Tom Alan Robbins: Pumbaa and Me: The First 10 Years

About the author:
For almost a decade, Tom Alan Robbins has been an audience favorite as Pumbaa the flatulent warthog in The Lion King. An original cast member in Disney's smash-hit Broadway musical, Robbins came to Julie Taymor's visionary production after creating roles in Jerome Robbins' Broadway, Once Upon a Mattress and Sunset Boulevard, plus a stint as Thernardier in the national tour of Les Miserables. As The Lion King nears the 10-year mark on Broadway, we asked Robbins to share memories of life in the Pride Lands—and the Juilliard grad gave us a frank and funny account. No surprise, given that he's a playwright himself. Read on for Robbins' perspective on the rewards and challenges of a really, really long run.

When The Lion King opened on Broadway in the fall of 1997, I was braying out "Hakuna Matata" as Pumbaa the flatulent warthog. Ten years have passed. The new millennium arrived. America went to war. They invented the iPod. Still I'm a warthog. Has playing the same role over 3,500 times driven me mad? This assumes I was sane to begin with, which is rarely the case with actors. What reasonable person would wade through years of rejection on the off chance that someday he will be allowed to smear makeup on his face, glue a ratty wig on his head and declaim, "The Queen, my lord, is dead"?

Actors are the Juggernauts of the art world. Once employed, no force on earth can keep us from hurling ourselves onto the stage eight times a week to wrest from a taciturn audience their laughter or tears. During my decade in The Lion King, the physical therapist has become my best friend. My spinal disks are disappearing like the polar ice caps. Still, I strap on my 50-pound puppet and leap into the jungle with the friskiness of a spring lamb. Is there any other profession where the show must go on so desperately? Must the transmission be repaired? Must the spreadsheet be spread?

The truth of the matter is, there's a "bravery in the face of certain death" aspect to it all that actors live for. We refer to people who are not in the theatrical industry as "civilians," because only someone who has shared a hot, smelly, powder-filled foxhole, slippery with Albolene cream and sticky with spirit gum, missing weddings, Thanksgivings and bar mitzvahs to perform existential drama for an audience of five, could understand what the life is like. The hill must be taken! Dancer down! Call for reinforcements!

You would think, given the difficulty of supporting oneself in the theater, that staying in a long run would be considered a good thing. This illusion was shattered by director Julie Taymor herself, who greeted me after year two by asking kindly, "Are you looking for other work?" In fact, Disney has been generous enough to let me take short leaves to perform Henry V in Central Park, two Encores! shows and numerous workshops and readings including a reading of my first effort as a playwright: The Joke the Rabbit Told Me, but I have always returned to the warmth and security of my purple puppet.

Yes, it would be lovely to be inundated with exciting, challenging new projects, but the greater likelihood is long months of unemployment interspersed with experimental contracts that barely pay the subway fare to get to work. I have a wife and daughter who insist on luxuries like food, clothing and medical care. They show no sign of leaving, and it's easier to feed them than to listen to their stomachs rumble.

I also believe that there are things you can learn about the craft of acting in a long run that you can't learn anywhere else. Tension is the enemy of creativity and I defy you to remain tense when you're doing performance number three thousand and ten. Loose as overcooked spaghetti is more like it. A long run also affords the time to develop an incredibly rich inner monologue. For the benefit of future theater historians, I will try to record a tiny bit of my inner monologue during the "Hakuna Matata" scene that ends Act I:

"Oh God, my back hurts. Better hop around… get the blood moving. Don't want to hyperventilate again when I scream at the buzzards. Boy, this audience is quiet. Okay, here we go. Oy, I'm stuffed. I can't eat paella before a show. I'm so stupid. Aaand… [I leap out on stage to begin the scene.] Don't land on the bad knee. Who's that playing the buzzard? Is he new? I've got to start reading the call board. Okay, see the baby lion. Did he move? Whoa, I think it's still alive. Better tell Timon. Wait, I got a note on this. What was it? Open the mouth wider? Be more terrified? Shoot! I'll get it next time. Why is Danny looking at me? Crap, it's my line! Wider, wider, let 'em see the tonsils. I hope someone from management is watching. Don't get distracted. Listen, listen. That's right; it means 'no worries.' Pick up the tempo. Sell it! Sell it!"

And so it goes, eight times a week, 12 months a year. Employed and happy to be so. I have been incredibly lucky to be able to support my family doing the thing I love to do above all others—and a new adventure is about to begin. After 10 years, I am leaving the confines of my porky preserve. Come October, I will begin rehearsals for a new Broadway show, and if it should run another 10 years, look for me at the curtain call. I'll be the one with the big grin on my face.