200 kids vie to be voice of Underwater World seals | Art & Theatre

Nathan Woulfe | 18th November 2008

Regina Scott gets up close and personal to Teiko the seal at Underwater World.

WHAT do the movies Madagascar, Ice Age, The Lion King, and Happy Feet have in common?

Aside from making plenty of millions for their respective studios, all feature plenty of chatty wildlife.

And if the box-office millions are anything to go by, the kids love them.

So it is little wonder that Underwater World has been inundated with applications - almost 200 - to audition to provide the voices for the animals in the centre's new seal show.

The kids selected to fill the roles will go from watching talking penguins on the telly to actually providing voices for Underwater World's ever-popular seal show.

Underwater World general manger Julie Cullen has not been shocked by the huge response, but is surprised “that we've got kids coming up from Sydney specifically for this”.

“The seal show has been around long enough, so many school kids have seen it on educational visits, so it's a fairly popular show,” she said.

The added incentive of a VIP pass to Underwater World, valid as long as the seal show continues to run, might have helped hustle a prospective voice-over artist or two on to a flight north.

Julie said the new-look show would see the seals “take the future into their own flippers”, taking six humans hostage to educate them about the damage being inflicted on oceans.

“All the talking is presently done by the trainers - the new show almost reverses that traditional role, giving the animals a voice,” she said.

That voice will be provided by a few of the 200 or so hopefuls who turn up for next week's auditions.

The kids will be put through their vocal paces from next Monday, with the winners to be announced at a Seal Cove night-time function.

Want to see more?

Teiko at Underwater World photo gallery

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