John Xintavelonis, a Tasmanian actor who played the part of Pumbaa the warthog in the Melbourne version of The Lion King gave an entertaining address at the National Puppetry Summit. As well as relating some amusing behind the scenes experiences, he said that although some regarded Disney as the McDonalds of the theatre world because it runs the exact same show using a rigid script in numerous countries around the world, he felt it should be encouraged for several reasons:

It provides big chunks of work for actors/ puppeteers, 10 to 18 months of work or more, on a good wage.

The success of The Lion King will mean that more such work will follow, too. Tarzan is already playing on Broadway and I think The Little Mermaid was also mentioned.

Puppetry enables the story to go live on stage, and to differentiate the look from the animated film versions, so its generating live puppetry as big theatre.

Disney don’t publicly call The Lion King puppetry (they employ actors and singers rather than puppeteers) because they don’t want it labelled as a kids show, so they are actually working towards framing the artform for adults, and getting away from the common preconception that puppetry is only for children.

John also wanted to encourage people to diversify and be prepared to learn other skills. He had started as an actor and diversified into singing and now puppetry, and felt it paid returns.

(My attendance at the puppetry summit was supported by the ACT Government)