Past/Present/Future for … Shaun Escoffery

PAST:

Parade was so significant for me. I played three different characters – Jim Conley, Riley and Newt Lee – and all of them had real depth and were so different. I had to do research for all three of them, to have a concept of who these characters were. Riley was an educated type, apparently quite an upstanding person in society. Newt Lee was in his seventies and was born into slavery so he knew, even though slavery was abolished by the time of the story, he still had that mentality and a real fear of white people. Then you had Jim Conley, who was young and brash and hated everybody.

Jumping from one character to the other was absolutely exhilarating. Our director Rob Ashford kept pushing the button for me. He moulded my performance almost effortlessly. He was fantastic. And the whole piece was life-changing for me, it really was. I discovered a completely different way to approaching my work, going really deep into it all so I can get the best out of the characters and give the best performance I can.

The Whatsonstage.com Award nomination was my first one ever. My agent called and said “you’ve been nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical” and I was like no, no, no! I was so engrossed in the production and was just enjoying it so much, I didn’t think of it as anything more than that. I just loved doing it so to be nominated, that alone completely freaked me out. I was so happy. Then obviously the Olivier awards were after that. When Tracie Bennett won (for Hairspray) and went up there and said what she said – that she thought my performance was fantastic and that if she could share the award she would and all that – I felt like I’d won that night as well.

PRESENT: I’m approaching everything with that same gusto now. My first day of Lion King rehearsals was terrifying, like the first day of school with all these new people. It’s definitely more frightening coming into a big, successful show. It’s coming up to the show’s ten-year anniversary at the Lyceum and the part I’m playing, Mufasa, has been played by some great actors prior to me. I know some of them – like Cornell John and Ray Shell. They’re older than me and more experienced than me and just fantastic actors.

I wanted to bring something new to the character. And Disney wanted me to do the whole Balinese thing again. It’s an Asian dance like you see in Bollywood films and it incorporates cat-like walking and stances and that gravitas of Mufasa. So that was very challenging. And then there’s the mask, which must seem very organic. Every movement has to be flowing and be like Mufasa. The mask comes forward with my character when he’s very angry or when something rattles him or if he’s going to war. It’s part of his way of dealing with things.

Mufasa is firstly a king but then a father and a warrior and a husband. The thing that’s difficult with the character is that, even though he has all this responsibility, he’s extremely gentle still. It’s easy to play gravitas but striking that balance of being quite heavy powerful but also being a very, very loving, sensitive and very spiritual father figure as well isn’t so easy. Mufasa’s concept is the circle of life, that everything is a fair balance. There’s a line where he says “We become the grass and the antelope eat the grass and we eat the antelope”. He’s a traditionalist, he likes things to be in a set order, in balance. The more I’ve discovered about Mufasa, the more I like him.

FUTURE:
My background is in music. I’ve done a few albums and had a few major recording deals and I’m always writing music, for myself and for other people. But at the moment, I am really loving acting. I am loving looking deep into myself and dragging out these different characters. So that’s what I’d like to do more of in the future, exploring those avenues, getting into more acting roles, maybe some TV. And most definitely I’d like to do some plays. When I saw Othello at the Donmar, I fell in love with Shakespeare for instance. I’m not saying I hadn’t known of Shakespeare before that, but that production made me look at him in a completely different light. I would jump on anything Shakespeare.

– Shaun Escoffery was talking to Terri Paddock

The Lion King is at the West End’s Lyceum Theatre, where it’s currently booking through to 19 July 2009. This year’s Royal Variety Performance is at the London Palladium on 11 December and is televised on BBC One later this month. The dedicated Disney concert, Radio 2 Celebrates the Music of Disney, takes place at the Lyceum Theatre on 8 December and will be aired on Boxing Day, 26 December 2008.