The company that made our childhood fun-filled with entertainment is all set to add another feather to its hat. Disney India is all set to bring the classic cult story of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ in a Broadway style. This is the first time the mouse house is getting the concept of a stage musical for the Indian market after having won hearts of audiences across 28 countries.
The best part about this venture is that since its happening in India, it will comprise of a complete Indian cast for the Broadway show. The managing director of Disney India, Siddharth Roy Kapur stated they believe India has a lot of untapped talent and has fine artists in the arts, music, dance and theatre genre, which is why they will be targeting in getting only the Indian talent on board.
While sharing his marketing plans with exclusively AnimationXpress.com, Siddharth Roy Kapur said: “Right now we really have our focus on Mumbai and Delhi; we carry out a lot of localised marketing efforts where we use print, radio, outdoor and also digital marketing. We also use our entire network might for promotions of in-house productions and have a few innovations which we don’t want to reveal right now. We are pretty sure we will be able to reach out to the right families in each of these cities.”
On being asked about their plans to adapt their Broadway show in different languages since India is a multi-lingual country, he explained: “You know English is one of the first or close second languages for most people, who are the audiences for such kind of shows. So we believe that we have the English singing talent who would be able to deliver such kind of performances. Many countries around the world have English as a third or fourth language and those are the places where we decided not to do in English but in their local language.”
Disney India promises to bring in the best of the hidden talent in India who will work closely with the renowned international artistes to recreate the musical in India. Some eminent personalities who have been actively involved in making this broadway to be a grand success are, Vikrant Pawar who is the show director and creative head, live entertainment at Disney India, Nishant Kenkre, the Project Head and Varsha Jain looking into the conceptualising of the larger than life set design. The music direction will be by Lesle Lewis, while Terence Lewis has been roped in for the choreography. Gavin Miguel shall be looking after the costume design, Pallavi Devika for the makeup and hair-do section and Suzanne D’Mello to train the performers for the vocals.
Getting a still unfamiliar concept of Broadway to India, which is already a connoisseur of the fine- art forms, was no easy task for Disney. It had to finalise only 18 lead performers out of the 8,000 applicants. The 130 minute live musical stage show will make its grand entry to India in October at Mumbai’s NSCI SVP stadium and Delhi’s Thyagaraj Sports complex.
For the ones expecting more Disney properties coming to the Broadway, Kapur mockingly said, “Just wait and watch!”
(With inputs from Prerna Kothari)