A Cattle Call for ‘The Lion King’

With virtually all of them dressed in black leather jackets, jeans and heavy boots, they might have been waiting to buy the latest hot album release or tickets to a concert.

Except their smiles were a whole lot brighter and more practiced than most.

And they were nervous.

By 9 a.m. Saturday, more than 100 young and aspiring actors stood in line outside Hollywood’s Henry Fonda Theatre for an open-call audition to begin a half-hour later. They were hoping to become the next Simba or Nala, leading roles in the Los Angeles theatrical production of Disney’s “The Lion King.” The much-lauded musical opens in a newly refurbished Pantages Theatre, across Hollywood Boulevard from the Fonda, on Oct. 19.

Casting directors have been conducting Actors’ Equity union auditions for the show all week, but this was the moment for complete unknowns. Ads in trade publications and on the radio drew them in for that one-in-a-million chance to be discovered. The roles of the two leading lions, the ads said, call for “young men and women, ages 18 to 25, who can sing, dance and act,” and “require actors who have a strong rock / pop voice, sex appeal and charm.” But what they didn’t say was that the actors only got about two minutes to prove they have it all.

Joe Sepulveda, 25, was first in line at the theater; he had come at 6 a.m. from his home in Pico Rivera. Although he’s only done small theater productions, Sepulveda said he was prepared. “I figure there’s a better chance here than in the lottery,” he said with a laugh.

Patricia Elzie, 20, a student at USC, where she’s currently playing Peppermint Patty in “Snoopy!!!,” came to sing “Someone Like You,” with her “Snoopy” stage manager. “She’s the one with the car,” Elzie explained. Tati Le of Rancho Dominguez was hopeful because she’d once been called back at an open audition for “Rent,” and Lorinda Hawkins came with some friends from Altadena and her 2-year-old son, Emmanuel.

When the line was cut off at noon, half an hour past the announced time, 176 people had handed in their resumes and promotion pictures, and many more were still awaiting their turn.

Before the auditions began, lead casting director Mark Brandon of New York’s Binder Casting said he was hoping to find raw talent.

“We look for a wide variety of talent and experience, but we also look for people who have never done a single thing on stage before. A lot of people from the original cast hadn’t had Broadway experience before; we can mold people,” he said.

“We look for a wide variety of things--people who are in the recording industry, or who are actors who sing, or models who used to sing in school and end up having natural voices and are natural actors.”

It’s the L.A. dream, but it’s not an easy drill, and it’s not surprising that few fortunes are made this way: After waiting in the cold outside, the actors came in and had to wait again in the lobby, where there was nowhere to warm up their vocal cords because the holding area was within earshot of auditions taking place onstage.

In the theater, actors were admitted one by one to make the long walk down the aisle to the stage where, at a small folding table, sat Brandon, who works full time casting “Beauty and the Beast” and “Lion King” for the various Disney productions, and “Lion King” associate producers Michele Steckler and Ken Denison. Pianist Todd Schroeder was the first to greet the applicants; he took the sheet music and immediately began to play.

Actors’ voices cracked regularly from nerves and inexperience. From gospel-level boldness to barely a whisper, their range was immediately evident. Some removed jackets to reveal scanty clothing, with bare midriffs or muscular builds underneath. Brandon quickly cut off the singers and politely thanked each by name, giving no sign of what he thought.

Nicole Pryor, a 20-year-old student at Pepperdine University, came for a second try. She’d auditioned earlier in the week at an Equity call at Screenland in Burbank, despite the fact that she is not an Equity member. They let her in anyway, she said, and when she returned Saturday to give it another shot, Brandon remembered her. He asked her to sing the same song she’s done on Monday, one by Celine Dion, and the advertising major was in shock. “I can’t believe he remembered me!” she yelled afterward outside the theater.

To be sure, most roles go to actors with at least some professional experience: Heather Hedley, who originated the role of Nala on Broadway, for example, was found in the Toronto cast of “Ragtime.” But Bashirra Creswell, who this summer took over the Broadway role, was cast the day after graduating from college. And Sonya Leslie, a member of the original cast and a Nala understudy, was found at a previous open call in Los Angeles.

So there’s hope. And by late Saturday, Brandon said he’d found “three or four call-backs.”