First Night of The Lion King

Last week the first night of the well-known Broadway musical “The Lion King” was held at Astrakhan State University; the play was a great success.

Isn’t it a joke?!

It was our Rector Alexander Lunyov who had the original idea to stage this musical at our University. The first stage of our students’ socialization campaign, the Theater Festival in particular, has revealed that there are a lot of talented students at ASU and that they all should be involved in large-scale activities. “When Professor Lunyov suggested we staged The Lion King, we were slightly shocked - we thought he was joking”, Dr. Galina Palatkina, Dean of ASU’s Department of Pedagogics, Social Work, & Physical Training, the musical producer, confesses. “We were afraid even to think how much human, financial, and other resources were necessary for that. But Rector believed our students would cope with this huge project well”.

During the preparation to the second stage of the socialization campaign - Big Dances at ASU and the Battle of Choirs at ASU - Dr. Palatkina, remembering about her talk with Rector, suggested that her Department took a fragment of The Lion King as a vocal number and made some kind of a promotion version. It took over two months to prepare the six-minute play…

Getting Ready for First Night

“1.5 years at least”, that was the term Mr. Alexey Matveev, the stage director of the Astrakhan Drama Theater who is in close cooperation with ASU, named when he heard about such plans for the first time. The project participants - actors, choreographers, musicians, gaffers, etc. - had to spend hundreds of hours for rehearsals, to prepare the scene, to record music, to break down tracks into separate voices, to create a video picture, to arrange mise-en-scenes, to sew costumes, to say nothing of innumerable other things. Inspired with the successful promotion version, everyone was involved in the huge work - from students to staff of the Dean’s office: before each rehearsal, they were calling all the participants of the socialization projects (about 750 people!), inviting them to come to auditions, and tackling technical issues. Dr. Galina Palatkina, besides the general supervision of the preparation process, has designed the costumes and sewn over 80 ones together with professional seamstresses and three students within 3 months.

As it has turned out, tackling technical difficulties was far less than enough. It was also necessary to organize the actors’ work. Some of them couldn’t bear the hard rehearsal schedule; others couldn’t combine their studies with rehearsals; some students simply did not have enough patience… However, the play organizers were able to motivate the participants in the right way: eventually, after months of enormous work, a real team of actors has come to the scene; it included about 60 students of nine ASU’s Departments.

The first night was really bright - that was the unanimous opinion expressed by the audience. The distinguished guests of the musical - Mr. Konstantin Markelov (Government Chairman of Astrakhan Region) and Mr. Vitaliy Gutman (Minister of Education & Science of Astrakhan Region) - were amazed with the large scale of the play, with the young actors’ professional-level performance, and with the unique entourage. “Frankly speaking, I wasn’t quite satisfied with the outcome”, Dr. Palatkina says. “This is not the final product that Mr. Matveev, the actors, and personally I could imagine. It’s rather the very beginning of a large creative process, some kind of a general rehearsal. We’re facing numerous tasks: to prepare a second (maybe a third) team of actors, to make links between episodes, and to enhance the video picture and the vocal numbers. But we’re greatly pleased with our actors’ reaction to their own performance, with their shining eyes, and with their wish to play better next time. That’s the most important thing for me as for a Dean and a teacher”.

Deep Impact upon Entire Astrakhan Region

The musical staging is of real importance not just for students of our University (who learn teamwork and communication skills, leadership qualities and an ability to defend their view-points during the musical preparation campaign), but also all the people of Astrakhan Region. “This project will play a great social role, first of all, for people living in north-western districts of Astrakhan: there are no theaters in those areas except for our Leisure Center. We’re aware of our social responsibility, and we’ll certainly work to attract local people to watch theater plays”, Dr. Palatkina concludes.

Show Must Go On!

The organizers are planning to present The Lion King to students of Astrakhan’s high schools and to staff of various public organizations of our region. They have applied to register a copyright, which will determine the further fate of the musical.

Right after the first night, the actors have gone to the town of Tolyatti (Samara Region) to present our University and our Region at the 2014 Russian Student Spring. That has become possible thanks to the fact that the fragment of The Lion King shown at the regional stage of the Festival has got a grand prix. This performance has highly been assessed at the national level as well: our students have taken the 1^st place in the nomination “Variety Vocal”!

Russian original information source: T.Yu. Gavrilkina (the Innovative Laboratory of Information Linguistics of ASU)

Russian original photo source: T.I. Vasilyeva, E.V. Fedyulina (the TV Media Center of ASU)