‘The Lion King’ After 25 Years: How a Broadway Hit Stages 10 Shows Around the Globe

Last November, The Lion King musical celebrated its 25th anniversary on Broadway, marking the stage adaption of Disney’s 1994 animated film as one of the longest-running productions in New York theater history, and presently Broadway’s highest-grossing.

But the legacy of the Tony-winning show, which transferred from Minneapolis’s Orpheum Theatre to Broadway’s New Amsterdam Theatre in 1997 before moving to its current home, the Minskoff Theatre, in 2006, spans far beyond its more than 10,000 performances in New York. The show, originally directed by Julie Taymor, has played around 60,000 performances worldwide, with more than 100,000 people viewing the puppet-led show featuring music from Hans Zimmer and Elton John in 10 productions weekly across multiple continents. That global success has helped make The Lion King the highest-grossing entertainment property in film and stage history, with the show grossing more than 8 billion in 2017.

Since its debut, The Lion King has staged 28 productions in places like Toronto, Mexico City, London, Paris, Madrid, Johannesburg, Shanghai and Sydney. And that’s alongside international tours with stops in the U.K., Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, New Zealand, the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates, as well as special performances everywhere from the Diamond Jubilee Pageant to the White House and The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

Over 25 years, it’s nearly impossible to find a show that’s performed so many productions simultaneously in the world, with the latest opening taking the show to São Paulo since May. It’s an effort led by a team of creatives, most of whom have been with the Disney Theatrical Group production since its early years. Among them are associate director Anthony Lyn; Clement Ishmael, who serves as the show’s worldwide music supervisor; associate choreographer Marey Griffith; and production supervisor Lisa Dawn Cave.

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Around the World in (Almost) 30 Days

Following its Broadway anniversary on Nov. 13, between November and December of last year, The Lion King‘s international team had one of its busiest schedules, traveling from New York to São Paulo for auditions (Nov. 26); São Paulo to London for the West End show (Dec. 2); London to Manchester for the U.K. tour (Dec. 7); Manchester to Abu Dhabi for the closing of the Asia tour (Dec. 9); Abu Dhabi back to Manchester for the U.K. tour (Dec. 11); Manchester to Paris for the French production (Dec. 17); and then back to New York (Dec. 19).

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They travel the world on a constant loop, making adjustments for regional audiences and keeping the show fresh, while ensuring all productions adhere to the Broadway show’s original vision. At present, the group oversees those 10 concurrent productions, along with special performances like last year’s Platinum Jubilee Party at the Palace at Buckingham Palace.

Since January alone, the group has made multiple visits to São Paulo, while also stopping in three South African cities (Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town) for auditions, along with stops in New York, Hamburg, Madrid, Manchester, Paris, London and Los Angeles.

While demanded of any Broadway production that’s operating with an international arm (think shows like Hamilton, Rent and The Phantom of the Opera), these four members of the musical’s creative and technical team help play a key role in enshrining the legacy of a show that has, for more than two decades, centered a tale set in Africa and Black performers unlike any other on Broadway.

The Hollywood Reporter spoke to Lyn, Cave, Ishmael and Griffith about how they bring the show to new audiences more than 25 years after its debut; the joys and challenges of putting on a Tony-winning show in cities around the world; and how their work and the musical impacts the talent and economic pipelines of its cities.

Can you walk through what your role is and how it shapes the international productions?

ANTHONY LYN My job would be what the public assume a director does on a show. It’s after the original director is no longer part of the show on a daily basis and moves on to other creative projects and checks in from time to time. If there’s a brand new production of The Lion King, as there’s been most years, we will be on the panel that will take all the auditions. We make the selections and then at the final auditions, we may be joined by Julie Taymor, the original director, or we may not. We go through the whole audition and casting process, choose the people to be in the show, then we direct the show from first day of rehearsal through the opening. Once the show is on, because thankfully Lion King tends to run for a long time in each of these different places, we go back to check on the maintenance of the show to ensure that it’s kept to a very high standard. We also go back to recast the show because we have people leaving and needing to be replaced.

CLEMENT ISHMAEL My role involves picking the musicians and conductors, and rehearsing them. Also, with Anthony and Marey, choosing the cast and performers. I have to make sure all aspects of the music are up to scratch, up to the original creators’ ideas of what it should be. Originally, I was working very closely with Lebo M., with Mark Mancina, with Dave Metzger — all the guys who actually put the show together originally. Thankfully, they trust us now to keep going because we’ve been doing it for so long. But my main objective is to make sure the original vision stays what it was and continues.

MAREY GRIFFITH The same thing applies to all the choreography, which I do. It’s keeping guard of this vision of what the show should be live. So you’re picking extraordinary dancers. You’re also not just putting up a show in a different country. You’re putting up the Broadway show in another country. The standard is very high, and I think we all strive for that. We all have a deep passion creatively, personally, spiritually to make sure that happens for everyone, so the audience can have the best experience possible.

LISA DAWN CAVE I’m the production supervisor. I look at myself as the liaison between these folks and the associate designers. The associate designers take on what the original designers’ vision was. I connect the creatives, designers, and then I connect the locals. When you go to another country, they have to be connected with the local stagehands, producers, hair team. I oversee the trips when people go visit the countries and the maintenance trips that these folks do once they’re up and running. I’m also involved in scheduling when the designers have to check on the scenery to make sure it’s still in good shape; when things need to be replaced; if there needs to be a paint call to make things look what it was originally supposed to look like. I do visits with the lighting team to give notes back on what I might see in a show technically.

I will be around when the show is being put up to help with the scheduling, making sure it’s done in a certain timeframe and in a very efficient, productive way. You have to do site visits to see, how do we fit the show in those places? And looking to see what rehearsal space is needed because The Lion King takes a lot. It’s not a regular show that needs three studios for rehearsal. There’s all the puppets involved — the size, the lengths and the heights of the puppets. There’s the very developed makeup they do and teaching people how to do that because once everybody leaves, the local team has to keep that up. Same thing with the masks and how you incorporate the puppets on the bodies of the actual actors, dancers and musicians. How do you gradually do that, so no one gets hurt, no one gets injured? It’s a whole process, and it really takes a lot to do this.

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Meet Lisa Dawn Cave (Production Supervisor)

The production supervisor was born in Brooklyn and graduated from Purchase College at SUNY before spending a decade performing on stage in productions like Cats and the 1992 revival of Guys and Dolls. In produciton, she has worked on West Side Story, The Color Purple, Into the Woods and Parade, among others. She is a founding member of Black Theatre United and Broadway & Beyond: Access for Stage Managers of Color, and a recipient of the 2023 Tony Honors for Excellence in the Theatre.

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Clearly it’s a big commitment, and some of you have been doing this for more than a decade. Why do you continue to work with The Lion King?

CAVE I have to admit that I am a new person on the show. I actually joined The Lion King May 1 [of 2022], when the person that was doing it for 25 years moved on. So it’s been a learning process for me to know what this entails, how much it entails. The folks here have been really gracious with me. I’m still learning and I’m getting a hold of it, but it is a lot. The why for me is because I never get tired of listening to the show and watching the show and feeling this show. I’ve done a lot of shows before, and it’s like OK, it’s done, that was great. This one continually stays with you.

ISHMAEL This is the first show that I’ve been in for so long. Normally, you do one show, and then you move on to the next show. But for me, Lion King — it’s the music. It’s the depth of the music and the fact that you have the underscore from Hans Zimmer, which is beautiful. Then you have Elton John’s music, Mark Mancina’s music. In addition to that, there’s the choral music level. There are so many layers to it that I find it extremely rich. So to convey and teach that, I feel like it’s a privilege.

GRIFFITH I didn’t think that I’d last this long, quite frankly. The first year it was so hard. I thought, “What have I gotten myself into?” (Laughs.) But it’s just so extraordinary, and there’s so much detail involved. I think it’s the heart of the show. It’s the story of the show. Being based in Africa, and just all the backgrounds. We have a very diverse cast. I love the dancing. I love the music. I don’t think there’s any show like it. I started in very, very good times, but then as the years go on, and personal things happen in your life, the show starts to take on a different and deeper meaning. I find I connect with it even more in other ways — the family aspect, the community, the death, the losses, and then finding your way back. It’s very personal, and I think that’s why other people connect to it so deeply.

ISHMAEL When Marey talks about the diversity of the cast, that is hugely important wherever we go. It does something for your heart, I guess, to have all these people from all over the world coming together to perform this piece. It gives it a universality which increases the depth and the emotion of the show. These people from all over the world are coming to tell this one story and are connecting in that way. It’s quite powerful.

LYN That’s huge. There’s simply nothing else like it. I’ve been with the show now for 23 years, and I couldn’t imagine being on anything else for as long. I say to the cast on the very first day of rehearsal for a new production, “We know everything about The Lion King, yet we know nothing about it, because we haven’t done it with you yet.” It is true that each time we do it, each company is so different, and it is so meaningful, that it truly is a unique cultural and emotional experience as well as being hugely entertaining. We had a resident director in London — all of us have counterparts at the local productions who stay there — a great guy called Chris Hornby, who seven years ago sadly passed away very suddenly while he was doing the job.

In one of the last conversations I ever had with him, I said, “Hey Chris, do you ever think about moving to another show?” He’d been with the show for years, and he was somebody who jumped from show to show. He said, “I do, but then when I look around at other shows, I don’t think there’s anything like this that I want to go to.” That resonated with me when he said it. And, of course, it resonated with me when he passed because I was able to say hand-on-heart at his memorial service how great it is for somebody to say I’m doing exactly what I want to be doing.

ISHMAEL The only other thing I will say is we’ve been with the show for years. I’ve been with the show for as long as Ant has been with the show, and you go, why wouldn’t you move on? Because honestly, all the shows are the same, but they’re very different. Even the English-speaking countries, they are not the same. London is not the same as New York. New York is not the same as the tour. They’re different because the people are different. What they bring is something else to the show. There’s room and scope for this piece to have that kind of individuality, which keeps it running.

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Meet Anthony Lyn (Associate Director)

The associate director was born in Swansea, South Wales, and trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. The actor, director and teacher has worked on The Lion King since 1999, along with Broadway productions of Miss Saigon, Mary Poppins and Les Miserables. His other credits include the Tony Awards and Oscars, as well as The Late Show with David Letterman and The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. Lyn is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College.

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Lisa, you mentioned earlier the kind of technical maintenance that’s involved. What does that look like from the creative perspective, performance-wise?

LYN It’s happening on many continents and of course, it’s dealing with different people with many, many different levels of experience in the various performance forms and techniques that we require. You can have somebody who’s a talented, gifted and experienced singer who hasn’t acted very much. It’s about crafting what we do for each individual person in rehearsal. Finding a way to help them to interpret the material that is best for them, while at the same time, their true selves shine through, which is the mark of any good actor or performer. People say don’t they get bored doing the same thing night after night? Well, Shakespeare’s plays have been the same for hundreds of years.

There are ballets that the choreography has remained the same. There are operas where every word and move is exactly as it’s been. For this, it’s us going to them through a rehearsal period, finding out what those individuals need, and how to inspire and help teach them both the technical aspects, but also how to click into what they need to do emotionally. Then it’s continuing to reassess that each time we visit and see where a person is. It’s a very delicate balance between the creative between being like the team coaches, between psychology all the things that yeah, there are a lot of different elements.

ISHMAEL It’s really important that we choose our counterparts who are working on the ground. But it is very interesting because when we go to a company and watch a show, a lot of times we see things they don’t really see because they’re in it. We have an outside eye — an international outside eye — so we can say “this” needs to happen. When it comes to individual people working, I see my job as being to point out what they need to do and try and inspire them to do it. Sometimes when you repeat things over and over, you let the energy drop a little bit. So we come in there and give them a little bit of boost. We hired them in the beginning for a reason, and we have to remind them of that. And in those instances where maybe they need help — they might be injured, and their voices may have problems — it’s really important that we support them through that, too.

GRIFFITH From a movement standpoint, it can be quite overwhelming on the body when you first start The Lion King. You want to make sure that you hire the right people, especially dance-wise, to make sure that they understand their bodies and know how to take care of them. They’ll have a physio, but seven, eight, nine shows a week is a lot, especially if you’re doing the show for years. There are singers who have to do movement, actors have to do movement. It may take months to get into the show and feel what you have to do for your body, but those who love the show are there and do what is needed. But it isn’t easy, and it’s constant discipline. We have resident dance supervisors and all those people are very skilled. One in particular, Celise Hicks, is also the dance supervisor, so when there are things that I cannot do or need help with in other places, she’s always there. The dance in the show is really more concert dance as opposed to being more Broadway dance. So it’s very exact and precise, even the movement for the singers.

How do you approach finding the talent for your international productions?

LYN We have casting directors in each country around the world that we do the show who are charged with going out and finding people. Marey touched on just how different a dance style it is and the music having its roots in South Africa, so the casting directors need to look outside conventional theater circles, and they do. There’s also a lot of outreach into the community. Also, every production of The Lion King around the world has South African artists in it. We go to South Africa every year, and we hold extensive auditions to find South African artists who can come and be in the various companies around the world. Because of what’s been going on with COVID, we hadn’t been able to go for the last three years. But going there and doing those auditions is again, it’s another one of the unique elements of Lion King. Without it sounding patronizing, because the industry in South Africa is so small, for a lot of the people that we see who are successful and get cast in the show, it can be a life-changing experience.

ISHMAEL In addition to South Africa, we go to the Caribbean. There are people in the show from South America — all over the world. So the net is very, very wide. When Marey was talking about concert dance, it’s not your normal Broadway dance, so you have to look in different areas for these people. In terms of the singing, it’s the same thing. The show has a lot of raw talent in it. You have experienced performers, yes, but the majority it might be their first production. That takes a special kind of nurturing. What’s most pleasurable to me is when we hire someone who’s never done anything before, and they come in, blossom and they’re off. After all these years, I think we can recognize raw talent when we see it.

CAVE My job is very different from this. We don’t go out and audition folks. The associate designers are the ones that are going out and finding the stagehands and crafts that can actually maintain a show. But those skills are something you need to have to be able to paint scenery and be fine detailed. But on the technical part, we do get people that are very fresh out of school because it depends on where you are, what country you’re in, and the sources that are there. Some have people that have a lot of experience and some are novice that you have to train up. But the one similarity is that some people don’t know how you can actually transfer skills into the theater. You could be someone who grew up being a handyman with your dad doing carpentry. And if you look at a stage, things have to be built. So if you keep that mind open and you nurture that, people find out that a raw skill they have actually can be developed and be part of theater.

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Meet Marey Griffith (Associate Choreographer)

The associate choreographer spent eight years touring globally with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and joined The Lion King in 2000. She served as the co-choreographer on The Wizard of Oz in concert at Avery Fisher Hall featuring Nathan Lane, Joel Grey, Jewel and Natalie Cole, and has a number of TV and voices credits, including roles on soap operas As the World Turns and Another World.

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Can you speak about your experiences navigating the theater cultures and industries of multiple countries? Because there’s really only one Broadway, but you’re bringing that tier of a show to so many different places.

LYN I think it varies enormously, country to country. As far as the actual place where the show is performed, that’s decided on by Lisa Dawn, and her team and the management. That is all investigated in great detail. Some places that we go to have a very rich and long history of musical theater, and therefore they have rehearsal spaces that are used — although as Lisa Dawn also said, it’s unique for us as there aren’t many rehearsal spaces where you can walk in a giraffe.

We went to do a production in Manila. It was going to be an international tour, and we were rehearsing in a performance venue that was next to a funfair [traveling carnival]. So they said, “OK, we’ll take part of the parking lot, and we’ll build you a room for rehearsal.” It was a beautifully built structure in a parking lot next to the main building. The only thing that was funny and problematic was when they visited this venue, it was out of season, so the funfair next door wasn’t open. When we went to start rehearsal, the funfair was. (Laughs.) It was fine when we started rehearsal first thing in the morning, but the funfair would open at lunchtime and our room was next to a roller coaster. So every minute and a half we would hear everybody scream as they would come downhill right next to us.

ISHMAEL There are so many stories I could tell you about how we get to a place. In Mexico, I was rehearsing in the car park with just these walls, and when they use the elevator, all you would hear was a ding, ding, ding every few minutes. You have to roll with the punches and understand that they’re not used to this. A lot of places that we go, it’s the biggest show that they’ve ever done. Sometimes the only big show that they’ve ever done. We were in Brazil when they had heavy rains and everything came down. The roof collapsed on top of all the instruments.

GRIFFITH Everyone was running with the masks, the choreography books. (Laughs.)

ISHMAEL We have extraordinary circumstances a lot of times which is fun, though it wasn’t fun at the time. (Laughs.) But it happens because they want to do theater and we’re trying to make it possible. Lisa Dawn’s job, in those circumstances, it’s hard to coordinate that. So my hat goes off to the coordinator. But it’s entertaining when we do put up a new show in a place that hasn’t had anything like it before, for example, Madrid — which we thought was going to last maybe a year — it’s actually changed downtown Madrid. Now there’s shops, restaurants that weren’t there. That’s what opening does sometimes.

CAVE I want to jump on Madrid. When you talk about looking at places, I have to say walking into Madrid’s theater and going backstage, I learned more on that show than any show. You would never, ever think that that show could fit in that theater or backstage. But it’s so creative. The different things that you’d have to mount on top of each other to hang in a line, so you can fit three zebras. (Laughs.) Cutting up the graveyard. You bring it onstage, it’s in two pieces, but when they bring it offstage, it’s in four because it can’t fit onstage in two pieces. They had to find a way to cut it up to store it. When they bring it onstage, before the audience sees it, they have to put it back together again.

Also, backstage, the choreography is amazing. If anybody is out of line, you can get trampled by something. But that cast is so pristine because it has to be choreographed in order to fit in that theater. It’s the same thing going into different theaters. There’s the procession right at the top of the show, so where does that stuff get stored? Out in the lobby. So how do you block that off in an area that the audience has no idea the birth of the elephant is actually sitting there? (Laughs.) You have to do all that — look at the theater and ask, where can this go and not obstruct? Because the audience also has to have room in the lobby to come in and out. In the huge theater district in New York, we have those theaters that are tiny as I don’t know what. We run into that across the world, too, and you just have to go, “How do we make this work?”

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Meet Clement Ishmael (Music Supervisor)

The British-born, Canadian music supervisor has previously worked on the West End for productions of Five Guys Named Moe, Ain’t Misbehavin’ and Soul Train, among others. A conductor, composer and arranger, he graduated from the University of Toronto and Royal Conservatory of Music. His compositions and arrangements have been broadcast by BBC Television and Radio, and his opera Grazyna was performed at the Royal Opera House’s Lindbury Studio.

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Anthony, earlier, you mentioned the special events. How are the challenges of those smaller-scale, one-off productions different?

LYN It’s kind of like trying to answer, how long is a piece of string? It depends on what the event is; what they require; what the space is; are we indoors or outdoors? There are so many machinations to each event. These guys did a performance at the White House and that was very different from the performance we did for the Queen [Elizabeth II]. We had a press event in Zurich because the show was going on sale there. They wanted to have the cast perform at the press launch, and it was happening on national television. But it was a Saturday night, so they couldn’t have people that were in the show. We had to get people previously in the show to come back, rehearse and then fly to Zurich. The machinations of doing something for the queen in London versus doing Circle of Life in Times Square — which we did on the first day that Broadway came back, complete with the animals for Good Morning America — is so eclectic and different.

ISHMAEL When these events come up, the first thing is, what song are we going to sing? We want to make sure that we do different things, not just “Circle of Life.” They might request, “Oh, we want three minutes” or “We want two minutes and a half.” So we start with a piece of music and say, “OK, it’s going to be this long,” then we figure out what it’s going to be, who’s going to be playing it, whether we have it on tape or recorded. I’ll probably play it on the piano. You add an extra chorus here or there. And of course, it’s the sound elements as well. Will they be able to hear?

GRIFFITH It’s always very stressful for me. (Laughs.) It’s just a lot to do because, unfortunately, a lot of times they do want something like “Circle of Life.” I usually get the layout of the stage, whether it be tiny or big, and I have to figure out how we can make all that choreography happen in that place with the limitations that we have with time and with space. I quite like trying to find different ways of doing the same thing, but it can be scary at times because you don’t really know if it’ll work until you get to the actual place and rehearse it. You have to really think on your feet.

You’re taking the Broadway show to different countries, which means different languages and cultural references. How much do you adjust the show depending on its location?

ISHMAEL If we’re doing the show in different languages, the music has to adapt. For example, if we’re doing it in Germany, there’s more lyrics. So you have more choruses. The underscore is longer. It does change. I would say we keep the essence of the Broadway show, but each show is different. It has to be different because it’s in a different place and has different sensibilities. I think we’re flexible in that score. There are certain areas where we can actually play to the local audiences. Timon sings a song for distraction. It is the can-can in America, but in Paris, it’s the La vie parisienne. In Spain, it’s a sevillanas. So we make those changes because it’s got to be right for the local audiences as well.

CAVE Scenery-wise, there’s only a couple of things that are different, and it’s because of that theater, and what is it able to do. And scenery-wise, when you do accommodate, you’re not accommodating the local people. You’re accommodating the local structure. On the Broadway show, we have Pride Rock that comes through the deck. Then you have places on tour, you can’t do that because it’s like going in every city, ripping up their stage and their basement. So the rock comes in on a track from the wing. The theaters in Madrid and in Paris, even though those are actually stationary, where the show isn’t going to move, could that still fit in the basement? No. So they also use track.

GRIFFITH The choreography, for the most part, has pretty much stayed the same. We’ve had a refreshing in the last few years, but we do try to do the same choreography everywhere. And we seem to be able to find the dancers and the people that we need to do that.

LYN I think Clem said a very important point at the beginning. There are changes that that have to occur, and we do make a couple of small changes depending on location. There are some moments of humor that we can change, but for the most part, we want to ensure that the people who are going to see the show know that they are seeing Broadway’s Lion King. That it’s absolutely the essence of the show they would see if they went on vacation to New York and to watch the show on Broadway.

Interview edited for length and clarity.