From Nebraska Shakespeare to Scar

By

March 6th, 2013

Omaha, NE — The hit Broadway Musical The Lion King will leap onto the Orpheum Theater stage for a 5-week run starting March 12th.
[audio:https://kvnonews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Mixdown.mp3]
Now entering its 16th year, Disney’s Broadway Musical The Lion King has had 20 global productions and been seen by more than 66 million people. If you took each production and ran them one after the other, the run of the show would run for 96 years. It’s been translated into seven different languages and received more than 70 major arts awards including a New York Drama Critics Circle Award, a Tony Award, and a Grammy. According to Timothy Carter, who plays Scar in the Broadway Tour coming to Omaha next week, the key to all of the show’s success lies with its Director and Supervisor, Julie Taymor.

“She completely rethought the whole look of the show and so the visual elements of the show, which are so beautiful and so strong, are entirely her creation and in my opinion that’s the reason the show is still running after all these years. She’s such a brilliant visual artist and created images of such beauty and spectacle.”

Timothy Carter as Scar

Timothy Carter as Scar

Carter, a native of Lexington Kentucky, previously played Scar for 3 years on tour before leaving show for another 3 years. After that hiatus, Disney contacted Carter about reprising his role for the current tour and Carter accepted. For him, playing the role of Scar is a constant process, one he is always tweaking show after show. One of the biggest challenges, Carter said, is working the 40-pound costume complete with an animatronic mask that he controls throughout the show.

“It does restrict your movement in certain ways, but it also offers opportunities to really use it as an instrument. To express yourself through movement and through the mask.”

This isn’t Carter first time working on an Omaha stage. Back in 2005, he worked with Shakespeare on the Green.

“I was there doing two plays. I did Richard III and Merry Wives of Windsor with Nebraska Shakespeare Festival. I remember the great audiences, some of the biggest audiences I’ve ever performed for, some nights about 5,000 people in the park there in Omaha.”

Since working with the Shakespeare Festival, Carter’s career has progressed nicely to his current position with the Lion King Tour. For those actors who have dreams of playing a Broadway show someday, Carter offered this advice:

“I’d say get really good training and keep training all your life, I know I do. I’m always trying to raise the level of my work. There are always skills, whether in this case it’s singing, which I never really worked on strongly until I got this show. The larger skill set you have, the more chances for getting work.”

But really good training isn’t all of the equation. You must also look at yourself as your own small business.

“I’d say you also have to be a very smart business person. Talent is one of the things that will get you work, but it’s only one of them. You have to be really smart about knowing who the players are in the business, striking up relationships and friendships, and being a smart business person.”

You can see Timothy Carter in the role of Scar in upcoming Broadway Tour of Disney’s The Lion King coming to the Orpheum Theater March 12th and running through April 7th. For more information visit TicketOmaha.com

Comments are closed.

©2023 KVNO News