Last week I went to go see The Lion King at the Sunderland
Empire Theatre and had a backstage tour at the end of it by one of the cast
members. I found that when I went to go see the show, I was just as captivated
by the costumes as I was by the actual show. I thought that the costumes were very
inventive and well thought out, and managed to make even minor objects like
grass and ant hills into costumes like they were actual characters.
The masks I thought were very well designed and added to the
show and helped to portray the characters in a way that just normal make up
wouldn't have been able to do. I liked the fact that it wasn't a conventional stage
production, where everything happened on the stage, in this show it made some
of the songs more dramatic when the characters would enter from the back, this
in a way engaged the audience, because they were looking around during the
songs to see where the other animals would enter from.
After the show I was lucky enough to have a backstage tour
with two of my friend that I went to go see the show with, by one of the cast
members that was in the ensemble. She showed us around the backstage area where
they kept the props and we were allowed to hold some of them. We were also
allowed onto the stage itself, and I found that everything was a lot bigger up
close and personal than it is when you’re watching from the audience. The last
place that we were shown was underneath the stage, which was where the ensemble
had to change costumes. This space was very cramped for the amount of people
that had to change there, there was also all through the backstage labels on
the floor for where other characters had to get changed in the hallways.
Walking
around the backstage I realised that working on a theatre production could end up
being very fast paced and quite stressful. However, this does not put me off
wanting to get experience in that field on work.
Scar & Mufasa from the stage production The Lion King
Timon & Pumbaa from the stage production The Lion King
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