Site History
By Meredith Lee, webmaster,
1998-present
Early
design for the Raizens' Jason
Raize Page
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When The Lion King was
Broadway-bound
in fall 1997, I caught a television special
called From
Pride Rock to Times Square: The
Lion
King Comes
to Broadway.
Jason Raize appeared on the screen in his trademark
green hat and
talked about the stage show's emotional
moments, such as his solo
"Endless
Night" in which Simba asks his deceased father
for guidance. Jason
explained his connection with this number:
he'd lost his own mother at
age three.
My
mother, watching with me, excitedly informed
me
that Jason was the
nephew of her co-worker's sister-in-law, and
that the whole family was
thrilled for his big break in The
Lion King.
This is not a straightforward site history.
Jason, a
person I never knew very well, made a
tremendous impact on my life, and
that's the story that I want to tell. When I
"discovered" Jason in
1997, I was 14
years old and incredibly shy. I didn't know
much about Broadway. My
mother took me to a lot of local theater as a
kid, and I knew many
classic musicals, but I didn't know anything
about the contemporary
theater scene and probably wouldn't have been
interested in The Lion King had the cast
not
included Max Casella from my favorite movie, Newsies.
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My cousin Kathleen and I
became smitten with Jason when a friend gave
us a video of his
performance of "Endless Night" on The
Rosie
O'Donnell
Show. After
watching
the
clip
countless
times,
we scoured the Internet to
see what we could find about Jason. We
uncovered not very much; these
were still the early days of the World Wide
Web. Then we had an idea:
why not start our own site?
I had minimal experience in web design, and
Kathleen had
even less. But we were impressed with Jason,
and figured that he was
worthy
of a website. My mother and her co-worker
provided us with the address
of Jason's aunt Sue. We wrote a letter that
explained our desire to
start
the first website about Jason, and asked for
her support. We told her
that
we were calling ourselves "The Raizens"
which sounded silly even at age
14, but similar nicknames (such as
"Baleheads" for Christian Bale fans)
seemed all the rage, and ours amused us so
much that we had to use it.
Not long after we sent our letter, Jason's
aunt called me and said that
Jason was "flattered" by our idea. She
encouraged us to move forward,
and offered to try to put us in
touch with Jason to make sure that we had
the right data for the site.
We were thrilled and got to work.
The Raizens' Jason Raize Page premiered in
early 1998 on Geocities as a
fairly typical fan
page, and we updated it as we came across
information. We also started
recording various television appearances
featuring Jason and the other
cast members. Growing increasingly more
excited about our upcoming trip
to The
Lion King in
June 1998, we read or watched nearly
everything available about the
show. To
this day, my first trip to The Lion
King remains one of my most
treasured experiences in a theater.
Even from the last row of the New Amsterdam
Theatre, in $25 seats with
the words "seat behind pipe" printed on each
ticket (the pipe turned
out not to be that obtrusive),
we
sat
in
awe of Julie Taymor's designs, the
incredible sets by Richard
Hudson, and the gifted original cast,
including (of course) Jason.
After the show, we headed to the stage door
to meet Jason. We
explained that we were the girls who ran the
website, and he greeted us
as though we were old friends. He asked if
we'd gotten his message
(which we had not, but we were too excited
to ask for clarification),
and, after we gave him the address of our
website, he told us excitedly
that he
had a computer at home. Jason took the time
to sign autographs for
everyone who had waited, and he took a
picture with us in addition to
signing our
programs.
Over the next year or so, we started to
receive e-mails from ushers at
the New Amsterdam, fans of Jason, and others
who had started websites
about
Jason and The
Lion King. (By
this time, Jason's
official website had launched.)
Meanwhile, The
Lion King had sparked
our interest in other Broadway shows, and we
began reading theater
websites, recording TV appearances, and
seeing shows when we could. We
moved the site to our locket.net domain in
1999, where it remains.
Then, in November
1999, we opened
our inbox to find an e-mail from Jason:
You
guys have really won my respect, and my
gratitude.
I've watched your site develop
and grow,
constantly impressed by the way in
which
you handle the process and the
information.
This is a very exciting
time. If
you're interested, I would love to be in
touch with
you about all the things that
are happening, and work with you to get up-to-date info and
materials on the
site.
Let me know, and I hope you've
all had an
excellent Thanksgiving!
Jason Raize
Knowing that Jason appreciated our work
meant the world to us. For the
next four years, we corresponded
periodically with Jason about
his various projects. He worked to put us in
touch with the people we
needed to speak to in order to build our
website, such as his
management
company, his official webmaster, and later
his production
company. He
was always friendly, and frequently thanked
us for our work on the
site, even when updates to the site grew
less frequent due to part-time
jobs, college applications, and (for me)
frequent day trips to New York
to see Broadway shows.
I
will always regret that I never met Jason
again after our encounter at
the
stage door in 1998. He had contacted us
while abroad with Keeping it Wild
in fall 2001 about meeting up once he
returned to New York for "a lunch
meeting where we can invite everyone who's
interested to chat about all
the things I'm working on and see some of
the shows and pictures from
my traveling," but this never panned out.
At that time, I had just moved to New York
to study Dramatic Literature
at NYU. Rarely did more than
a week or two go by when I didn't attend a
Broadway or off-Broadway
show. I found fantastic internships in the
theater industry and worked
for two and a half years as theater editor
for NYU's Washington
Square News. However, I felt guilty
about the lack of
updates to the
Raizens website, which had become solely my
project as Kathleen pursued
other activities. I began working on a
revised version to be called "The Raize
Resource," and I contacted
Jason in January 2003 to see if he
wanted me to add any news to
the revised site. He replied:
Meredith-
Thanks so very much for keeping
this
active, Ladies! I appreciate it
more than I can probably convey
in an email!
I'm
actually working with the great Walt
Disney again, this time I'm
voicing the character of Denahi in an
animated movie that's currently
titled Bears. I am one of three
brothers in the film - One of the
other brothers is played by Joaquin
Phoenix, who I think is an awesome
actor.
Things are going pretty well,
I'm in Los
Angeles now, looking at other projects
and getting my bearings.
How
are things with you guys now?
Probably pretty busy, all the more
my
thanks for managing to work this in to
your priorities! I'm
impressed,
definitely.
Thanks
again, and Happy New Year to you
both!
With admiration,
Jason Raize
I wrote to him in June when The Raize
Resource launched, but I never
heard from Jason again. In February
2004, my mother
called me with shocking news from her
friend: Jason had killed himself.
I never knew Jason well; I only knew his
public persona and a bit of
the
friendly guy who sent me e-mails over the
years. His death devastated
me. The person who had played such a role in
inspiring my love of
theater was gone, and I'd never be able to
thank him for all that he'd
provided me and all that he had led me to
do.
I attended Disney's memorial service for
Jason at the New Amsterdam in
April 2004, and met Jason's aunt Sue for the
first time. She took my
hand and said, "I am so sorry for your
loss."
We discussed the website, and she advised me
that I didn't need to take
it down. I updated the site with a short
statement about Jason's death
and a link to an article that
I wrote
for
the NYU newspaper, and for years the
site
remained inactive.
My intention was to leave the site up as a
place where fans could
learn a bit more about Jason, especially as
his official site had been
taken down. I received periodic e-mails from
fans asking me a
question I
couldn't answer: "Why did he do it?" I
noticed that Googling "Jason Raize" only
brought up articles and blog
posts about his suicide, with little about
his career aside from a
Wikipedia page that someone had essentially
plagiarized from my old
biography of Jason (without sourcing my
site).
In 2009, I began working on reviving The
Raize Resource as a tribute to
Jason and a resource where fans could learn
more about this talented
man's life and career. I spent over a year
gathering information,
creating new site content, verifying facts,
working on the site's
new look (with my limited knowledge of web
design), and formatting
articles and photos. I launched the new
site in August 2010, and I am thrilled to be
able to present Jason's
fans with this comprehensive look at all
that he accomplished in his
short life.
As I write this, it's been almost 13 years
since I first saw
Jason on television. I'll never forget being
a shy teenager, and having
a
real Broadway star reach out to me and tell
me that he appreciated me.
I've built a career as a grants writer for
arts-in-education
programs that I hope will inspire a new
generation of young people to
discover themselves through the arts. I
thank Jason each and every day
for inspiring me.
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