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But time hasn't dimmed his enthusiasm for it.

Despite his busy career as owner and operator of Michael Curry Design and Sculptural Engineering in Oregon, he stays in contact, visiting the musical's several companies during rehearsal periods and giving interviews.

"I keep getting responses from people who haven't seen it before," he says. Their excitement as first-time audience members rekindles his ardor.

As co-creator for masks and puppets, Curry worked with director Julie Taymor to design and build literally hundreds of masks that brought the Disney animated movie to life on the stage.

Their work and that of others will be seen Friday when "The Lion King" begins a five-and-a-half-week run at the Benedum Center, Downtown.

Curry was the first person Taymor thought to hire when she became associated with Disney Theatrical Productions' plan to turn the 75-minute feature film's cartoon drawings of settings and characters into a live, three-dimensional stage production.

Curry had collaborated with Taymor to create the puppets in "Fool's Fire," a film adaptation of an Edgar Allan Poe story, and had done the technical design for the puppets in her operas "Oedipus Rex" and "The Magic Flute."

In addition to designing the puppet and costume mechanics for Disney's World on Ice shows -- "Aladdin" and "Beauty and the Beast" -- he has done mechanical animation and fabrication for Walt Disney World's stage shows of "The Lion King" and MGM/Disney's "The Little Mermaid" show.

His Oregon studio has turned out puppets and props for large public events such as the 1996 Olympics opening ceremonies, New York City's Times Square 2002 Millennium event and Super Bowl 2000.

"I'm a live performance guy," Curry says. "I'm good at big scale and the collaborative process.

Taymor had earned her reputation for creating exciting visual images with large puppets, masks and costumes on shows such as "Juan Darien," "The Green Bird" and "Liberty's Taken."

But no one had ever worked on a show quite like "The Lion King."

Millions of people had seen Disney's animated film. They knew what Pride Rock looked like. Moreover, they were sure to be disappointed if a stage play failed to fulfill their expectations of stampeding wildebeests, hundreds of scary hyenas, an elephant graveyard, panoramic scenes of the African grasslands and the story of Simba, a young lion who grows from naive and playful cub to inherit the adult leadership of his pride.

Taymor's job would be to design the characters, retaining the flavor they had in the film, and incorporating elements of African sculpture and her own aesthetic presence. Curry would be responsible for the technical designs that would make it work. Their visions would have to mesh with those of choreographer Garth Fagan, scenic designer Richard Hudson and lighting designer Donald Holder. Tim Rice and Elton John would have to write three new songs to add to the five that were in the movie version.

Whatever anyone devised would have to work with real human performers who had to dance, sing and emote from inside the animal costumes.

"We use real dancers, not special stunt people. The designs have to be as comfortable as dance wear," Curry says.

Typically, musical theater designers create solo, each isolated in studios that are sometimes separated by an ocean or continent. Aside from phone calls and e-mail consultations, they come together only periodically for production meetings.

To facilitate collaboration between designers and performers, Taymor and Curry talked the producers into renting loft space in a building near where rehearsals were proceeding. Working in the same building in proximity to the director, choreographer and cast allowed the designers to feed off others' ideas and derive inspiration from casual, day-to-day knowledge of problems, triumphs and disasters.

"Scenic designers, costume and puppet designers were together a lot," Curry says. The result: "We had a more synergistic look."

The first intention was to design a set filled with stuff, Curry says. But that changed as Hudson watched the dancers, costumes, masks and puppets being created.

"He realized (the sets) needed to be spare so these things could be seen," Curry says.

That meant a more abstract and minimalist dance-friendly set highlighted by dramatic visual set pieces, such as the spiraling Pride Rock, the sun that blazes brightly over the African grasslands and Rafiki's mystical, symbol-emblazoned tree.

"This was one of the most magical team of collaborators I have ever worked with," Curry says.

That doesn't mean everything came together easily.

Taymor has written a book, "The Lion King: Pride Rock on Broadway," that tells of first attempts to design a retractable shield mask for Mufasa that would emerge as needed from a backpack. It was eventually scrapped as cumbersome and unworkable.

"We made some horrible mistakes," Curry says.

Curry spent 13 weeks working all day with actors in rehearsal to collect biodynamic data to refine the giraffe costumes that required an actor to work with not one, but two pairs, of stilts.

Masks had to be virtually weightless -- some as light as three ounces, the weight of five pencils. Although they were created from super light, super strong carbon fiber, they had to resemble natural wooden materials that had been hand-carved.

And, he says: "We didn't just make a mask, but had to give it another life with computer controls on (actors') fingers."

Stage crews had to adjust their usual work rules and boundaries to fit the costumes they were working with.

"Our wardrobe people have to carry pliers and repair electrics," Curry says. "There was an issue about what is a puppet and what is a costume. We (created) a new genre -- an active puppet that's handled by wardrobe (workers)."

In the end, it was worth it.

After more than 2,500 performances on Broadway, "The Lion King" continues to play to capacity or near-capacity audiences. The national touring production's Pittsburgh run sold out within hours of the start of single ticket sales.

While that's gratifying to producers and backers, it's not necessarily how Curry measures its success.

He's proud that both sophisticated and less-sophisticated theater audiences respond equally well to "The Lion King." He likes the moment at the start of the show when the animals converge on Pride Rock to welcome the Lion King's new son, Simba.

"What's great about live theater," he says, is that gasp that rises up."

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