So it would have been easy to put them into funny animal costumes. “They can emote with their faces their voices. “You don’t want to hide the actors,” he explained. Reilly is the puppet supervisor for this tour and says director Julie Taymor’s original vision was to have the actors be as much a part of the performance as the puppets themselves.

“He can blink his eyes,” Michael Reilly said of the Zazu puppet, while demonstrating the two hand controllers that independently operate many of the bird’s features. There’s a whole menagerie backstage, quietly waiting to be brought to life by the puppeteers who don’t just operate them but embody them. “We call her Bertha,” Westmoreland chuckled, pointing up to the two person costume that hangs from the ceilings off stage left.

That jaw-dropping opening includes a parade of puppets down the aisles, from small spiraling birds to an enormous elephant. “I remember seeing it and literally having to say, ‘Brian, close your mouth!’ because my mouth was wide open with excitement and awe,” he recalled. Just ask production stage manager Brian Westmoreland, who watches the opening every single night, and says it still fills him with the same wonder as when he saw it for the first time.

The Lion King runs at the Pantages through March 26, 2023.

This is the first time the show has returned to LA since 2013.

It has been performed for over 100 million people worldwide.

The Lion King opened on Broadway in 1997.

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