Princess diaries

Music director lives out his Disney Princess fantasy

RICH LOPEZ | Staff writer
rich@dallasvoice.com

The love affair Benjamin Rauhala has with Disney and its princesses has been a long one, beginning with his childhood days playing with his Ariel doll to creating with Disney an entire show featuring Cinderella, Jasmine and Belle and others. The music director stars alongside his heroines — sorta — in the touring show, Disney Princess the Concert, which comes to Dallas on Saturday, Oct. 22, at the Music Hall at Fair Park.

Before the show, Rauhala talked about the show’s origins and how Disney stepped in, about the connection between queer communities and Disney and about his star-studded Instagram.

Dallas Voice: First, can we talk about your selfie game on Instagram (@brauhala), because it is major. Love seeing you alongside some big names. Benjamin Rauhala: (Laughs) My job is to support the artists in my life, and they have ascended up and up. I was just at the Emmys with my best friend, Ariana DeBose, and we got to have a lot of fun and met a lot of people. It’s great to be with her on that journey and take pics along the way.

So you are back on the road with the princesses and headed to Dallas. We were on a hiatus but have been back on the road this fall through December.

The show has quite an origin story. Do you mind telling how it came about? Yeah. I was hired by the venue in New York, 54 Below, to produce two shows a month in 2015. I went on a Disney cruise once with Jeremy Jordan (Newsies, Supergirl) and went to a Disney Princess Tea Party. It was so campy and funny, and I wondered, “What if we did this with adults?”

Camp always works. I got my best friends together to sing the best princess songs and did it for one night. It went viral on YouTube. We had only done it six times in New York before being asked to go on the road as the Princess Party. So a smaller version of this show was born then, but we had an amazing chemistry.

Disney is pretty protective of its characters and image. How were you able to perform these shows? That was a question: How could this grow? At the end of 2017, we performed symphony concerts in the Middle East, and then Disney called us. What we thought would be a cease and desist call, but it was not that. They wanted to be partners. So what exists now is a co-production between Disney and Broadway Princesses LLC.

That’s a big deal. How did the show change when you got the Disney OK? This was originally developed as a symphony show, but because the pandemic continued, we did a version with just the four women, Prince Charming and me. But we took a year-and-a-half with Disney and worked on every symphony chart how we wanted. They edited animation to our timing, and we got to take our time to build it exactly the way we wanted.

The show is titled as a concert, but is there a narrative at all? Thanks for asking that. Yes, there is. The first character is the Fairy Godfairy, which is me. And I’m playing with my dolls, and the princesses come alive. So it’s like my childhood dream came true, and they get to tell their stories while I serve as the emcee and play piano. The thought behind it are the stories about these courageous women.

A boy playing with dolls is a fabulous image to put there on a big stage. I’m very lucky Disney has been supportive with the whole show. I was relentlessly teased when I took my Ariel doll to show-and-tell, and now look at my show-and-tell! I think the real gift of this show is that I can make peace with that part of my life.

To be clear, the actors are not playing the princesses. Correct. They appear as themselves but in tribute to those characters. These are real adult Broadway actors, and we’re all loving the stories of these characters onstage.

The show sounds appealing to a broad audience then – not just children? I’m part of the VHS generation, and many parents are, too. So the show plays on a couple of levels. I’d say maybe six and older will understand the show, but I’m so proud to say it’s for all generations.

You know in some ways, you kind of created this Disney-approved drag show with female-presenting performers. What is it about Disney that resonates so much with queer-discovery and queer youth? (Laughs) You know I’ll get messages from parents who tell us their boys wear their dresses to the show. A boy in drag or when dads dress up alongside their kids is always a good day.

You know I think it started with The Little Mermaid, which was written by a closeted Hans Christian Andersen, by the way. I was a young gay boy, and I knew something was different, but I didn’t know what it was. Ariel knows something is different about her. I think from then on, Disney had these girls or young women with big dreams and a best friend and they all overcame obstacles to become the person they are supposed to be.

We love doing this show and invite everyone to come dream with us.

For tickets, visit BroadwayDallas.org.