Two Vetrans of the Lion King Still Roaring

Camille N. Brown is a supple dancer who hails from California. Lindiwe Dlamini is a singer from South Africa. They would seem to have little in common. Except they do: both have spent the last 15 years in the ensemble of The Lion King on Broadway.
During those more than 5,000 shows since 1997 Dlamini has welcomed a baby girl and Brown has been married and divorced. And like the show itself, which is celebrating its milestone anniversary this week, they plan to keep on going. (Ensemble member Ron Kunene has also been with the show since opening night.)
Brown and Dlamini told the San Francisco Chronicle they still remember their auditions for the show, back in the year when Hong Kong was handed to China and designer Gianni Versace was murdered. Brown, who had been on Broadway in The King and I, had read about artistic visionary Julie Taymor and landed an audition. Several callbacks led to a role in the ensemble for the former Martha Graham Dance Company soloist: “I really was elated. I had no idea that 15 years later I’d still be happy in the same show.”
Dlamini, who missed the earliest reading because she was pregnant, auditioned when the show made the leap to Broadway. She knew it was going to be special during an out-of-town tryout in Minneapolis when she the audience crying. “That feeling, even today, I still get,” she says. “Somehow I felt like, ‘OK, this is going to be a long-running show.’ ”
Does it ever get old? Is hearing “Hakuna Matata” for the 5,000th time enough? “Whenever we have vocal rehearsal and we’re singing the music, 15 years later I’m still like, ‘Wow. What a beautiful score,’ ” Brown says. As for the rest of the show: “There are all these beautiful layers. It’s not just pretty. It doesn’t just sound good. There’s a deep motor to it.”