More than 115 cases of eye damage reported in Ontario after solar eclipse
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
L. Steven Taylor got the call that would change his life in 2005: Would he like to make his Broadway debut in "The Lion King"? It was just a six-month contract but he took it, uprooting his family and moving to New York.
"Six months has turned into 16 years," Taylor says with a smile. "The show just kept kind of pulling me back, calling me back. It's home for me."
Taylor got the honour to restart "The Lion King" this week as Mufasa, the king, after 18 months of silence due to the pandemic. Roars greeted him as he stood atop Pride Rock at Tuesday's reopening. Being back is both familiar and not.
"It's just different and the same," he says. "It's kind of these two feelings fighting with each other constantly everywhere."
Taylor started in the Broadway ensemble, went out on tour, took a break to do other work, returned to the ensemble, went back on tour and has been Mufasa on Broadway for the last six years.
Taylor -- born Steven Lamar Taylor but who goes professionally as L. Steven Taylor -- has matured into the Mufasa role, gradually making it his own. He was a young father when he started in the show and now his son is off in college -- studying musical theater.
"This is everybody's favorite father, you know what I mean? That weight of the gravity of what I was stepping into was super heavy on me at first just because I just wanted to do it right," he says.
"When I first stepped into the role, I was 26. I was a very young father. And all I was trying to do was not trying to mess up. So every time I put on the costume, I felt like I was kind of playing in daddy's clothes."
Over time, he has infused the role with his own personality and rebuilt his body to easily wear the costume, which he warns will "swallow you up," especially the king's big headdress.
"I was confident enough of who I am as a dad, as an actor, to bring those elements into this role and vice versa. There's a lot of things that I've learned through playing this role that I like to think that I've implemented into my life as a father to my relationship with my son."
Taylor recounts the first time his son watched him as Mufasa. His young son, Steven Taylor Jr., and a friend were seated in the front row when -- spoiler alert -- Mufasa dies and is lowered into the ground. From the stage, Taylor could hear his son's friend saying: "Your dad's dead now." To which his son replied: "He's just playing!"
Adrienne Walker, who plays Nala in the show, calls Taylor a natural leader and a comforter. He checked in on her frequently during the shutdown, once even offering to drive her to and back from the doctor's office because she didn't want to take the subway. "He is a leader and he cares and it's not show. It's just who he is," she says.
During the enforced hiatus from "The Lion King," Taylor had to pivot. He did online concerts and turned his son's old bedroom into an recording studio to narrate audio books. He and his partner, Holly Ann Butler, an actor in the Broadway musical "Diana," made funny videos, one of which went semi-viral called "The Tango Quarantine."
He also took the time to reflect on what he wanted to be. "Revisiting the things that were important to me during this time was a really key factor in getting me through this, reconnecting with family and even cutting some friends off," he says.
On a wider scale, Taylor has also cheered proposed reforms and commitments for the theater industry to be more inclusive galvanized by the killing of George Floyd and last summer's protests.
"Broadway itself has always been this kind of lofty ideal that wasn't really changing. Broadway was this unmovable thing," he says. "We are what makes up Broadway and it should reflect that."
In addition to his regular job, Taylor and a castmate from "The Lion King" are writing a musical and he'd like to return to TV and film -- mediums "I didn't think that I would enjoy as much as I do," he says.
"The most important thing to me is, is being able to tell stories of people who are underrepresented in whatever area. And that's most likely where most of my efforts will go from here on out."
While "The Lion King" has been running on Broadway for 23 years, Taylor thinks it's the perfect show to usher the world toward a more equitable and inclusive future.
"We're a predominantly Black cast and so people are coming to see a predominantly Black cast telling this particular story. We represent royalty. We're not the stereotypes that you see on TV. We're kings, queens, you know what I mean? We're flawed, but we figure those things out," he says.
More than 115 people who viewed the solar eclipse in Ontario earlier this month experienced eye damage after the event, according to eye doctors in the province.
A Sherwood Park family says their new house is uninhabitable. The McNaughton's say they were forced to leave the house after living there for only a week because contaminants inside made it difficult to breathe.
A man has been handed a lengthy hunting ban and fined thousands of dollars for illegally killing a grizzly bear, B.C. conservation officers say.
The B.C. NDP has asked the federal government to recriminalize public drug use, marking a major shift in the province's approach to addressing the deadly overdose crisis.
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) says it's investigating an interaction between a uniformed officer and anti-Trudeau government protestors after a video circulated on social media.
An emergency slide fell off a Delta Air Lines jetliner shortly after takeoff Friday from New York, and pilots who felt a vibration in the plane circled back to land safely at JFK Airport.
Sophie Gregoire Trudeau says there is 'still so much love' between her and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, as they navigate their post-separation relationship co-parenting their three children.
George Mallory is renowned for being one of the first British mountaineers to attempt to scale the dizzying heights of Mount Everest during the 1920s. Nearly a century later, newly digitized letters shed light on Mallory’s hopes and fears about ascending Everest.
A loud explosion was heard across Hamilton on Friday after a propane tank was accidentally destroyed and detonated at a local scrap metal yard, police say.
As if a 4-0 Edmonton Oilers lead in Game 1 of their playoff series with the Los Angeles Kings wasn't good enough, what was announced at Rogers Place during the next TV timeout nearly blew the roof off the downtown arena.
Mounties in Nanaimo, B.C., say two late-night revellers are lucky their allegedly drunken antics weren't reported to police after security cameras captured the men trying to steal a heavy sign from a downtown business.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”