tech problem I remember was in one of the Portland performances the mic blew during Shadowland for about 5-10 seconds (I don't remember if it was the time I went with Audra or not, maybe she remembers) and Ta'Rea doesn't have the loudest singing voice so it was pretty awkwardly silent for a moment but she kept going and thankfully it got fixed right away.
Anyway, love to hear more, what souvenirs you got, if you met the cast, any pics, etc when you get a chance, glad to hear you had such a great time as always... you're now into double digits! 10 TLKOB views :wow: you are one craaaazy cat!
Oh yeah, and where was the shower curtain from? That page you posted from the script was really interesting, thanks for sharing that (and I hope he shares more with you)
I didn't get to met the cast. The garage where we parked closed at 11 and we had to drive home. :( I think we'll go to the door when we go next time since that show will be earlier and it won't be so late when we're done.
There really wasn't anything new souvenir wise. Did you get my text? :lol: They were selling programs of course, but they came with a tote bag thinger. When I asked for one at the stand though, the guy gave me a regular bag. I'll pick on up next time. I was going to see if I could just get the tote since someone already got me the program. ;) :lol:
I still can't get over how weird that wagon was... and how off the tech was. Dawn said she wanted to go smack them. :lol:
Oh and the shower curtain was from Pier 1. ;)
Hasira, I don't know if you've seen this video or the Japanese TLKoB, but I thought you might like this. A very well-done adult Simba (kind of cute, too ;) )...and interesting in another langauge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2sQr...elated&search=
Thanks Kiara. :)
I found another video. I think I've seen it before, but everything has started to run together. :lol: It's a promo vid for the Broadway production. http://www.sightchecker.com/emusicalsite.html
Oh and this one has a bit of Japanese Simba glisten! :D http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGb_dFi7UUU
Hey guys, just thought I'd share the excitement, I've been Lion King backstaging, saw all the masks and stuff!! :D
OoooooO! Did they let you take pictures by any chance? :D That's awesome.
You were there again? LOL
Hey, about pics... do you have them?
samo pls ne re?t da niso dovolili...
Oh, no, pictures weren't allowed, I guess I could take a sneaky one here and there but I'd rather not cause I didn't wanna get people who got us in into trouble.
It was amazing tho, I couldn't believe how lite everything was, and Timon has a soft face, :lol: and Zazu the pupet is hand painted, every single feather. Oh and the cheetah, it's made of some kind of fabric, so when you look at it up close you can see trough a lil bit haha. Loved the Simba and Nala mask, they're alot smaller than they look.
And each actor has their own bucket with paint that matches their natural skin color and shoes colored to match their skin color, it's so funny! I loved it :)
Oh and the masks are made right there inside the theatre. :)
Interesting! Masks are made in there? paint for every single actor? I couldn't belive that! I don't know when we will have a theatre like that! Only in dreams!
THat would've been great to go backstage and see all those things. Pity you couldn't take photos, though I understand why.
Just got back from Austin and the show. Got to see Vusi Sondiyazi as Simba tonight. He was really good. :D He was also the tallest Simba I have ever seen. :lol: He had to lean down to hug Ta'rea during CYFtLT. Tech was much better, few new choreography things I noticed. The buzzards just before Timon and Pumbaa make the first entrance had some interesting new stuff. Also noticed for the first time, that there are doubles in Chow Down. :lol: I always thought they were just supposed to be other hyenas, but they're doubles of Shenzi, Banzai and Ed. And Kevin Gray has been promoted to an 8 on the Scar Scale(tm).
Hey you saw Vusi! The very first time I saw TLKOB he was the understudy for local star Brandon Louis. I do remember that he had a very thick accent but his singing voice was fantastic... I wrote in my review that he sounded a lot like Jason Raize during Endless night.
Never knew about the doubles during Chow Down, I'll have to watch for that next time.
When I saw his name on that big chart thinger they have with all the understudies, I freaked out! Of course I was a little sad that I wouldn't be able to see Wallace again, but I was so excited because I had wanted to see him for ages. :D I was not disappointed. He had me at "It means no worries..." :lol: I thoroughly enjoyed his accent. ;)
They didn't have any new merch, but I got some stuff I didn't have and had been debating about. I got the baseball hat (which Dawn says I already have, but I don't know :lol:), a new sun shirt to replace my old one, the newer charm bracelet, and another program. :lol: One to put away and one to drool on. ;) I went over there just to get the hat and left Dawn by the door to the theater. When I came back, she was like "That looks like more than the hat." :lol: "I am ashamed," is all I could think of.
This thread is making me sad? Where have all the TLKoB fans gone? :(
Here's a picture to try to lure them back...
Y'all make Josh Tower sad. :(
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...tour1_175x.jpg
Oh and my friend sent me the TLK script. :D And I didn't have to marry him. :lol:
:: Drools ::
He's hot....:D
I would be haunting this board if I'd SEEN TLKoB. Having to see a musical event for Music Appreciation would've been the perfect excuse, but it came too late. *smashes things*
Houston yes? I've heard rumours that it's coming back around that area sometime earlier next year.
*crosses fingers*
Hey, Hasira, I just noticed you live in San Antonio. Coolness!
I'd love to go backstage for a look at the props, lighting, and costumes. It's just so amazing. When Julie Taymor said "I want elegant, not cute", that's what she got. It's freakin' art!
One of my friends at work said he was going to write to Ellen and see if I could get backstage that way. :lol:
I've been on stage + back stage, at the Dutch theater where it used to play.
Really cool, to touch the masks and stuff like that.
Lucky Nathalie! I want to do that! :p
I want to try to use the Zazu puppet. :lol:
We weren't allowed to actually try it *aww* hehe.
But we were allowed to pick it up and such.
And those mask things look so heavy, like those wildebeast mask-things, but you could actually lift them with just 1 finger.
And the stage is so tiny, lol.
And cool to see, where all the whole in the stage are, and the chain which pulls that grass line, etc...
That's so cool Nathalie, someday I hope to be able to go backstage and see the masks and puppets.
-------
I was really bored this weekend... so I decided to have a little fun TLKOB-style and "shadowed" singing and dancing to two Lion King on Broadway songs, Endless Night and He Lives in You Reprise. Thankfully I have a large photography studio in my backyard so I was able to have enough space to do this.
I've been wanting to try do something like this for a long time and kept putting it off... but making these videos took a lot of time and effort (and a lot of takes) to memorize the movements and stuff.
Here's my disclaimer: I have absolutely no professional singing, acting/theater training or experience! I made these videos just for fun as most everyone here knows I'm a HUGE fan of the musical.
Hope you all like!
btw: the Simba "headpiece" I'm wearing I purchased at Walt Disney World Animal Kingdom (after much coercement from HasiraKali) It's about as close to the real thing as I can get.
Linkage to Tim making a fool of himself for the world to see:
:gasp:
Endless Night
He Lives in You (Reprise)
Whoohoo! :lol: Yay for Simba hat! :D You know you wanted it ;) And lifesize Clifton... ooooo :lol:
This is pretty cool. :) Kissy Simmons takes us behind the scenes of TLKoB @ the Minskoff. :D
http://www.broadway.com/gen/Buzz_Video.aspx?ci=546472
I'm working on saving the file so I'll let y'all know if I'm able to. :)
That is officially my all-time favorite TLKOB "behind the scenes" video EVER!!!
Thanks for sharing, I'm amazed they got all of the principal actors in there! Kissy Simmons is hilarious, she was perfect to host this video.
"And now we're gonna go see Josh Tower - he's my boyfriend on stage, so HANDS OFF!"
:lol:
What I would give for that German Lion King robe...
Did you notice that they spelled Pumbaa wrong? :lol: I've got it saved I'm just trying to figure out a way to convert the file to something more usable than a swf. :p
Haha! That was so awesome! Kissy is so funny! :lol:
The official site has some new images up. Well some of them aren't really new, but they're bigger versions of smaller images from the past. :D I squeed for this one...
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2.../joshtower.jpg
They've also got some new wallpapers up. Again, bigger versions of old images but still whoo! :D Nice one of Jason leaping with his arm up. The biggest I've seen of that one was like a 200x150 little thing. But now... it's wallpaper sized! Yay! :D
Here are a couple of clips on Youtube I came across recently, it's far and away the best TLKOB TV feature performance I've ever seen. It's of the Korean cast:
Featuring:
Cha Ji-Yeon (Rafiki),
Lee Kyung-Su(Simba)
Endless Night/He Lives in You (reprise)
Lee has an incredible voice and it's great to hear the songs in a different language. There's also another clip of the Circle of Life scene and some people talking about the show (in Korean, which I don't speak) and that is here:
Circle of Life & Talk
In Korean ?? :wow:
I thought it'd be in English.
Cool, another CD to look for :D
*downloads*
Oh yeah I saw those. He is pretty good. And not scrawny. :lol:
Oh the official site also had some pictures of rehearsals in South Africa. :)
It's like a month back but Sharifu, I was allowed to try the Zazu mask, it's a wicked thing really, and that neck is super elastic and each feather on the puppet is hand painted. But loved the hyena masks better, the way you put them on and how they're attached to your headpiece and then move with your head wherever you turn...:)
Here's an awesome article about the production in South Africa which begins previews on Tuesday. :)
'Lion King' Comes Home to South Africa
By MICHELLE FAUL
The Associated Press
Saturday, May 12, 2007; 2:03 PM
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- With an explosion of drumbeats, "The Lion King" has returned to its cultural roots, and its story of assassination, coup and famine, the destruction of a nation and hopes for its rebirth is finding a special resonance in Africa.
This first production with an all-South African cast, some new costumes, choreography and songs promises to make as big an impression on the continent's performing arts scene as the theatrical adaptation of Disney's animated film did when it opened on Broadway 10 years ago.
"To be in South Africa for this production has been the realization of a dream 10 years in the making," director Julie Taymor said. "As `The Lion King' expanded beyond Broadway, I knew it had to keep its roots firmly in South Africa and ... I am proud to say that now, we have brought the show home."
The new African home for "The Lion King" is the specially built Teatro at Montecasino, which has a capacity of about 1,800 ("There wasn't anything large enough in Africa," Taymor said) at a hotel, casino and shopping complex in Johannesburg. It cost nearly $14.5 million. The show officially opens June 6 (preview performances begin May 22) with tickets costing 175 to 375 rand, about half the Broadway and London prices of around $50 to $120.
It's a professional homecoming for Lebo M., the South African Grammy-winning composer and arranger who will celebrate his debut as a commercial producer with the new production. In partnership with South African theater impresario Pieter Toerien, more than $10 million has been invested, Lebo said.
He said his partnership with Toerien, who is white, was symbolic of the new South Africa, even as "The Lion King" story reminds him of the old, racially segregated, white-ruled country that forced tens of thousands, including himself, into exile, and where thousands died before Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress were democratically elected in 1994.
Taymor and Lebo spoke during rehearsals at the Pretoria State Theater, where, for the first time in years, they were rehearsing together.
The director said she was nearly moved to tears, while Lebo said he was "crying inside" when he spoke to children in the cast about the meaning of the musical.
"In a split second it hit me, these children could not even have been in the theater (under racially segregated South Africa) because they're black, and yet here we are in a very powerful historical second, bringing the `King' back home and delivering it to a center of what was meant to be an exclusively white bastion."
Indeed, the theater reflects that history of white culture, its walls lined with portraits of classical performers, all of them white.
Now, its high ceilings, which once echoed with opera duets, resonate with peremptory drumbeats and the four-part a capela harmonies traditional to South Africa's Zulu tribe. The sprung parquet floor and wooden barre used to practice ballet reverberate to stomps of the gumboot dancing developed by mineworkers and the shoo-shoo whisper of "tip toe" dancing adopted by black migrant workers wanting to keep their activities from white managers.
"Aiyeeeee!"
"In the middle of the hallway, I heard the scream and people just started dancing automatically," Taymor said. That kind of energy led to two hours of improvisation and a new dance. "I was working with the singers, but 'Oh my goodness! That's a singer, but look at how this singer can move! How can we use that?' And we found another dance."
Taymor said the experience was "a seminal event" in her life.
For Lebo, his music also was influenced by the gospel rhythms and harmonies he learned in African-American churches while he was in exile. He now lives with his wife and son between Los Angeles and South Africa.
For the child actors, Lebo drew a parallel between the homecoming of Simba, the exiled lion prince, and Mandela being freed from 27 years in jail and taking over the country. He said he wanted the children to understand how Mandela was "inspired by the struggle of humanity and the people of South Africa."
There were too many parallels for one young actress, who burst into tears during the scene where Nala the lioness finds Simba in exile and tells him famine and drought are raging at home, that his wicked Uncle Scar has devastated the Pride Lands and that he must return to save the country.
"This is what's happening in my country right now," she cried to Taymor. "The violence, the crime, the fact that women and children are getting abused and raped and nobody is doing anything about it."
South Africa's 47.5 million people have been freed from white minority rule but the vast majority remain impoverished to a degree that helps escalate crime rates that are already among the highest in the world _ especially for rape.
The young actress' anger reflects the disillusionment of many in a country with a booming economy that unequally benefits a white minority and a handful of blacks.
But "The Lion King," with songs by Elton John and lyrics by Tim Rice, is all about magic _ mind-blowing puppets, amazing costumes and fantastic masks.
At an early rehearsal when some of the masks were brought out, a bit of that magic began to emerge with the maniacal hyena laugh of a young black boy, the gallumping entrance of a hefty white man playing the warthog and the balletic leaps of an actor attached to puppets that become a herd of gazelles.
Lebo, looking to the past and ahead to the future, sees himself in a skinny kid in a group playing young lions: "A week ago, he probably didn't know where his next meal was coming from."
"The Lion King" has won more than 70 major awards worldwide, including the best musical Tony Award in 1998 and five other Tonys, and has been seen by more than 34 million people. Besides Johannesburg, it is also being performed in New York, London, Hamburg, Tokyo, Shanghai, Seoul, and will soon open in Paris.
? 2007 The Associated Press
I wanna know what the "new songs" are. :hmm: Or maybe they're referring to the songs that were written for the show to begin with? I dunno. We'll see. :D
that's a really cool article. It would be really cool to see it performed in where its roots lie. Would be more true to form, kinda thing. Hooray for the Lion King.
I can't wait for the show to officially open in South Africa. I haven't been able to find anything about the previews, so it's kind of frustrating. :lol: It opens next weekend though. Yay!
Speaking of new TLKOB productions, the French company looks set to premiere in a few months, they already have a nice looking website up and a couple really cool videos here that were performed on a live preview/promotion show:
French Lion King on Broadway videos
The first one features a sort of remix of the They Live in You and He Lives in You Reprise song with Rafiki singing, and I think we get a preview of who is scheduled to play Mufasa as well as Adult Simba which may be of certain interest to some of you ;)
The other one is a "One by One" clip featuring Lebo M.
Can't wait for the new soundtrack to come out.
OH, and I just found out that Simba's name is Jeremy Fontanet... feast your eyes ladies
http://www.isabellecharles.com/actua...yFontanet1.JPG
Sorry, but he's ugly D:
Nice to see the TLKoB spreading internationally though :]