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More Than Kids' Play
"The Lion King's' four young cubs find meaning in the musical
after a dizzying process to land their roles
By LYNNE
HEFFLEY, Times Staff Writer
 The
assignment: Interview the four 11-year-old actors who landed the plum
roles of Young Simba and Young Nala in Disney's blockbuster musical
"The Lion King," at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood.
The dread: That the interview would be a
quadruple dose of over-handled, over-groomed, self-important, stagy
little adults in kid clothes.
The reality: Adrian Diamond, Lisa Tucker,
KaRonn A. Henderson and Jazmn are four unjaded, friendly kid-next-door
types, albeit unusually talented. Starry-eyed at having been chosen
out of upward of 500 young hopefuls to alternate in the roles, they
were eager to share the experience--one heady roller coaster of an
experience by all accounts.
* * * In
"The Lion King," with its astonishing visual elements and
African rhythms, child actors are key to the first act. They play the
lion cubs: Young Simba--prince and heir to majestic King Mufasa--and
Young Nala--Simba's playmate and future wife.
The roles require kids with big, musical
voices; kids who can dance up a storm, perform acrobatics, run
fleet-footed up and down huge set pieces, fearlessly "fly,"
stay on cue while riding enormous, rainbow-colored ostriches and not
trip over their lion tails. They must be able to show emotional range,
too--from playful exuberance, fear and anger to grief for a king and
father.
Adrian, who hails from the Stevenson Ranch
community in the Santa Clarita Valley, and Baldwin Hills resident
KaRonn are the new Young Simbas; the Young Nalas are Lisa, who is from
Anaheim, and Jazmn, who has come a long way--from Florida--to be in
the show.
For Adrian, all lean intensity and fervent
enthusiasm, "it's a dream to be part of something this big and
this grand." KaRonn, with an earnest and endearing volubility,
opened his long-lashed brown eyes wide to emphasize how excitedly he
was "jumping from couch to couch," when he got the part.
 Lisa,
her sweet, sunny face framed with a cloud of long dark hair, said that
when she was auditioning, "I prayed to God that he would help me
get this show and I would just do my best." Soft-spoken Jazmn,
striking with a tumble of glossy black ringlets, said, "I just
think it's really, like, amazing, because I've never really been in
anything. When I got it, it was like [she screams], 'oh, my gosh!'
"
"I've always wanted to do this, since the
day I was born," Adrian added. "Like Jazmn, I've only done,
like, school plays and things like that. I just think it's
awesome."
The budding actors now have many weeks of
intense rehearsals and performances under their belts, but each had
limited experience before being tapped for the show. KaRonn had done
commercials and the former UPN comedy "Shasta," but had only
sung in church. His audition piece was James Weldon Johnson's landmark
anthem "Lift Every Voice and Sing," "the only song I
really knew before I started doing this."
Jazmn had done some public gigs for Radio
Disney at festivals, sporting events and elsewhere, but was still shy
when it came to singing solo. "It made me nervous and I'd sing
low and fade out," she confided.
 Adrian
explained that "in my family, we just get up, turn on the radio
and just sing and dance. We have a good time in our own living room
without any TV or anything, so I've been taught that sense of rhythm
since I was really small."
Lisa, meanwhile, was a one-year singing
and acting veteran of the Orange County Children's Theatre. "I've
been singing since I could talk," she said, eyes shining.
Pre-"Lion King," her biggest public appearance was at an
Angels baseball game, where she sang the national anthem.
Auditioning for the Cast
Auditions, including numerous
call-backs, were held between April and June. Kids came to open calls,
and others were recommended by schools, dance studios, voice teachers,
YMCAs and theaters.
Winnowed down to "maybe 5 or
6" finalists, according to casting director Mark Brandon of New
York-based Binder Casting, the final four were chosen by the show's
creative team, headed by Tony Award-winning "Lion King"
director, costume designer and mask and puppet co-designer Julie
Taymor.
"Especially the boys," Brandon
noted, "they carry the entire first act of the show, and they
have to be dynamic personalities who can act, and sing and dance. The
girls need a very specific look and to be really strong singers and
actresses and be able to move. When you're talking about an age range
of 9 to 12, that's a lot to ask of a child."
But "The Lion King" child
actors had to have something besides talent, Brandon said. They needed
"that indefinable thing," an appeal that could reach out
into a 2,700-plus-seat house like the Pantages. That meant
"children who are not necessarily show-biz kids, not trained,
coached children. We look for kids who enjoy being kids."
The chosen four refreshingly fit that
description. Sitting in one of the Pantages' utilitarian rehearsal
rooms for their interview, they quickly loosened up, sharing giggles
and the camaraderie of their experiences, clearly happy to have
friends their own age to hang out with.
How did they prepare for the auditions,
especially since none had seen the show? Vocal coaches, to be sure,
but parents and siblings were a big help--sometimes inadvertently:
Jazmn did "a bunch of practicing with my mom, and my sister would
be Simba." Lisa practiced "in my living room with my mom and
dad. I'd just do a whole bunch of lion moves."
Adrian found inspiration in watching his
little brother and sister "play and chase after each other. I
tried to take some of that and put it into my performance." A
nifty lion pose came to KaRonn when he got into an angry crouch during
a play fight with his sister ("she likes to play beat me
up," he said with a grin.)
His mom, Shirell Henderson, "showed
me how to move my arms and legs and stuff." Mom also took him to
a football field to practice when they found out that the part
required "all this acrobatic stuff," KaRonn said. "I
would do cartwheels on the grass, and each day we practiced, I got
better at it." He's determined to nail the back flip, too.
"I'm still practicing."
There have been many challenges since
the auditions. One, for Adrian and KaRonn in particular, was to play
off the masks and puppets that the principal actors wear or
manipulate, and not look at the actors' faces.
Rufus Bonds Jr. for instance, as Simba's
father, Mufasa, wears a majestic Lion King mask fitted above his face,
not over it. John Vickery, as wicked Uncle Scar, has a similar
arrangement, except that Vickery can maneuver the Scar mask so that it
stretches dramatically and threateningly forward.
If the kids look at the actors' faces
while exchanging dialogue, it will spoil the character illusions.
"The first day in rehearsal, I had
no clue that the mask did that," Adrian said. "It just came
at me, and I'm like, gee, that's scary."
"You always look at a person when
you're talking to him. But the mask is way up here," adds KaRonn,
pointing above his head, "and you're not used to looking way up
to talk to someone, unless that person's as tall as Shaq."
(Besides acting, KaRonn's dream is to one day play for the Lakers.)
He's grateful to Vickery, he said, who,
noticing the trouble KaRonn was having in making the Scar mask his
focal point, took him aside. "He had me look at [the mask] for
like 10 minutes, so I could get used to it," KaRonn said.
"It worked."
"I had to practice really hard to
get the 'Nala attitude' they wanted," Lisa volunteered.
"She's tough and she doesn't let anybody get in her way."
Nala's "happy side," said Jazmn, reflects her own feelings.
"I'm bouncing and I'm smiling because I'm happy and the show
makes me happy."
Despite all the work that continues
daily, and even though they know what's behind the makeup and how the
stage magic is done, each finds something different in the show that
resonates in a personal way.
For Lisa, it's the eulogy scene in which
Young Nala mourns the loss of her king and her best friend,
"because I know how it feels to lose someone you have feelings
for."
Adrian identifies with "the joy and
the curiosity that Simba has, 'cause it kind of feels like me."
"The thing that feels real to me
isn't sad, it's scary," said Jazmn. "It's the chase."
(The lion cubs are pursued by the villainous Hyenas, Scar's henchmen.)
"I run and I have to be fast, and when you're scared you have to
be fast, so it really feels real to me."
"They Live in You," the show's
big father-and-son emotional moment, rings truest for KaRonn, when
Mufasa is trying to teach Simba about proper behavior and his heritage
as a future monarch.
"It's just like something your real
father would tell you," he said. "If you did something that
you weren't supposed to do, you know at home that he's going to talk
to you about it. Mufasa is trying to tell Simba the things he knows so
that when Mufasa dies, Simba will know and can pick up on it."
During the interview, the young actors'
parents were an unobtrusive presence. As they listened to their
alternately thoughtful and effervescent offspring, there wasn't a hint
of the stage parent stereotype.
Afterward, they took turns talking about
what has been both a nerve-racking and a thrilling family experience.
Lucrece Guy, Jazmn's mom, said that she
and her husband decided that she would quit her job and temporarily
relocate in Long Beach with Jazmn and Jazmn's sister, while her
husband and son remained in Florida. The family's bicoastal
arrangement is "kind of stressful," but worth it, she said.
"I wanted to support her, so I'm doing it 100%; this is my
full-time job."
The Parents' Point of View
Helena Diamond said that she took some
convincing to involve Adrian in show biz. Persuaded by friends and
teachers--and her eager son--she found a manager for him through an ad
in L.A. Parent magazine.
"We were totally blind, had no
clue," she said with a laugh. When the manager asked if Adrian
could sing, she responded, " 'Yeah, I guess.' I didn't
know." (Her husband Harold said later that Adrian's participation
depends on him keeping his grades up. The children attend school at
the theater with a tutor.)
"The Lion King" was Adrian's
sixth-ever audition.
Lisa's road to the Pantages began when
her father, Stan Tucker, decided she should have professional training
after he saw her in the backyard one day, "standing on the diving
board and singing to the sky." Voice lessons led to roles at the
Orange County Children's Theatre, where she learned of "The Lion
King" auditions.
For KaRonn to audition was "a
natural," said Jamie Henderson, because he and his wife had first
realized their son's gifts when KaRonn memorized, on his own,
everyone's part in an elementary school production.
Since the "cubs" must be
fairly diminutive physically, the young actors, presently so small and
lithe, are aware that their days in the show are numbered--six months
or so is average, said Brandon; for the same child to play the role
for as much as a year is rare.
All Good Things Come to an End
So, there was a bit of wistfulness in
the air when these 11-year-olds talked about having fun while it
lasts, and about the friends they've made, and how
"down-to-earth" and just plain nice the whole company is. As
his three new friends nodded agreement, KaRonn put it this way,
looking down at the table, his voice becoming softer and more hesitant
as he spoke:
"This is a Broadway show that a kid
can rarely do for a long time, 'cause he's going to grow--or she's
going to grow--so I'm just taking it as the opportunity I have, and
I'm going to keep on having fun. But when this is over . . . everyone
that's in the cast, I'm going to miss . . . very much."
BE THERE
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