Video: Julie Taymor Talks THE LION KING 25th Anniversary and More!

Hello, and Gondon, my Godi, Bada

for Broadway World. Renowned director Julie Tameur is the driving force behind Disney's The Lion King

which is the global phenomenon and one of the most successful and beloved musicals of all time

The Lion King will celebrate its 25th anniversary here at the Minskaw Theater on Sunday, November 13th

and I recently sat with this visionary genius to chat about creating this groundbreaking musical

Thank you so much for sitting with us here and sitting with me for Broadway World

Yes, fantastic. Well, I want to thank you, first of all, for giving the world one of the greatest stage

musicals of all time. You're about to celebrate the 25th anniversary. How excited are you

I'm thrilled, you kidding? No, it's great. I feel very old and really very lucky

I think it's that too. It's just, there's a reason it's 25 years old, but many things should be 25 years old and they

aren't. So I feel very, very honored and lucky to be here. You have brought so much joy to, I think, nearly 110 million theater goers around the

world. How does that make you feel? Wow, full. Yeah. No, it's great. It means that you can create a work of art that transcends all of our differences

That's what it makes me feel. I like to say, look, you don't need to make your audience just

16-year-old boys or whatever. They can come. They can like it. But so can

75-year-old Broadway Hater and so can a four-year-old who believes what they're seeing

Yeah. And I adored the fact that that's what I like the best that you could

be a Japanese viewer or Chinese. We've done it in all these languages

You know, it's not like it's a piece of American theater that goes over as a tourist little bit of

a spice of America. It's not that at all. The Japanese production of the Lion King is equal

to the New York production, to the South African production, to the

Chinese production when we did it in Mandarin in Shanghai because we do it with local artists

in each of these places. The language becomes adapted, especially humor. Humor has to be totally local

Doesn't transcend or translate if you just do it exactly. You have to make it specific

The jokes have to be specific. And that's a challenge and it's been fun

I mean, you read about how Hamilton had to go through four years to get the translation

Well, this didn't. we didn't do that exactly because we didn't have that kind of language but still it it really

becomes country specific culture specific and that's that's what makes it so successful and powerful

well let's talk about that because you oversee all these productions that have been done all

around the world and i think it's like nine different languages so what has it been like for you

like going to these countries and working on these productions and watching how audiences fall in love

with the show? Well, I have a team. Okay, yeah. Of course you do

When you say, oversee, I've done other things besides the Lion King during the 25 years

but what I have is a great team. So I have associate directors and choreographers

and I will go quite often, I've gone and I've done the final casting in a country

So I go over and I will help choose the final cast

often, and then I'm gone for a while because I have a great team, a great team

We're a family and we enjoy getting together. And then I often am brought in, which I like very much, at the end

And the last week, it's amazing that you'd think it would be set, but it's not set

because if the original director comes, because a lot of my team, some of them weren't there at the very beginning

But if I come, there is an attention that the actors will give to hear that voice

And also because I can see the specifics that are necessary. I have not, I don't have to deal with, did he get to this point, you know, is he on his mark? You know, is a lighting hitting? You know, I don't have to do that. I'm really about performance at that point. So it's very fun for me. It's really thrilling. And also I talk to the cast and hopefully talk to them about why they're doing what they're doing, the theater of it. Why are we artists? You know, there's a whole thing where you want to set the company off in the right direction and what brings you to do this

this art form. And what should you expect? And what does the audience expect from this

How should you perform it? How are you going to be fresh eight shows a week

for how many years? We have people in this cast for 25 years

I mean, that's just incredible to me. I could never do something for 25 years

but I honor the person who can. And surely, they're finding a way to fulfill themselves

in the performance. And that's what we talk about. You know, how do you

How do you keep things fresh and new and alive? Because in traditional theaters in many places

there's no memorization. You're not doing things en route. You know, I lived in Indonesia for four years

and I saw traditional theater all over Java, and Bali, and Sumatra

And people, actors, in masks, with puppets, whatever, dancers, they improvise for nine hours

They know their character. But the challenge is that they get together

before the performance, these various actors get together in, let's say, Bali doing mask performance

It's incredible. And they talk about the story that they're going to do that night

while women are threading beautiful Franjapani flowers and the costumes are being prepared

and everybody, the audience is out eating and drinking and getting excited and flirting and all of that

And then these performers start to improvise with the musicians. They're coming from different villages

So what you're watching is a lot of the people, the audiences know these stories

It's just like, you know the Lion King, but you've seen it how many times? About 12

Okay, I've seen it. A couple of hundred. And so, but each time, it can be different

because it's live theater. So this is what's very thrilling. I learned this when I was a young theater artists in Indonesia

is watching these artists, are with each other and compete on who is

You know, they knew their part. They knew with the, OK, I'm Mufasa. I know the limitations

I know the kind of character. It's like soap opera, right? I know the kind of character. But now I'm going to improvise the rest of the evening

And the audience is enjoying that and the slight changes that are happening

I mean, I could go on and on about the kinds of things I learned when I lived in Indonesia and Japan

and traveled through on a fellowship in theater. But I try to instill that into this

performance into these companies which is keeping it fresh and alive and understanding that its power is not just as entertainment but it also a healing art form Yeah because that first trip you took there was very life

for you in Indonesia, wasn't it? Completely. Yeah. Totally. So what you took away from that

how much of that influence that you learned there did you use in the Lion King? It's the most prevalent

Yeah. I mean, it's not just Indonesia. I was also in Japan, so you'll see the insulin

of the techniques from Japan, Bunraku. Bunraku is the puppet form where three people in black manipulate about a four-foot-tall puppet

and the audience is able to see the manipulators and the character, and after five minutes they don't see the people in black anymore

Okay, so I didn't do exactly that, but if you look at Timone

Timon is an actor, all in green. I didn't want to do black

black. Black didn't actually fit the environment. So I made him look like the jungle. Even the

fabric is all shibori techniques. It's various techniques of cloth printing that all the

this is a little sideways thing, but all the fabric in the Lion King begins white. Everything

is hand-painted and hand-printed. You cannot buy it off the rack. So Timon is all green. His makeup

is green and he's attached to a puppet in front. He's doing the diabet

for it, but hopefully he's manipulating that puppet so that all of his actor energy is in that puppet

So the puppet is what you really is the character. That's Timo. I don't know who this guy in green is

but that's Timo. The same with Zazu. So the idea that you could see the manipulation

appreciate the artistry of the puppeteer slash actor. Nobody I hire or we hire has been a puppeteer

before. So you have to know that if they had, that's fine. But it really had, we were

We were casting actors who were not feeling, what would you call it

overshadowed by the puppet or the mask. So we have to cast actors who see the joy in that, you know, who have fun

And when we do the auditions, first they acted out themselves. And sometimes I would say in auditions to my, you know, partners

oh God, I wish we didn't have to do this with a puppet. They're so good. Like the hyaine is

my God, they're so good. Look at their movement. They're funny. They're this and that. All right. We already decided this is a mask and puppet Lion King, blah, blah, blah

But then you give them the puppets. And they're not trained yet, and they haven't had a lot of time

But you can see if they enjoy themselves. If they don't enjoy themselves, and it looks like a burden

no matter how great they were, you shouldn't cast them. Because this has to be a partnership

That is fascinating. Yeah. Because when you watch the show, I mean

you look at the puppets, which I think is really, really fascinating. Going back to the beginning, what unlocked the Lion King for you

of the way you wanted to tell the story and present it? Because it's so visual, it's so big, there's so many beautiful elements to this show

Was there something, do you start the same way when you work on a project? To start on paper

Yeah, I think in this case, the story. You start with the story

And the Lion King animated film was a 70-minute episode. animated film that wasn't, it didn't feel complete

And it wasn't just me who felt that. The producers said, you know, we know the story needs development

Go ahead. So my background at Oberlin College and even before that in

general has been mythology and folklore and the study of shamanism in Northwest Coast Indian culture and a lot of

study in Asia and this and that. And I knew what the hero myth and the hero stories required

In every culture, you'll find the commonality of this theme of the prodigal son

And that child who's going to come of age and take a very difficult journey, the hero's journey

has to suffer and has to go through a trial, the trials

in order to come home again and earn the mantle of kingship

which is what happens to Simba. And Simba in the movie didn't really quite do that

So the whole second act, where Simba feels so guilty about the death of his father that he almost, in a kind of anger and

taunting of his best friend, Timo, he almost kills his buddy. And he goes through this time of dark guilt

And then he's also challenged by Nala, which isn't in the original

So there were a lot of major themes that had to be, they were there, that they had to grow

And I definitely wanted the female president. presence to be stronger. So in that, I developed the story and I developed Rafiki Nala, but Rafiki was the one

Have you heard that story of how I came? Yeah. Yeah. That's a, you know, it came from Tully Dumacade, you know, how this idea

And then, you know, the notion that the presence of an older woman who's the wise woman

but she's also the comedic, was very crucial to me. Because we have often seen the princess, the witch

or the wise old woman, scary, wise old woman. But, you know, it's those tropes, those types

But I wanted it blended into one. And Rafiki is almost the narrator

And there was the technical problem of who sings the circle of life, who starts the show, who's the character

Can't just be a chorus member off stage like in a movie

It's not score. It's on stage. It's front and center. So Rafiki as a female singer, as a female voice, was the right thing too, and Lebo felt that

Well, let's go back into the Circle of Life. One of the greatest moments in the American theater at any musical show is the opening of Circle of Life

Was that easy for you to come up with? I don't know. I don't know. It was 25 years ago

Easy to come up with. Yeah, sure. No, I'm kidding you. But that's, like you said, we watched this thing

I sent people to The Lion King last. week who had never seen the show and they were totally blown away by this whole

entire production but they said for all the years they'd go into the theater they've never seen anything like the circle of life that whole opening of that show

Well I knew because it had been a film yeah that I wanted to do something that was so

three-dimensional and really surrounding the audience. It's also the biggest scene in the movie in the story it is when all the animal kingdom comes to

bless this baby lion king something completely not natural to the animal kingdom, yes, this fairy tale. So I knew that I would use the whole theater

And also I had producers, Tom and Peter, who said, sure, why not? Let's just make sure the aisles

are wide enough and that the staircases are there. And so it had to be everything. I mean

birds on Zazu flying in on these kites. And I had seen Japanese theater, not just the

Bunraku and the Awaji these other kinds of things But in much of the grand know they have they not runways that go into the center but they do have these runways where characters come out

And I thought, well, why not, you know, have this feeling that the characters could actually go up and down these aisles

and really engage the audience in a way that film can't. It just can't

Film is two-dimensional, television is two-dimensional, and it's far away, and now we do something at

only theater can do. Yeah. So you have the oral pleasure of it surrounding you and you have the visual scale of it

And I knew with the hyenas, I mean, it's not just the opening, but when those hyenas come off

the stage and they're so creepy and they're sticking their heads into the audience and scaring the kids, you know, with their big mouths, it's also a wonderful moment

But this being able to focus and play with the perspectives and the heights and introduce

all the characters. and really for audiences to see the human beings inside those mammoth bertha legs, the elephant legs

to see those people are there inside and to reveal the artifice, to reveal the technology

and say this is the fun part, you know, the cheetah, off the front of the female dancer

watching her head move and the strings attached to the cheetah head and the head of the animal moves

and then she manipulates. So the audience is thrilled not just by

oh, this is a, they don't know what the story is. They don't have to know

They might have seen the movie. But what they're seeing is, oh, my God

this is the kind of theater. I don't know. But the first five minutes are hard to beat

So how do we beat it? Get all those animals up on stage

Close that in one curtain while they go crazy. Why there's a stampede that you can't see

as they're trying to. take everything off and get into their next thing

And we go to a little circle with a flashlight and a cut out of a mouse

And they have to be quiet back there, which is hard. That takes a lot of rehearsal

But then the audience, which has been like this with their vision, goes into what we would in film, say, an extreme close-up

And that focuses their energy. That little mouse, actually, it's scar, actually

It's scar and then the mouse. But just even seeing scar with, you know, the head moving up and then getting that shadow puppet that comes across the thing

That was the only thing you could do. You know, there are things that when you say easy, like what do you do after you've just blown your wad on the biggest opening

You kind of don't have a choice. You have to find out what that is

And the story needs to begin. The story needs to be told

And the dialogue starts. It's beautiful what you've done. And like I said, 25 years later, we're sitting here

Like I said, 110 million people falling in love with, you know, this Disney production all around the world

Back to that, I remember talking to Harold Prince and he said, Fiddler on the Roof in any, all these different languages

especially Chinese. They loved the show because it was about family. Right, right

And I was going to ask you, this is played in all these different languages. You've seen it all around the world

You've been there. You've cast them. Why do you think people have fallen in love with this musical

and continue to fall in love with this musical? this musical all around the world in different languages

Because it's their story. Because they know that story. Now it's well done, so that helps, right

I mean, the music is beautiful. The combination of what Elton did and Lebo, you know

this Western pop music with this South African style of choral singing

and these two individual, because it's not folk music. It is particularly Lebo's, but it's within a tradition

Lebo Am's tradition. And even though it's five African languages that I'm sure there are people in the audience occasionally who understand all five languages, but no, not generally

But it doesn't matter. It's like you go to see Tosca or Madame Butterfly in Italian and read the subtitles

Who cares? As soon as you following the exact translation wouldn't make it a better experience

In fact, what I love is the sound of the languages. And so it transcends our separations

It transcends our differences because that story, the prodigal son's story, the coming-of-age story, the brothers fighting, whether it's Hamlet or some other story, you know, of the death of the king by the jealous brother or the one who's going to usurp his throne

These happen everywhere. That's why Shakespeare has done. How many beautiful Japanese Shakespeare's are there

Borisawa is one of the greatest director of Shakespeare movies, and he does it in his language

But the story belongs to so many different cultures. The interesting about, I saw fiddler in the roof in Japan, so I saw a Japanese fiddler on the roof

Of course it works because it's a family thing, but it still is a particular story from singer, Batshavis Singer

Yes. In the Russian, you know. Shalomala Laka. Yeah, Shalomelaqa, excuse me

So you're still being taken somewhere. The thing about the Lion King is it isn't Johannesburg, you know, it's not Cape Town

It's not New York City. It is the animal kingdom. Now, the African animal kingdom specifically, but not specifically

Because I never went to Africa till we were doing the English version of the Lion King

Then for press, Lebo and myself and the woman playing Rafiki were brought to South Africa

And I went out on the animal safaris and I'm not a jerk, but I did see, I kept looking at the animals and go, especially the ostriches

They're so dreary looking. I mean, they're nasty. They're gray and brown

And mine are purple and orange and full of plumes and this

So, you know, I take great liberties in the design of, obviously, those are, our animals are their own unique Lion King animals, right

They're the way the people interpret the animal kingdom. So there's no attempt at reality there

So in that sense, this is going to relate to animals in India

It's going to relate to animals in Brazil. It's going to transcend

We created it here in New York, but it's hardly a New York story

It's a human story in animal guise. Let's look about the costumes

You also did a beautiful job designing these costumes. You'd love that aspect of designing that for the Lion King, right

Yes, I adored it. Yeah. Because it's not costumes. It's character, right

I mean, you can't, you, what are you until you see the whole kitten caboodle of mask, costume or puppet costume

It's, how are you going to do a giraffe? I think the giraffes were one of the first things I designed, the giraffes and the zebras, before I went to the humans, before I went to the lions

because, okay, giraffes, they tell you what they need to be. Tall four long necks And so yes I thought okay I will use stilts But because of this commitment to showing the artifice I said you going to see where the dancers are attached

to the stilts. I'm not going to try and hide that connection

in a full costume. Also, you will see the face of the dancer

but off his head will be this long mask with the giraffe head

at the end of it. So when he moves and goes up and down, he's able to control it. But his body, you're completely aware of the dancer, and it makes it that

much more frightening, magical, daring, all of it. So that was one of the first ones. And then the

zebra was a ball. Because, you know, okay, so it's like a horse. You know, these aren't cats

These are big creatures. So trying to figure out where the human, how the human is in in the

midst of it and what part? So I think in that case, the human head, yeah, there is a, there is the neck and the

because they, you know, they don't want to be that tall. So there's the neck of the zebra and the

head. But then he gets to move to the legs, you get the dancer's movement here, but then like

the cheetah, so the fun for me was figuring out where's the human in the midst of this and how to then

you manipulate all the other parts of the animal legs and paws and everything

Yeah, because you were brought, there's nothing like The Lion King. There is no musical, there is no show like Disney's The Lion King that you have put together

because you've, you're such a visual director. I mean, what you do, like you said, the last time I went to the show, I was sitting next

to a Korean family who didn't speak English and they had the time of their life figuring out

this show. They loved everything about it because I talked to them at intermission. Like you said, it's about family. It's about family. It's about

everybody. And you know, you do masks and costumes and it's so visual to look at. And you can

you can hear the story without knowing the language. Right. I love that. I think that that's a very

a very powerful medium. And dance does that. So this is really dance music theater

puppetry, dance music theater. You know, it's not a play. Yeah. With music put to it

No, I know nothing is ever easy, but I remember talking to, I think it was opening night or right

after the show at Open. We had never seen anything like the Lion's. We had never seen anything like the Lion King before. We'd never seen the kind of things you brought to the stage before

I've done it before. You just haven't seen it. I had seen Juan Dary and I'd see all your beautiful

shows. I've seen all your stuff. But I mean, I just figured for a Broadway musical, I said

you took a such a beloved Disney film and expanded and created this incredible Disney musical

that is now beloved by millions of people. Like I said, 110 million people. How many shows are

seen by that, you know, by that many people with these 20 global production

that have been seen all around the world. It doesn't happen. There's like five musicals that have traveled around the world

at that scope. So as I'm sitting here with you like 25 years and like just what you've done with this show

what it means to you. Oh, God. Are there words just sort of

Not exactly. Yeah, but I mean, is there a feeling or, you know

It's hard to, because I want bigger or better words than what I'm gonna do right now

first of all, it's given me tremendous freedom as an artist. So the freedom to pick and choose what I want to do

And that's rare for artists to be able to do that. So I have to love things

And that has meant a lot to me. It's given me financial freedom but also artistic freedom

Because I can always... A lot of my projects that I want to do are out of the box

They're original. they're not normal or they're not usual. It still is not a no-brainer to say

they're just going to do whatever I want to do because it's not going to happen that way. But it has given me a foundation

And I can always harken back to it, like in the Lion King. At that time, these producers, Tom Schumach or Peter Schneider

Michael Eisner, they didn't know what it was going to be, but they didn't censor me

You know, they gave me freedom. And if there was something that they had doubts about

then I would find another way. It was an incredibly good collaboration

because a lot of people said, how are you going to work with Disney? You know, because I'm from the avant-garde

or from the off-Broadway or whatever. But we were after the same thing

which is to create a kind of theater, and they knew, maybe not Michael

but Tom definitely knew what World Theater was. He had done the Olympic Arts Festival

So he knew at Bunrakku. Maybe not all of them, but he knew all the different forms

that could possibly have potential for this storytelling. So working with the most commercial company in the world, doing the most uncommercial thing to their property

set a trend that has been repeated sometimes. But it makes me feel proud if other artists got that opportunity

If I've inspired, I mean, War Horse came after the Lion King

But look, it had the horse's the star of War Horse. And it's not just the story that's the star

It's the way those puppeteers and the designer how they were able to make that horse

come alive, that isn't just marvelous, it's moving. And I wanted people to be moved by the art form

There's a terrible word that American has in its culture, which is spectacle

The French call theater Les Spectacles. But we think of spectacle as being contentless, and I beg to differ big time

That's why the opening of the Lion King works the way it does. Because certain things touch you without words in a much deeper way

than things with words, and the same with language. I am touched by the opening chant of the Lion King

when the Rafiki sings, nah, de Kone, and I'm not going to do it now because that would be pathetic

But that gets me. That's like a laser going to the right to my heart and into my soul

And I don't even want to know what she's saying, because I know what she's saying. And if it's not what she thinks she's saying, that's okay too

You know, to give that opportunity for each level of person to hook in wherever they want to hook in

I met so many people who hate Broadway musicals, but they're surprised that they like the Lion King

They may not like every song in the Lion King. There may be ones that are too cute or too commercial, which may be the most popular songs of the Lion King

But what they do like is maybe the moment when the lionesses pull the silks out of their eyes

That might be their favorite moment because that's inspired by an... ancient Japanese style of theater because it's sophisticated theater, but children know those

aren't silks, those are tears. So there's this sort of interesting balance of how people can hook in to the Lion King

at whatever level they hook into any live theater, any or any entertainment

Yeah