Peter Schneider at Bucharest

In late 2010, American stage director and producer Peter Schneider paid a visit to Bucharest.

What was the occasion? He signed the direction of the one woman show “My Life with Men And Other Animals” starring the famed Italian actress Maria Cassi performed in the hall of Arcub, the Bucharest Cityhall’s Centre of cultural projects.

The same hall hosted the screening of the documentary “Waking Sleeping Beauty”, which Peter Schneider produced jointly with Don Hahn and launched in 2010; in the mid-1980s, the Walt Disney studios went through an extremely difficult period.

The dissensions between the two generations of artists working in the studios at the time triggered a number of box office failures, providing a gloomy prospect for the animation
film. “Waking Sleeping Beauty” tells the story of the spectacular revival of Disney animation from bankruptcy during the 1980s and early 1990s; “Waking Sleeping Beauty” shows the differences between the main shareholders, the tribulations and huge efforts of the team ensuring the success of the Disney animation over 1984-1994 with a shocking and compelling sincerity.

Peter Schneider is a legendary figure in the history of the Disney Studios, where he ran Walt Disney Feature Animation, ”the most important company of the group over 1985-1999, then becoming president of the Walt Disney Studios between 1999 and 2001.

At the time, he made and distributed over 50 films being responsible for helping to turn the feature animation department around and creating some of the most critically acclaimed and highest grossing animated features that Disney released.

Those films included “Who Framed Roger Rabbit “The Little Mermaid”, “Beauty and the Beast”-, winner of a Golden Globe and the first animated feature nominated for the best film Oscar award, then “Aladdin”, “Toy Story” or “The Lion King . Peter Schneider practically reinvented and relaunched the Disney feature animation in a spectacular manner.

He succeeded in making the world love cartoons again. “Our purpose was to tell stories, to make viewers live at the character’s level and if people laugh, cry or are happy when watching the Disney movies it means that our purpose was reached”- Peter Schneider says. In 2001, Peter Schneider left the Disney Studios founding his own theatre production company with which he put on the musical “The Lion King”, winner of a Tony prize, highly appreciated on Broadway.

Schneider has staged several theatre pieces, musicals and operas including “Sister Act”, “The Breakup Note Book, “Norman’s Ark, “Grand Hotel”, the musical “Aida” on Broadway, being one of the producers of the successful musical “The Marvellous Wonderettes”.

Quite an impressive career, isn’t it? After the screening of the documentary “Waking Sleeping Beauty” in Bucharest, Peter Schneider was kind enough to give me the following interview.