Word: hakuna
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...grassland system," and as one fellow steps into the open-air vehicle, he asks, "Is it air-conditioned?" No, mate, this is reality. Real crocodiles lazing primordially below that rickety bridge. Actual cheetahs motoring their stretch-limo bodies across the savanna. Genuine loamy smell over there near the warthog. (Hakuna matata, guys--it's only nature's perfume...
...Stop to gaze at--then try, just try to tear yourself away from--the terrarium of mole rats, burrowing or eating or just collapsed in a pile like a failed pyramid of cheerleaders. In a cloudy tank, two hippos float with hefty grace. Meerkats (completing The Lion King's "hakuna matata" trio) stand sentinel on a hill, gazing through glass at suspected predators: us. Finally, an ennead of gorillas--four bachelors on one side of a waterfall, a family of five safely on the other--scuff their knuckles as they proudly prowl...
...anyone who has seen The Lion King knows, Hakuna Matata means "no worries," but on this July afternoon in Minneapolis, Minn., director Julie Taymor has plenty of them. She is in rehearsals for her new stage version of Disney's animated film about Simba the lion cub and his struggle to take his rightful place as king of beasts. Her long, dark hair pulled back and an intense expression on her face, Taymor is trying to work out some kinks in the Hakuna Matata number, which ends the first act. The pop-up cactus plants need to inflate sooner...
...might appear that Disney has hakuna matata'd right off the deep end. Taymor's highly stylized theater work--using masks, puppetry, mime and other non-Western techniques--seems as far from classic Disney animation (and from those dancing teapots in Broadway's Beauty and the Beast) as one can imagine. Taymor admits she was surprised when Thomas Schumacher, a Disney vice president, first asked her if she would like to develop a theatrical concept for The Lion King. "I'm sure if they find something that doesn't work, they'll tell me," she says. "But they asked...
...Dining Services Director Michael P. Berry was exploring a whole new world at Disney, the search for his successor wasn't all hakuna matata...