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When Gabriel Croom, ’99, first saw that getup, he said to himself, “No way.”
The costume itself wasn’t the problem, even with its towering headgear. What concerned him were the four stilts.
Six years after graduating from SUNY Fredonia’s musical theatre program, Croom made his Broadway debut in January 2005 when he was hired permanently to act and sing inside the body of a giraffe for Disney Theatrical’s The Lion King, directed by Julie Taymor. His job required him to walk on his arms and legs atop those stilts, as well as perform aerial dancing while being winched up to a harness.
Today Croom is completely comfortable in his “second skin.” Instead, he’s more likely to wax enthusiastic about the amazing engineering in the costume’s design that allows a man to move around stage and sing while balancing a giraffe-head “helmet” above his shoulders.
The full costume rises 26 feet above the stage, but the man inside of it stands less than a fourth of that. The show demands extraordinary physical stamina and discipline, but Croom downplays it. “It’s not that hard,” he said recently. “I’m not completely hunched over. The aerial dancing isn’t as hard as walking on stilts.”
Each man-animal that comprises the cast is a visual combination of the actor, who is revealed in an obvious way (Croom’s face, for example, is displayed at the base of the giraffe’s neck), and the costume, which lends the animal its singular mystique. The show has won six Tony Awards, including one for best costume design in a musical.
On stage, Croom is part of a spectacle. As a giraffe, he sings with the chorus, and as a swinging vine, he flies about in the air. He is also an understudy for one of three principal hyenas. Again, his agility and athleticism are called into play—for hyenas have only one speed: fast; and they love to dart, hustle and scoot around the stage with manic energy.
Croom learned both Lion King roles as fast as he could when he was hired for the national tour production. The company gave him two weeks to learn the songs and get used to those stilts before his first performance, which took place on a stage in Columbus, Ohio. It was only a four-month temporary gig, and shortly after it was over, an opening occurred for the same position within the Broadway ensemble. They called Croom. “I’ve been doing it since,” he said.
A Buffalo native, Croom graduated from the Buffalo Academy for Visual and Performing Arts before spending four years at SUNY Fredonia studying musical theatre. With his sights set on performing on stage, Croom says the Musical Theatre degree was the right one for him. “The more skills you have, the better,” he said. “I encourage anyone to do Fredonia’s Musical Theatre program if they want to do Broadway.”
