Nebraska couple, toddler relish life on the road with 'The Lion King'

She’s seen the Golden Gate Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and a casino in Reno, Nevada. She’s been in a “second line” parade in New Orleans, wearing purple, gold and green Mardi Gras beads and carrying a small umbrella.

She cruised at sunset on Lake Michigan in Chicago, and watched fireworks in Washington, D.C., on the Fourth of July. And, for nearly all of her life, she’s been traveling with the cast and crew of a popular Broadway touring musical.

This week, Malina arrived at the Orpheum Theater with her parents — musician Mike Faue and “kid wrangler” Anna Speed — and the entire entourage from “The Lion King” to begin a three-week residency.

“I tell her, ‘You have no idea how lucky you are,” Speed said.

Faue and Speed met when “The Lion King” came to Omaha in 2007. He was raised in northern California and has a music degree from Cal State-Northridge. He joined the tour in 2003.

She’s from Grand Island, Nebraska, and has a music degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. A cellist, she was one of the local musicians that touring shows used to hire, a practice Faue says is increasingly rare.

The tour was in Omaha for six weeks the year they met, giving them enough time to realize their relationship might have a future. She went to Hawaii with Faue in August 2007 and remained with the tour. They bought a house in the Old Market and lived there between gigs, and got married at the Orpheum in 2017.

But virtually their entire marriage has been on the road. They took a 16-month break in Omaha when Malina was born in 2020 and COVID-19 shuttered the show. But as soon as the pandemic eased, the tour resumed and they returned, this time with a baby.

After years of touring as a couple, adding an infant created some challenges.

“We are on the road every day of the year,” Speed said. “We have to find sitters in every city. We will have to figure out our schooling situation. And just being on the road is hard. We miss out on weddings, funerals and family reunions.”

But it also created new opportunities for exploring and education.

“It’s a different lifestyle and it works for us,” Speed said.

Malina is on their schedule, which means she stays up later than most kids her age. The family still follows a morning routine, however: breakfast, a puzzle game, talking about the letter of the day and the color of the day.

They schedule daily activities, Faue said, including visiting a gym for kids, going to museums and days at zoos across the country. They also go to the library in every city on the tour.

“That’s why we’re on the road,” Speed said.

It’s not about sitting around in the hotel or bed and breakfast.

They also go to national parks whenever they can, enough that Malina participates in junior ranger programs wherever they are. And though she’s still a toddler, she’s remembering a lot about her travels.

In St. Louis, for instance, they attended a Cardinals baseball game and met Fredbird, the team mascot. When they encountered an abstract statue of a player in another city, Malina recognized it as “the guy where we saw Fredbird,” Faue said.

Favorite places include Hawaii and Alaska.

“It was very cool to go for so many weeks at a time,” Speed said. “We got to feel like we lived there a bit.”

During trick-or-treating in New Orleans, she said, people handed out candy to the kids and cocktails to the adults.

But Reno may have been their “craziest” stop yet, she said. In her job as a kid wrangler, she has to make sure the four actors who play young Simba and young Nala make their cues. Performers had to trudge through the casino — past gamblers and scantily-clad cocktail waitresses — to get to the stage door.

“It was hilarious with these four little kids,” Speed said.

For some bizarre reason, there’s also a huge airplane backstage in Reno, and the orchestra was seated behind it because there’s no pit in the auditorium.

Even with all the adventure on the road, Speed and Faue miss relatives in Nebraska. To compensate, they embrace the cast and crew as their family. They spend holidays together and keep in touch with people who have quit touring and settled in various cities. Some of the kids Faue knew when he was first on the road are now having kids of their own.

Speed estimates that she has “wrangled" at least 80 kids since she got the job in 2007. (She took a break from work for a while). Some have remained in the business, including Niles Fitch, who appeared on TV show “This Is Us” as young Randall. And some took sharp career turns, like the former actor who’s studying to be an accountant.

Many of the kids on the tour keep in touch long after they quit. One young Simba and one young Nala even reunited to attend senior prom together.

“They have friends across the country,” Faue said of the show’s kids.

The couple said they have no plans to leave the show. They love “The Lion King” and they expect it to be around for a long time because parents and grandparents will want to share it with future generations.

“One of the things about this show is that it is for all ages,” Speed said. “‘Circle of Life’ (one of the show’s signature songs) really is moving. There are nights when it really catches you off guard, especially when you can see the (audience) reactions. This may be someone’s very first show and someone’s very last.”

But no matter how much they like the road and the show, Omaha always beckons. They have lots of plans for the month: visits to family, the Omaha Children’s Museum, the Durham Museum, the Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium and the refurbished Gene Leahy Mall and Riverfront.

“We are so excited to be home for three weeks,” Speed said.