Skip to footer

Katy Perry: Here's where that Super Bowl lion came from

Staff at Michael Curry Design of Scappoose, Ore. worked to create the 30-foot-long lion on which Perry made her entrance during the Super Bowl halftime show. 'We were all very uplifted and elated,' Curry said of Perry's entrance. 'It was as if we had won the Super Bowl ourselves.'

|
Mark Humphrey/AP
Katy Perry performs on a 30-foot-long, 14-foot-tall lion during halftime of NFL Super Bowl XLIX football game in Glendale, Ariz.
  • By Mike Francis Associated Press

It started, Michael Curry said, when Katy Perry's team asked, "How do you make a powerful entrance at the Super Bowl?"

It ended, as most of America saw at halftime of Sunday's big game, on the field in Glendale, Ariz., with pop star Perry steering a 30-foot-long, 14-foot-tall lion into the spotlight.

The whole process, from first discussion to finished work, took about eight weeks, said Curry, whose world-renowned theatrical production company is based in Scappoose, Ore.

At any given time, from 25 to 30 members of the team at Michael Curry Design worked on the Super Bowl project, putting in about 3,500 person-hours, he estimated. That included the work at the Super Bowl, where the beast was guided by a team of puppeteers led by Oregonians Jarred Kearsley and Sam Perkins.

The compressed time frame worked because of the team's experience with staging theatrical spectacles and because Curry and Perry had worked together previously. Curry's team, for example, created the white Egyptian horse and other props Perry used on her 2014 Prismatic tour.

Michael Curry Design has a portfolio that speaks to the company's broad success in live productions, in the United States, and around the world. Sunday's game was the company's fourth Super Bowl, but it is best known for its live theater, from "The Lion King" to Cirque du Soleil. His team is busy this year prototyping pieces for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, he said.

The Super Bowl show is especially gratifying because it appeals to such a broad audience, including many people who may not see a show on Broadway. When Perry entered atop the lion, Curry said, "we were all very uplifted and elated. It was as if we had won the Super Bowl ourselves."

The lion, with its carbon-fiber skin covered with a mosaic of gold mirror planes, isn't coming back to Oregon. Curry said he suspects it's in Perry's warehouse in the Los Angeles area.

"Katy," he predicted, "will find a new life for it."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Katy Perry: Here's where that Super Bowl lion came from
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Music/2015/0204/Katy-Perry-Here-s-where-that-Super-Bowl-lion-came-from
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe