We experience each other’s sorrow and happiness.”
To me, those memories are my happiest experiences,” she emphasizes. “They come around and you see them-this little bitty thing that you did a baby shower for-and they tell you they’re graduating or going to college. The actors have watched each other’s children grow up, Diamini shares. Hamiton performed throughout her two pregnancies and she says that her children, now 9 and 12, have had a strong connection with the music of The Lion King from the time they were babies. The cast has become an extension of the actors’ families. They saw it when they were kids and now they’re bringing their kids.” And then people tell you that they’ve been here 12 times, coming to see the show. “Every time it’s a different audience member, but it’s almost the same reaction. “I’m one of the bird ladies, and when I come down the aisle I see almost the same reaction from the time we started the show 20 years ago,” Diamini says. It transcends all cultural barriers, racial barriers-it’s just transcendent,” she notes. “There is something that connects people about the opening of the show. And 13 years later, that iconic moment still resonates with her in every performance. “I had goosebumps,” Hamilton says, of the moment when she first heard “Circle of Life” from a performer’s perspective. Her opening night in the role of Shenzi the hyena was magical. “It was a good drive,” Hamilton laughs, “even though I was stopped by the police.” In her excitement, Hamilton may have been driving just a little over the speed limit-but when she eagerly told the officer she was going to appear in The Lion King, he issued her a warning, rather than a ticket, and told her he hoped to see her on Broadway one day. Near the end of a whirlwind day that included a six-hour round-trip drive to New York City, two auditions and two callbacks, she learned that she was cast in both shows. Just out of graduate school, Hamilton was in Albany performing in a production of Ain’t Misbehavin’ when she learned she’d booked two auditions for her day off. It was such an amazing experience.”īonita Hamilton is a 13-year veteran of the musical.īy the time Bonita Hamilton joined the cast of The Lion King in 2004, the show was a blockbuster.
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“But that’s when we learned how to move with the hyena legs, walking like you have four legs. “I really had no clue until we saw the amazing, amazing costumes,” she recalls, and she was also fortunate to learn from the puppet master himself, Michael Curry. Diamini’s reading and movement skills landed her a part in the company, and then she began to understand Taymor’s vision. “At first when they said, ‘We’re going to do The Lion King, I really didn’t understand how human actors could do it it should have animals,” she recalls thinking. from her native South Africa for the show Sarafina!, but opted to remain in New York and see what she could make happen. Lindiwe Diamini, who has been with The Lion King since it opened in 1997.ĭiamini was a 19-year-old actress when she first learned of auditions for the new musical. You saw people happy… crying… screaming… It was all at once and it was extremely overwhelming,” remembers Lindiwe Dlamini, who was part of the company on November 13, 1997-the show’s official opening night-and who remains with The Lion King to this day. “When we came down the aisle during the first number, ‘Circle of Life,’ people were in tears. Julie Taymor’s groundbreaking adaptation of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ beloved film The Lion King used puppetry, masks, and innovative staging to bring the African savanna to the Great White Way. Twenty years ago, Rafiki’s stirring call rang out through Broadway’s New Amsterdam Theatre for the first time.