Julie Taymor
Julie Taymor is an American director and writer of theater, opera, and film. Her stage adaptation of The Lion King debuted in 1997 and received eleven Tony Award nominations, with Taymor receiving Tony Awards for her direction and costume design. Her 2002 film Frida, about Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, was nominated for five Academy Awards, including a Best Original Song nomination for Taymor's composition "Burn It Blue". She also directed the 2007 jukebox musical film Across the Universe, based on the music of the Beatles.
Early life
Taymor was born in Newton, Massachusetts, the daughter of Elizabeth, a political science professor and Democratic activist, and Melvin Lester Taymor, a gynecologist and prominent fertility researcher later at Harvard Medical School. Taymor's interest in theatre took root early in her life. By age ten, she had joined the Boston Children's Theatre and starred in a number of productions. Being the youngest member of theatre groups became common. By 13, she was taking trips to Boston by herself every weekend, where she discovered Julie Portman's Theatre Workshop. At the age of 15, her parents sent her to both Sri Lanka and India with the Experiment in International Living. After graduating from high school at 16, Taymor went to Paris to study with L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. Her studies there exposed her to mime, which helped develop her physical sensibilities. While in Paris, Taymor worked with masks for the first time and immersed herself in film, especially the work of Fellini and Kurosawa.In 1970 Taymor enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio. During her second year, she interned with Joseph Chaikin's Open Theatre and other companies in New York City. Hearing that director Herbert Blau was moving to Oberlin, she returned there and auditioned successfully, becoming, once again, the youngest member of a troupe. In 1973, Taymor attended a summer program of the American Society for Eastern Arts in Seattle. The instructors were masters of Indonesian topeng masked dance-drama and wayang kulit shadow puppetry. This would prove to have a great effect on Taymor in later years. Taymor graduated from Oberlin College with a major in mythology and folklore and with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1974. She spent a summer with Bread and Puppet Theater.
As a college senior, Taymor won a year long Thomas J. Watson Fellowship that began after graduation. The Watson allowed her to travel to Japan and Indonesia, and after the fellowship expired she continued her travels independently from 1975 until 1979. In Indonesia, she developed a mask/dance company, Teatr Loh, consisting of Japanese, Balinese, Sundanese, French, German and American actors, musicians, dancers and puppeteers. The company toured throughout Indonesia with two original productions, Way of Snow and Tirai, which were subsequently performed in the United States. She met her long-time collaborator, Elliot Goldenthal, in 1980.
Taymor was the 2010 commencement speaker for her alma mater, Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio.
Career
Theatre
Back in New York from Indonesia, Taymor remounted Tirai at La MaMa in 1980. Her next project, The Haggadah, came from the desire of The Public Theater director Joseph Papp to create an annual Passover pageant that would be culturally inclusive. In 1984, Taymor worked in collaboration with Theatre for a New Audience on a 60-minute version of A Midsummer Night's Dream presented at The Public Theater. Two years later, she directed her first Shakespeare play, The Tempest, for Theatre for a New Audience. She went on to direct three other productions at that theatre: The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus and The Green Bird by Carlo Gozzi. She later adapted Tempest and Titus into major motion pictures.Taymor is known for a distinct visual style, with extensive use of puppets and masks, developed largely from her time in Indonesia working with Teatr Loh.
Taymor is most widely recognized for her production of The Lion King, which opened on Broadway in 1997. The Lion Kings worldwide gross exceeds that of any entertainment title in box office history, and has been presented in over 100 cities in over 20 countries, having been seen by more than 100 million people worldwide.
Taymor has the distinction of being the first woman to receive the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical, which she won for The Lion King. She also received a Tony Award for her original costume designs for the production. Taymor co-designed the masks and puppets, and wrote additional lyrics for the show. In 2007, The Lion King was performed in Johannesburg, and had its first French language production in Paris. In 2008, Le Roi Lion was awarded Best Costume Design, Best Lighting Design, and Best Musical at the Molière Awards, the national theatre awards of France.
In 2000, Taymor directed Carlo Gozzi's The Green Bird on Broadway. The work was first produced in 1996 by Theatre for a New Audience at the New Victory Theater and presented at the La Jolla Playhouse. Taymor's stage production of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus was produced off-Broadway by Theatre for a New Audience in 1994. Other directing credits include The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, The Transposed Heads, based on the novella by Thomas Mann, co-produced by the American Musical Theater Festival and the Lincoln Center; and Liberty's Taken, an original musical co-created with David Suehsdorf and Elliot Goldenthal.
Her original music-theatre work, Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass, presented at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater in 1996, received five Tony Award nominations including Best Director. Originally produced by Music-Theater Group in 1988, Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass was directed by Taymor, and co-written with Elliot Goldenthal. The recipient of two Obies and numerous other awards, the piece was performed at The Edinburgh International Festival, as well as festivals in France, Jerusalem and Montreal, and had an extended run in San Francisco.
In April 2007, it was announced that a musical adaptation of Spider-Man was being prepared for Broadway. Taymor was selected to direct the show and write the book with Glen Berger. The production was to feature music and lyrics by Bono and The Edge. The musical, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, was scheduled to begin previews on November 28, 2010, at the Foxwoods Theatre. The play was delayed for several months due to numerous injuries, and Taymor was fired and replaced by Philip William McKinley. The play officially opened on June 14, 2011, having set the record for the longest preview period in the history of Broadway at 182 performances. The production also set the record for most expensive Broadway production at an estimated $75 million. In November 2011, Taymor sued the show's producers, Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris, claiming that they were profiting from her creative contributions without compensating her. Taymor and the producers reached a settlement in August 2012.
Taymor was a 2015 inductee into the American Theater Hall of Fame for Lifetime Achievement.
Taymor directed a Broadway revival of David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly, starring Clive Owen, which opened on October 26, 2017, at the Cort Theatre, with previews beginning on October 7. David Henry Hwang made changes to the original text for the revival, mostly centering on the issue of intersectional identities.
Stage production history
- Way of Snow – writer, director, and designer in Java and Bali and The Ark Theater, New York City
- Tirai – writer, director, and designer in Java and Bali and La MaMa, New York City
- The Haggadah – sets, costumes, masks, and puppetry produced for the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, New York City
- Black Elk Lives – sets, masks, and puppetry produced at Intermedia Theater, New York City
- The King Stag – costumes, masks, puppetry and choreography produced at ART, Cambridge, Massachusetts
- Liberty's Taken – director, masks, and puppetry produced at the Castle Hill Festival, Massachusetts
- The Transposed Heads – director, masks, and puppetry produced at The Ark Theater, New York City and Lincoln Center
- The Tempest – director, puppetry. produced for Theatre for a New Audience at Classic Stage Company
- The Taming of the Shrew – director, produced by Theatre For a New Audience
- Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass – director, co-bookwriter, co-scenic designer, co-costume designer, mask designer, puppet designer
- Oedipus rex – director, puppetry. at Saito Kinen Festival in Matsumoto
- The Magic Flute
- Titus Andronicus – director, produced by Theatre For a New Audience
- The Flying Dutchman – director
- Salome directed and choreographed by Taymor and Andreas Liyepa
- The Lion King – director, lyricist for the song "Endless Night", costume designer, co-mask designer, co-puppet designer
- The Green Bird – director, mask designer, puppet designer produced by Theatre for a New Audience at the New Victory Theater, La Jolla, and on Broadway at the Cort Theatre
- The Magic Flute – director, Metropolitan Opera, New York, live broadcast
- The Magic Flute, newly translated and abridged version, Metropolitan Opera, Opera Australia
- Grendel – librettist, director, co-commissioned and performed at the Los Angeles Opera and the Lincoln Center Festival
- Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark – director, co-author, mask designer, Broadway at the Foxwoods Theatre
- A Midsummer Night's Dream – director, Theatre for a New Audience, Polonsky Shakespeare Center
- Grounded – director, The Public Theater
- M. Butterfly – director, Broadway at the Cort Theatre