Thursday, July 24, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
the lion king and creative solutions
The Lion King is unique in that we see how the magic works on stage. There's no attempt to cover up the wheels and cogs that make it all happen. The human beings that control the puppets and wear the animal masks are fully seen. As an audience member at The Lion King you have an important job: With your imagination, you are invited to mix the "animal" with the human into a magical whole. As Julie Taymor says, "When the human spirit visibly animates an object, we experience a special, almost life-giving connection. We become engaged by both the method of storytelling as well as the story itself."
"Disney animated characters are so expressive -- they're animals, but they're very human animals," Taymor continues. "I had to play with keeping some of the 'character' of the Disney characters, so that they're recognizable. But then, I was also very inspired by African masks, which are much more abstract, much more stylized, much more essential, less soft and round. Because we're doing three-dimensional theater, I didn't want the faces to look flat, I wanted them to have a kind of depth, like wood has. So I used texture and organic materials, fibers, wood -- things that would make it less cartoonlike."
"In contrast to the continually changing facial expressions in the animated film, a mask can project a single, fixed attitude," she says. "The sculptor has only one opportunity to incorporate the anger, humor, and passion of a character, to tell his or her whole story."
"I thought, what if I create these giant masks that really are clearly Scar and Mufasa, but then the human face is revealed below, so that you're not losing the human facial expression, you're not hiding the actor?"
To create the masks and puppets in The Lion King Taymor worked with Michael Curry, one of the country's leading puppet experts. Curry had worked with Taymor on several of her films and operas. With background in engineering as well as puppetry, he would create the technical design of the characters.
Taymor and Curry's first step in creating the theatrical world of The Lion King was to craft the masks for Mufasa and Scar. Could a balance be found between the recognizable characters from the animated film and the human actors?
The lions' costumes also helped to create this duality. While the human qualities of the lions come out in the African-styled beadwork, corsets, armor, and cloth, the costumes use silk cloth to negate the human shape, breaking the shoulder line, enhancing the powerful joints and thighs.
Monday, May 19, 2008
What you can't stop ...
You can only hope to contain!
InDesign just can't keep up with us. Actual error message documented 5.19.08 @ 10:23 am.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
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