As much as I learn from scrolling through online platforms I still feel like I retain more and learn more, from flipping through hard copies of books, magazines and newspapers again and again. Case in point was a Sunday New York Times piece, an oral history on the 25th anniversary of The Lion King on Broadway. I kept going back to it time and again, and will continue to do so because of its stories of reinvention, grit, vision, and creativity in storytelling. It’s something we talk about in class, and with young creators all the time…have the courage and the vision to ask questions, especially when you see things that others do not.
Some examples from the piece.
The analogies of sport, and its struggles, transfer to theater: We learned this when doing our three plays about “sports” on Broadway, most notably “Lombardi,” but in the piece the award winning director Julie Taymor saw in the original characters the draw of boxing matches, the perseverance of horse racing, even the beauty of gymnastics, and found how those pieces fit into the narrative of a musical on Broadway. Sport at its core is about heroes and villains, highs and lows and overcoming obstacles…its what drives fandom, and those core storytelling elements are what makes us love film, theater and every part of entertainment.
Don’t always see things for what they are, see things for what they could be: The creative team looked at the play and its music and saw success…but what else could it be when brought to live characters not animation, reinvisioning what the characters looked like, sounded like and literally felt like, they were able to drive imagination of the audience…each person seeing something or listening to words and song that others didn’t. It would have been a lot easier, and cheaper, for Disney to just take the storyline and bring it to Broadway status quo. However by asking…what else is here that we can do differently, “The Lion King” rearranged what musical theater could be.
If you get a no, come back and reposition; Listen and adapt and find consensus: part of Taymor’s genius was sitting and watching and listening hard core Disney executives and investors who were looking for one thing when concept was created but seeing something else…and at first they did not see the vision that she and the creative team had. They did not want to take the risk of having people try and understand what the show was going to be because they had preconceived notions from seeing the film. That’s OK she said…but try and understand this with a blank slate…maybe we can’t do everything with these characters we envisioned…but here is hat we can do. And in listening, resketching and adapting, the vision came to life, maybe a slight compromise, but one that was robust and unique and exciting enough to satisfy all and get the show out the door.
Be inclusive in your passions. It would have been easier for the show to play to the audience core for Broadway…a little whiter, a little older, a little safer. Taymor and team realized this show should speak to audiences that did not always come to Broadway…hence the reinvisioning of characters of color, of women with power, of flawed leaders looking to learn, of compassion, and of overcoming defeat. Many of those elements were in the original film, but by thinking and speaking to a different audience the show brought, and still brings, inclusion into a mix where it was not 25 years ago.
Lastly, keep adapting. One of the biggest problems with legacy organizations…teams, leagues, brands…is that its rinse and repeat. We see that in sports all the time. There is a cadence to the season we do the same thing every day and if it works, don’t rock the boat. Now while Broadway is built on delivering a similar performance and experience every day, the best shows, especially when they go out on the road, do look to tweak and adapt…words, phrases, costumes, sound, technology. The classics are important, but why can’t we look at them in a different way for an evolving audience. “The Lion King” at its core is the same, but the nuances keep pushing forward, and that’s one reason why it remains as popular today around the world as ever.
So there you have it. Maybe not what we normally bring, but from a “franchise” perspective, “The Lion King” at 25 is no different from The Yankees or Manchester United. It invokes passion, drives conversation and keeps expanding its reach, all because of its visionary and inclusive leaders when it started…many of which keep the fire going with other projects today.
