“It takes a week for set-up, from the deck to the lights to the autofly system to our offices and power. My advance stage manager will meet the crew in the next city,” says Shiner. The show, which includes 49 performers in an almost constant state of costume change, uses these types of space-saving maneuvers finessed for every theater it visits.Ī team of four stage managers heads up a crew of 85, about half of which are hired locally in each city. Shiner shouts over his crew as they raise a flat of grass headdresses into the fly, hoisting them temporarily out of the way. In the shadowy half-light of the wings, there lay the great scowling mask of Scar and the noble head of Mufasa, destined to bite the dust before the second act. They were designed under the command of Julie Taymor, the show’s original director, and were meant to evoke “the double event” as she called it: the perception of the actors as both animals and humans at the same time. Costumes fill long corridors of wardrobe racks. “But at some point, it becomes controlled chaos.”īy Wednesday, technicians and stagehands are busy setting lights, hanging backdrops and riding up and down on hydraulic Genie lifts, all to the tune of a high-powered vacuum whine. “It’s a well-oiled machine,” says Matt Shiner, production stage manager for the tour. It took a little more than a day to break down the massive production and move it 945 miles. The Richmond show ended the day before at 4 p.m. on Monday, May 9 - huge semis, loaded down with the costumes, props and set pieces needed to mount Disney’s The Lion King at the Overture Center. The trucks rolled in from Richmond, Va., at 5:30 p.m.
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