Lion King Musical Tickets – Tour Dates 2026, News, Cast & Resources

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Lion King Musical Still stays in the top list in TicketNews’ exclusive top events rankings.

The top selling shows in the theater and Broadway rankings continue to be “Wicked“, Jersey Boys, and Lion King. The theater rankings show Billy Elliot and Phantom of the Opera to be popular tickets still, while the Broadway rankings give precedence to Mamma Mia! and Chicago – The Musical. Radio City Christmas Spectacular tickets make their appearance on both rankings lists, at number ten.

A bone marrow drive for an 11-year-old “Lion King” star with leukemia has turned out to be one of the hottest matinees on Broadway.

Some 385 people registered as bone marrow donors Sunday in hopes of helping Shannon Tavarez (tuh-VAR’-ehz) beat leukemia.

Shannon played the role of Young Nala the lion cub in “The Lion King” for seven months before she was diagnosed with the life-threatening blood cancer in April.

Her best shot at recovering and returning to the theater is a bone marrow transplant, which requires a genetic match.

The bone marrow registry DKMS held a bone marrow drive Sunday at St. Malachy’s Roman Catholic Church in the theater district.

Shannon won the role of Young Nala in an open audition — her first ever.

The cast of “The Lion King,” Disney Theatrical Productions and DKMS Americas, a bone-marrow-donor center, are holding two bone marrow drives in New York City this month. Their mission: find as many eligible donors as possible.

The drive was inspired by a medical case that struck close to home: Shannon Tavarez, an 11-year-old who most recently played young Nala in Disney’s Broadway production of “The Lion King,” was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia in April and doctors say a bone-marrow transplant could be her only chance of surviving the cancer.

On July 18 at St. Malachy’s Church in Midtown and July 23 at Broadway’s Minskoff Theatre, DKMS Americas will register potential donors with a cheek swab, which collects cheek cells to identify a person’s tissue type. Donors can also register online at GetSwabbed.org.

If prospective donors match Shannon or other people in need of bone-marrow transplants, the charity will contact the prospective donor for future tests. “My daughter was a healthy, happy kid. This disease is something that could affect anybody and people need to know that it’s actually really simple to save lives by donating bone marrow,” says Odiney Brown, Shannon’s mother.

Finding a donor for Shannon is going to be even harder than for most patients because she comes from a mixed-race background—her mother is African-American and her father is Dominican.

The closer the donor’s genetic makeup is to the patient, the more successful the match is and there is a significant shortage of donors who aren’t Caucasian, says Katharina Harf, executive vice president of New York-based DKMS Americas.

For instance, only 8% of the seven million nationally registered donors are African-American so less than a fifth of African-Americans in need of a transplant will actually receive one, says Ms. Harf, who helped start DKMS Americas four years ago after her own mother died from leukemia.

“Overall, six out of 10 patients will never receive a transplant because they will not find a match,” Ms. Harf says.

“I’ve made it my life’s mission to recruit donors so patients and families don’t have to go through the pain we had to go through.”

Shannon, who’s from Bellerose, Queens, now lives at Schneider Children’s Hospital on Long Island, where she just finished her second dose of chemotherapy treatments.

“The Lion King” was the first show Shannon performed in and her mother says it was difficult for her to leave her acting gig.

“She missed her fifth-grade graduation and had to withdraw from ‘The Lion King,'” says Ms. Brown. She says her daughter, who wants to be an actor and a pediatrician when she is older, is doing well emotionally but that her blood count is too low to leave the hospital.

“She’s hurting, but she’s strong and resilient,” Ms. Brown says.

{Via NY HEARD & SCENE}

The Tony-winning Disney musical The Lion King will make its Southeast Asia debut in March 2011 at Marina Bay Sands. Tickets for the musical will go on sale in October, and rehearsals are scheduled to begin in January 2011.

Marina Bay Sands president and CEO Thomas Arasi stated, “We know there is tremendous excitement and anticipation in Singapore and around the region because of this award-winning Broadway musical. Our plan is to have a spectacular, world-class performance in March 2011 right here in Singapore. Featuring Disney’s The Lion King is one more step towards fulfilling our dream of having the best-of-the-best in Singapore and in Asia.”

The Lion King currently plays the Minskoff Theatre on Broadway.

Child star Shannon Tavarez, who played young Nala in the Broadway version of The Lion King, is battling cancer at the age of 11.

The young actress was diagnosed with Acute Leukaemia in April this year. Tavarez was performing when the symptoms first hit, according to theatre news website BroadwayWorld.

“When I found out, it hit me really hard, like someone was throwing a ball at me. It was shocking and I thought, why me?” said Tavarez.

She is now a patient at Schneider Children’s Hospital in Long Island, where she receives daily chemotherapy treatments while awaiting a bone marrow transplant.

Tavarez had a promising Broadway career and was performing four shows a week in The Lion King, until she was diagnosed with the deadly disease.

She is woman, hear her roar. The Tony Award-winning hit musical The Lion King will be featured on the June 14 episode of the ABC reality romance series, “The Bachelorette,” to air at 8 PM ET.

Ali Fedotowsky, the title star of the series’ sixth season, will go on a date to the lavish musical with seven bachelors vying for her hand.

According to ABC notes, “Together with Thomas Schumacher (president and producer of Disney Theatrical Productions) and members of The Lion King creative team, Ali auditions the men to try and sing and dance their way into her heart with the hopes of being chosen to make his Broadway debut with her in that night’s performance of the landmark musical.”

The Lion King is currently running at the Minskoff Theatre.

{Via Playbill}