If you’ve ever wondered what it would sound like if 300 kids all agreed on one thing at the same time, it would sound a little like last Thursday morning at Calderwood Pavilion, where a life-size lion — rather, a lion puppet — took over the stage for “Library Lion,” the musical adaptation of the beloved children’s book by Michelle Knudsen.
The show comes from Boston’s Adam Theater and features a massive puppet created by the Jim Henson Creature Shop, original music and an audience that’s very much part of the action. Hundreds of elementary school students filled the theater for a free matinee on Thursday to experience live theater, and judging by the singing, clapping and full-throated support for the lion, it was a very joyful morning.
For this week’s Joy Beat, Karin Sharav Zalkind, executive director of Adam Theater, joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to share more about “Library Lion.” What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.
Arun Rath: I love everything about this. We all do. You were behind this whole project, and you were in the room yesterday when it came to life. Tell us, when you heard hundreds of kids shouting, “Leave the lion be!” and clapping and singing along in unison, what was that moment like?
Karin Sharav Zalkind: Wow. You can’t really describe a moment like this. It’s a combination of so many details and so much work to bring that joy into kids’ worlds. I started this with my cofounder, Ran Bechor, in May 2023, with the vision and dream of making high-quality theater and art accessible to every child in the Boston area. Living in that dream and in that moment, hearing those joyful sounds and gaps in the audience is something that I don’t think many people get to experience on such a deep level.
Rath: As someone who’s performed magic for kids and knows kids’ show magicians, it’s a really difficult thing to pull that many young kids together into a moment like that in unison.
Zalkind: I think it really validates the idea of not dumbing down things for children, not making it remedial and not cutting any corners. The idea of using the Jim Henson Creature Shop and working in collaboration with them; the idea of bringing a really well-renowned composer, Yoni Rechter, who wrote the music and specializes in writing very deep music for children; getting a cast of characters who are amazing; puppeteers that work really hard, and live music pays in dividends in terms of how real the reactions are. You can’t cheat kids out of those experiences, and they react very, very authentically to all of these things.
Rath: Tell us a bit more about the story and everything that’s in the show. The lion just looks incredible.
Zalkind: Oh, the lion is really beautiful, and it was a joint collaboration. It took us about eight months to build the lion. It was built at the Jim Henson Creature Shop in LA, and we actually flew out to work with them on all the details. Ron, my cofounder who’s also the artistic director and director of the play, was very precise in telling them what the puppet needs to do and what emotion he needs to express. Through that process, we kind of navigated through deeper learning of the story itself.
The story is about a lion that walks into a library. Initially, when we first staged the play, it was staged as a site-specific show in the Boston Public Library. But we realized really early on that we needed to increase capacity, so we went to the Calderwood Pavilion in Boston, and last year, we started showing it to general audiences.
You know, the artistry that went into every detail, the props and the set that was built by Cameron Anderson, goes to show that we really need to make a point of reaching as many children with this type of quality.
Rath: You talked about holding their attention so rapidly and in unison, but to do that with a show that is interactive — I don’t even know how you go about planning or staging something like that.
Zalkind: If you have kids, you know that nothing can be staged. I think having professional actors on stage and professional puppeteers on stage is really, really important because they know and understand in a professional way how to interact with the audience while still moving the plot along.
Rath: I imagine that for actors and performers, when you’re improvising like that, you have to know your character that much better to know what you’re going to do.
Zalkind: I think it also goes to the process. Last summer, we rehearsed for about 15 weeks straight. If you are familiar with the theater world, this is a very long rehearsal time. It’s a different method of [putting] a play on stage. Secondly, working with a puppet that’s the size we have, a three-person puppet, requires a lot of coordination between the puppeteers, but also for the actors to play around this massive character requires a lot of work to make everything precise.
It shows on stage that these people are well rehearsed and understand exactly their roles in front of the characters themselves, but also in front of the children.
Rath: I have to imagine, for most of the children in the audience, they have never seen anything like this. Talk about what you’re bringing to these kids, because you’re bringing thousands of students to the show for free.
Zalkind: Yeah. When we did it in the library, there was one kid who ran up to me, and he high-fived me, and he was like, “This is better than any TV show I’ve ever seen in my life.” And that was like, a moment, right? You know, you realize that you’re doing something that touches someone.
We understood really early on that the exposure to theater in this region — especially after COVID, and specifically, for kids — is very small. We wanted to increase that capacity, so we worked together with Boston Public Schools, Cambridge Public Schools and Somerville Public Schools. They were really good partners.
At the end of the show, our director goes on stage and talks a little about why “Library Lion” was chosen. We decided to ask this impromptu question. We were like, “Raise your hand if you enjoyed the show.” Of course, everybody raises their hands, clapping and really excited. And then the second question that we asked was, “How many of you have experienced live theater before?” And we were shocked — about 80 to 90% of the hands are raised each and every show.
Our work is cut out for us, and we’ve just started. This year, it’s 2,500, and our goal is big and lofty. We want to reach 10,000, 50,000. We want to reach every child at the elementary school level in a meaningful way.
I really hope that you, also, as general audiences, consider coming to the show. Every ticket that a general audience member buys actually helps us subsidize tickets for students to come and see it. Even if you don’t have kids, you’re going to enjoy it.
If you’d like to make a nomination for the Joy Beat, leave us a voicemail at 617-300-BEAT [2328].
