Jason Raize

Jason Raize Rothenberg was born on July 20, 1975, in Oneonta, New York, and grew up in the Catskills region of upstate New York. He began acting as a teenager after his stepmother enrolled him in a summer Shakespeare workshop. Following a move back to Oneonta with his father during high school, he performed in school productions and with the local Orpheus Theatre. He later relocated to New York City, where he briefly attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. In 1994, he dropped his surname Rothenberg and adopted his middle name, Raize, as his professional surname.

Raize built his early career through regional theater and touring productions. At the Bucks County Playhouse, he appeared in Oklahoma! as Jess and Dream Curly, The King and I as Lun Tha, Phantom in the title role, and The Rocky Horror Show as Rocky. His other regional credits included Gypsy: A Musical Fable, The Sound of Music, and West Side Story. At nineteen, he succeeded Dennis DeYoung of Styx in the national tour of Jesus Christ Superstar, which starred Ted Neeley and Carl Anderson. He subsequently toured with Miss Saigon and had been cast as a swing in a national tour of The King and I starring Hayley Mills before choosing to audition for director Julie Taymor's Broadway production of The Lion King.

Raize won the role of adult Simba in the original Broadway cast of The Lion King, which opened in 1997 and became one of the defining theatrical successes of the decade. He performed with the production for nearly three years at the New Amsterdam Theatre. During that run, he performed "Endless Night" and "He Lives in You" on The Rosie O'Donnell Show and "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" on Good Morning America, and appeared twice on the cover of InTheater magazine. In September 1998, he contributed a performance of Simon and Garfunkel's "The Sounds of Silence" to The Paul Simon Album: Broadway Sings the Best of Paul Simon, a recording that also featured Christiane Noll, Jose Llana, Lauren Kennedy, Jane Krakowski, and Sal Viviano.

Beyond the stage, Raize pursued a recording career after signing with Universal Records, releasing two singles, "Taste the Tears" and "You Win Again," both produced by Desmond Child, who had recently produced Ricky Martin's "Livin' la Vida Loca." A debut album titled NYC was recorded but never officially released. In mid-2000, he and Jessica Simpson starred in a Disney Channel concert special filmed at Disneyland, which featured several of his original songs. Raize also worked in television, narrating the National Geographic nature documentary Wild Africa: The Land of the Lion in November 1999 and later hosting Keeping it Wild with Jason Raize, a nationally syndicated program in which he traveled to locations including Africa, Costa Rica, and Australia to document animals in their natural habitats. The series was produced by Sue Ann Taylor of Blue Heron Films. He also starred in a made-for-television production of The Kitchen, which premiered on PBS in June 2001, and appeared in a concert performance of Carmen Jones in New York in January 2001.

In October 1999, the United Nations Environment Programme appointed Raize a Goodwill Ambassador, citing his commitment to furthering environmental causes through his creative work and his efforts to promote conservation and the sustainable use of natural resources. He co-produced a benefit for Kosovo refugees at the Kit Kat Klub in May 1999. In 2003, he provided the voice of Denahi in the Disney animated feature Brother Bear.

In 2003, Raize traveled to Australia without informing his family, taking work as a general hand at Hardwicke Stud, a horse farm in Yass, New South Wales owned by Olympic gold medalist Lawrence Morgan, a property where he had previously made friends while filming in 2001. He was last seen alive on the morning of February 2, 2004. After friends reported his absence, a missing person's report was filed the following day, and his body was discovered on February 7, 2004. He was twenty-eight years old.

A public memorial service was held on April 8, 2004, at the New Amsterdam Theatre. The service included remarks from Raize's sister Lisa and Disney Theatrical's Thomas Schumacher, a performance by his former Lion King co-star Heather Headley, home movies and performance clips, and a traditional South African celebration of passing led by cast members of The Lion King. In his memory, the Orpheus Theatre in Oneonta established two annual Jason Rothenberg Raize Scholarships to underwrite tuition for financially disadvantaged youth attending the theater's summer musical theater workshops.