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Below the deck (or stage, rather) of Bass Performance Hall is a maze of hallways with checkered tiles where props, crew, costumes, and uncostumed performers intermingle. It’s where a lot of “Oh snap, that’s Mufasa’s head!” exclamations happen for the unhabituated. Taking the tour, we wound up in a room deemed the “puppet room,” where Michael Reilly, puppet supervisor, is touching up the intricately detailed masks worn by the actors who play Simba, Nala, and Mufasa from the musical “The Lion King” — showing at Bass Hall through this Sunday.
“Mostly carbon fiber is what you see here,” Reilly says when showing us the masks. “And they’re as light as 4 ounces of feathers.”
Reilly, a Toronto native whose previous experiences include fixing cars, painting canvases, and working at a Nerds candy soap factory — “We made soap of the candy. My job was to look at the Nerds that went by and [get rid of] the ones that had dings in them” — has been with “The Lion King” troop for 23 years. Yeah, to say he’s a veteran of the production would be an understatement. And given the importance puppets play when telling the popular story of Simba on stage, the puppet supervisor gig is as important to the production as the actors on stage. So, having a road-tested virtuoso is a necessity.
Few productions manage to integrate the millenniums-old practice of manipulating inanimate objects (puppetry has been around since 3000 BC) as seamlessly as “The Lion King.” And telling the story in such a way was a bit of a risk. Julie Taymor, both the musical’s director and costume designer when it premiered on Broadway in 1997, is credited with coming up with the clever way the actors portray the animals. For those who have yet to see the stage musical, don’t expect a streamlined interpretation of the animated movie.
“One could have easily put [the actors] in cowardly lion costumes, more or less,” Reilly says. “One could have done that. And it would have been fine. But by adding this puppetry element, not only did it allow the actors to do what they do best, which is, you know, emote through their voices, but it also allowed you to get into the story. After three or four minutes of the show, you’re looking at the puppet rather than the person.”
One of the most complex puppets in the show is its only hand puppet, Zazu — the fiercely devoted, sharp-tongued, yet undeniably anxious hornbill. Beneath his coat of feathers is a sophisticated contraption full of levers and pullies that control his wings and facial expressions. Despite these complexities, Reilly also tells us Zazu’s neck is made from a $4 slinky; even on Broadway, the simplest solutions are best.
Nick LaMedica plays Zazu in the traveling production of the show — the one you’ll see or have already seen in Fort Worth. And a big part of his job — in addition to speaking in an impeccable English accent — is controlling Zazu via a set of triggers he keeps in his hand. Yes, he sings, he speaks, he dances, and he acts, but he’s also a puppeteer.
“It’s really fascinating to take your performance and make sure it’s coming out of your fingertips,” LaMedica says. “Whatever’s happening in here (Lamedica points at his head), making sure it extends out through there (LaMedica points to the puppet).”
LaMedica describes the process of learning to emote through a puppet similar to learning a new language. A tug on a trigger this way or that way are like words that Zazu uses to express himself.
“Puppetry is one of those really cool things, where even if they dropped us into another world where no one spoke English or nothing like English at all, we could tell this story. We could a lot of the story in “The Lion King” because of the visual language being so unique and interesting.”
LaMedica graduated with Bachelor of Fine Arts from Marymount Manhattan College and subsequently performed with several regional theaters throughout the country. While he’s an actor first and foremost, he got thrown into the deep end of puppetry during his first stint on Broadway performing in the Tony Award-winning show “War Horse.”
“It’s not anything that I ever considered would be part of my performing,” LaMedica says. “[During “War Horse”], they had auditions for human stuff, human stuff, human stuff, and then they were, like, ‘Okay, now we’re gonna have you take a puppetry workshop.’ And I thought, ‘Okay, this is has been a fun process. Definitely not going to get this job.’ But I guess they saw enough there to think I could learn. And I’ve gone from there to do a lot of different types of puppetry.”
For his performance as Zazu, LaMedica sports tails and boulder hat and blue face paint that takes 45 minutes per performance to apply — the blue meant to represent the sky. When he’s showing us a demonstration, I can’t but notice his body, not so much mimicking, but perfectly synergizing with the bird’s expressions and movements.
“What my human body does isn’t necessarily the same thing that [Zazu’s] body is gonna do. So to produce the sort of double event of what Zazu is doing and what the human body is doing. Sometimes those are different shapes, but I need to make sure those shapes line up or riff off each other. Maybe there’s something I can’t do with my body, but I can do with the bird. So that helps to complete the visual picture.”
You can still catch “The Lion King” at Bass Performance Hall. The Tony Award-winning musical remains in town through Sunday, Jan 29.
