Entertainment Central Pittsburgh: The North American touring production of Disney’s The Lion King is onstage at the Benedum Center through September 29. Entertainment Central, along with other members of the Pittsburgh media, was invited to the Benedum for a behind the scenes look at The Lion King. Three of the main pillars of the legendary musical are the acting, puppets and costumes, and sets. We had an opportunity to speak with Spencer Plachy, who plays the bad lion, Scar, and puppet master Michael Reilly, and also to see a main set piece, Pride Rock, in action.
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This article blew me away, especially when Michael Reily talks about how there are around 230 puppets in this show. There are currently 8 productions of The Lion King going on so that is about 1,840 puppets for The Lion King. The scope of Disney theatricals is crazy. Hearing that every puppet breaks around once a week, I am amazed at the job of Michael Reily even more as having to repair 230 puppets a week is a large task to ask. I also wonder how the process of getting the puppets fixed works. Does an actor tell stage management or does Michael Reily just check up on them or do the actors go to Reily. This is an interesting challenge that many shows don’t have to deal with. Seeing Scar’s mask move was also incredible because knowing that it is mechanized somehow makes the mask even cooler. Reily’s interview was cool not only hearing information about the show but seeing how he came into theatre as I’ve never heard this story of someone falling into theatre from their non technical theatre technical high school training.
The Lion King is such an impressive show and especially due to the puppets. I can’t think of another show that is this big and uses full size puppets. The work behind them, the ability of the puppets, and the shear number that there are in the show is just astonishing. The ability in particular of the puppets I find fascinating. They have such strong mechanics behind them and in such a small amount of space. It is really impressive and must have been a great challenge to create them. Pride Rock is also another amazing thing. The ability to perform the track that it does and not reveal its inner guts is just cool! I can only imagine what a great and fun challenge figuring out how to make that piece perform those movements must have been. I would have loved to be a part of the process in trying to get that from concept to realization.
I did not realize until I got back to school that this show was currently in town and honestly I might try to go see it. I adore Julie Taymor’s puppetry designs and getting to see all 230 plus puppets in the show at work must be phenomenal. Puppets in general are a very cool department to me because, like Michael Rielly sort of talks about, there are so many skills that go into making puppets work that it works in your favor to be a person that “liked to work with [their] hands”. That is a sentiment that I can really relate to, which is probably why I have greatly enjoyed my work with props and puppets. I was surprised to read that almost every puppet breaks on a regular basis. It makes me wonder why there has not been a re-engineering of those mechanisms and structures. In my head it makes more sense to design a puppet that will last forever, since that is how long the Lion King will be running, rather than spend the time and money to fix them on a weekly basis. But I guess spending money is not something Disney is too worried about!
I remember seeing the tour of Lion King as a kid in Nashville. I actually saw it on two separate occasions of it coming through town. It was my first exposure to broadway level theater and my first exposure to puppets, which has really changed my life in a huge way. This show really captured my imagination as a young kid and has continued to inspire me well into my theatrical career. I think the touring version of this show is more impressive to me than the Broadway version because of the sheer amount of puppets they have to travel with. It is really impressive to me that they are able to pack all of that up and move it all around the country. I have seen pictures of their mobile puppet shop that are really quite impressive. They have duplicates of some of the more important and more fragile puppets for obvious reasons, but their ability to largely keep all of their puppets in working order throughout their crazy runs is just really impressive.
The design of The Lion King production has always been a fascinating one to me. I have had the pleasure of seeing it twice when it came to San Diego and I was blown away by every element of the show. Getting a behind the scenes look into the making of this show is very insightful as a person who would love to participate in a show of this scale at some point. The puppetry is so fascinating to me because the vision behind their usage is so well conceived. The merging of the puppets and the actors is incredible, especially knowing that there are just so many in the production. Which also led to a surprising but expected fact that these puppets are subject to breaking. Hopefully not many during a performance. Also, the story about the elephant puppet being stranded in the orchestra pit is as terrifying as it is funny. It's good that they have put a lot of thought into these elements to prevent catastrophic failures.
The first time I saw The Lion King musical at eight years old, I knew very little about technical theatre at the time, but I was stunned by the design of the show. Nowadays, I have an even stronger appreciation for what the designers of the show were able to accomplish. I recently did a project on the Benedum Center, and it’s the perfect place to put on such a spectacular show. What was so wonderful about this article was that it celebrated the technical aspects of the show, which is uncommon for most theatre articles. All too often is only the acting of a show praised without any mention of the hard work that goes on behind the scenes. The Lion King is a show that is essential to have a stronger design crew behind it in order to make humans become lions on stage. The article makes a point to cover the puppetry extensively to show the sheer amount of work that went into its creation and even provided photos to admire. Overall, it may have been a short read, but it was a special one for it’s praise of the aspects that usually go unnoticed.
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