Julie Taymor | |
---|---|
Born | Newton, Massachusetts, U.S. | December 15, 1952
Education | L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq Oberlin College (BA) |
Occupation(s) | Film and stage director, screenwriter |
Partner | Elliot Goldenthal (1980–present) |
Relatives | Danya Taymor (niece) [1] |
Website | julietaymor |
Julie Taymor (born December 15, 1952) 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.
This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification .(November 2022) |
Taymor was born in Newton, Massachusetts, the daughter of Elizabeth (née Bernstein), a political science professor and Democratic activist, and Melvin Lester Taymor, a gynecologist and prominent fertility researcher later at Harvard Medical School. [2] [3] 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. [4] After graduating 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. [4]
In 1970 Taymor was enrolled in 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. [5]
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 which she continued 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.
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, including 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. [6]
Taymor is most widely recognized for her production of The Lion King , which opened on Broadway in 1997. The Lion King's 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. [7] [8]
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. [7] 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. [9] 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. [10]
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. [11] 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. [12]
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 features 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. [13] 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. [14] Taymor and the producers reached a settlement in August 2012. [15]
Taymor was a 2015 inductee into the American Theater Hall of Fame for Lifetime Achievement. [16]
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.
Taymor's first film, Fool's Fire, which she co-directed and adapted from Edgar Allan Poe's short story, Hop-Frog, was produced by American Playhouse. The hour-long film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and aired on PBS in March 1992. [17] In the film, all characters except the titular character Hop-Frog are either elaborate puppets or masks, not unlike Taymor's stage work. [18] The film won the Best Drama award at the Tokyo International Electronic Cinema Festival. [19]
Taymor also directed a film adaptation of opera Oedipus rex after directing a stage production of the same opera. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Jury Award at the Montreal Festival of Film on Art. Broadcast internationally in 1993, the film garnered an Emmy Award and the 1994 International Classical Music Award for Best Opera Production. [2]
Taymor's feature film debut, Titus (1999), starring Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange, Alan Cumming and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, was an adaptation of Shakespeare's play Titus Andronicus . Taymor adapted the screenplay and produced the film, which received an Academy Award nomination for costume design.
Taymor received critical acclaim for her direction of Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina in Frida (2002), a biographical film about the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Frida garnered six Academy Award nominations, including a Best Actress nomination for Hayek, and won two Academy Awards for make-up and original score. [20] Frida was honored with four BAFTA nominations and one win, including nominations for Hayek and Molina, as well as two Golden Globe nominations, winning the Golden Globe for Best Original Score. [21] In addition, the film received two Screen Actors Guild nominations. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival where it won the festival's Mimmo Rotella Foundation Award. [22]
Her next film was the jukebox musical Across the Universe (2008), which received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Musical/Comedy as well as a nomination for the Academy Award for Costume Design. [23] With a collection of 33 Beatles songs, the film stars Evan Rachel Wood and Jim Sturgess in a 1960s love story set to the music of The Beatles, and featured performances by Bono, Joe Cocker, Eddie Izzard and Salma Hayek. Taymor both directed and co-wrote the story for the film. [24]
In November 2008, Taymor directed a film version of Shakespeare's The Tempest , released in December 2010 starring Helen Mirren, Alfred Molina, Djimon Hounsou and Ben Whishaw. Working behind the camera with Taymor on The Tempest were the Academy Award winners Elliot Goldenthal for music, Sandy Powell for costumes, and Françoise Bonnot. Taymor produced the feature and adapted the screenplay based on Shakespeare's play. [25] [26]
She also completed a cinematic version of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream , starring David Harewood, Max Casella and Kathryn Hunter, and filmed during her critically acclaimed, sold-out stage production that ran at Theatre for a New Audience's new home in Downtown Brooklyn. The film was shown at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival as part of the Mavericks in Film Programme.
Taymor directed and co-wrote The Glorias , a biopic of feminist icon Gloria Steinem, based on her novel My Life on the Road, starring Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, Bette Midler, and Janelle Monae. The movie premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was released by Amazon Prime on September 30, 2020.
Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1992 | Fool's Fire | Yes | Yes | Yes | TV movie; Also costume designer |
1999 | Titus | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
2002 | Frida | Yes | No | No | Also Tango choreographer (credited as Taymor) and lyricist for the song "Burn it Blue" |
2007 | Across the Universe | Yes | Story | No | |
2010 | The Tempest | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
2019 | The Lion King | No | No | executive producer | |
2020 | The Glorias | Yes | Yes | Yes | Also uncredited cameo |
Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Puppets | Masks | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1986 | The Tempest | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | |
1990 | Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Also co-scenic designer and co-costume designer |
1993 | Oedipus rex | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Also sculpture designer and editor; released as an episode of Great Performances |
1995 | Salome | Yes | No | No | No | No | Also co-choreographer; Co-directed and co-choreographed with Andreas Liyepa |
1997 | The Lion King | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Also lyricst for the song "Endless Night" and costume designer |
2014 | A Midsummer Night's Dream | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Taymor's first opera direction was of Stravinsky's Oedipus rex , for the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Japan, under the baton of Seiji Ozawa in 1992. [27] The opera featured Philip Langridge as Oedipus and Jessye Norman as Jocasta. Taymor went on to direct the film adaptation of the opera Oedipus Rex. [2]
She went on to direct Wagner's The Flying Dutchman for the Los Angeles Opera in a co-production with the Houston Grand Opera. [28]
She directed Richard Strauss' Salome for the Kirov Opera in Russia, Germany, and Israel, conducted by Valery Gergiev. [2] Taymor's first direction of The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), was for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, with Zubin Mehta conducting in 1993. Over a decade later, Taymor premiered The Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera in 2004. The show is now in repertoire there. A newly translated and abridged English version of the opera premiered at the Met in December 2006, and inaugurated a new series on PBS in 2010 entitled, Great Performances at the Met as well as launched the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD series of movie-theater transmissions. [29]
In June 2006, Taymor directed the premiere of Elliot Goldenthal's opera Grendel for the Los Angeles Opera, starring Eric Owens, which was also presented as part of the Summer 2006 Lincoln Center Festival in New York City. [30] A darkly comic retelling of the Beowulf tale based on the novel by John Gardner, the opera was co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Opera and the Lincoln Center Festival. The opera was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2007. [31]
For the Metropolitan Opera 2005/06 season, Taymor directed a successful production of The Magic Flute . It was revised for the 2006/07 season and, in addition to full-length performances, was adapted for a 100-minute version over the holiday season to appeal to children. That version of the opera was the first of a series of NCM Fathom Live on the Big Screen presentations of MET operas downloaded via satellite to movie theaters across North America and parts of Europe for the 2006/07 season. [32] In 2012, Opera Australia produced this version with locally built scenery and props at the Sydney Opera House, the Arts Centre Melbourne, and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre in Brisbane. [33]
A major retrospective of 25 years of Taymor's work, titled 'Playing With Fire' opened in the fall of 1999 at the Wexner Center for the Arts [34] and toured the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington D.C.) in 2000 [35] and the Field Museum of Natural History [36] (Chicago) in 2001, and was extended due to popular demand in each venue.
In September 2009, costumes from The Lion King were requested and presented to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History [37] and they are now part of the Smithsonian collection as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. [38]
In 1991, Taymor won the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. In addition, Taymor has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, [2] two Obie Awards, [39] the first Annual Dorothy B. Chandler Award in Theater, the Brandeis Creative Arts Award, [39] and the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. [40] [41] Taymor received a Disney Legend award in 2017 for Theatrical. [42]
Year | Award | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2002 | Academy Awards | Best Original Song | "Burn It Blue" (from Frida ) | Nominated | [43] |
Year | Award | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1993 | Primetime Emmy Awards | Outstanding Individual Achievement in Costume Design for a Variety or Music Program | Oedipus Rex | Won | [44] |
Source: [45]
Year | Category | Nominated work | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
Drama Desk Awards | ||||
1996 | Outstanding Costume Design | The Green Bird | Nominated | [46] |
Outstanding Set Design | Nominated | |||
1997 | Outstanding Costume Design | Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass | Nominated | [47] |
Outstanding Scenic Design of a Musical | Nominated | |||
1998 | Outstanding Director of a Musical | The Lion King | Won | [48] |
Outstanding Costume Design | Won | |||
Outstanding Puppet Design | Won | |||
2014 | Outstanding Director of a Play | A Midsummer Night's Dream | Nominated | [49] |
Tony Awards | ||||
1997 | Best Direction of a Musical | Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass | Nominated | [50] |
Best Scenic Design | Nominated | |||
1998 | Direction of a Musical | The Lion King | Won | [51] |
Best Original Score | Nominated | |||
Best Costume Design | Won | |||
Bob Crowley is a theatre designer, and theatre director. He lives between London, New York and West Cork in the south west of Ireland.
Roger Rees was a Welsh actor and director. He won an Olivier Award and a Tony Award for his performance as the lead in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby. He also received Obie Awards for his role in The End of the Day and as co-director of Peter and the Starcatcher. Rees was posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in November 2015.
Susan P. Stroman is an American theatre director, choreographer, and performer. Her notable theater productions include Oklahoma!, The Music Man, Crazy for You, Contact, The Producers, The Frogs, The Scottsboro Boys, Bullets Over Broadway, POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive, and New York, New York.
Jeanine Tesori, known earlier in her career as Jeanine Levenson, is an American composer and musical arranger best known for her work in the theater. She is the most prolific and honored female theatrical composer in history, with five Broadway musicals and six Tony Award nominations. She won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center, the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change, the 2015 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Fun Home, making them the first female writing team to win that award, and the 2023 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Kimberly Akimbo. She was named a Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist twice for Fun Home and Soft Power.
Elliot Goldenthal is an American composer of contemporary classical music and film and theatrical scores. A student of Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, he is best known for his distinctive style and ability to blend various musical styles and techniques in original and inventive ways. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 2002 for his score to the motion picture Frida, directed by his longtime partner Julie Taymor.
Bartlett B. Sher is an American theatre director. The New York Times has described him as "one of the most original and exciting directors, not only in the American theater but also in the international world of opera". Sher has been nominated for nine Tony Awards, winning a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for the 2008 Broadway revival of South Pacific.
Eiko Ishioka was a Japanese art director, costume designer, and graphic designer known for her work in stage, screen, advertising, and print media.
George Tsypin is an American stage designer, sculptor and architect. He was an artistic director, production designer and coauthor of the script for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014.
John Newport Caird is an English stage director and writer of plays, musicals and operas. He is an honorary associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, was for many years a regular director with the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and is the principal guest director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm (Dramaten).
Michael Curry is an American production designer who lives in Portland, Oregon. He is also the owner and President of Michael Curry Design Inc. in Scappoose, Oregon, which was started in 1986.
Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass is a musical with music and lyrics by Elliot Goldenthal and a book by Goldenthal and Julie Taymor. The musical premiered Off-Broadway in 1988 in the former St. Clement's Church. It was subsequently reworked and refined before playing on Broadway in 1996 at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, directed by Taymor. The musical, based on a modern fable of the same name by Horacio Quiroga, is set in the jungle in South America, with a jaunty skeletal Death ever present. Its story concerns an orphaned jaguar cub who is miraculously transformed into a human child by the compassion of a woman who has lost her own baby; the boy must then confront the savagery of human civilization. The production employs masked actors and puppets, and the score includes elements of Latin American folk music and the Requiem Mass. The piece was revived and toured extensively.
Diane Marie Paulus is an American theater and opera director who is currently the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University. Paulus was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for her revivals of Hair and The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, and won the award in 2013 for her revival of Pippin.
Susan Hilferty is an American costume designer for theatre, opera, and film.
Anthony Powell was an English costume designer for film and stage. He won three Academy Awards, for Travels with My Aunt (1972), Death on the Nile (1978) and Tess (1979).
Sharon Langston Ott is a director, producer and educator who worked in regional theaters and opera throughout the United States. Two plays she directed, A Fierce Longing and Amlin Gray's How I Got That Story, each won an Obie award after their New York runs.
Paul Tazewell is an American costume designer for the theatre, dance, and opera and television. After training at New York University Tisch School of the Arts he started his career on Broadway. He went on to win a Tony Award and an Emmy Award as well as a nomination for an Academy Award.
Christine Jones is an American multidisciplinary artist for theater, opera, public art, and digital media. Beyond her Broadway, Off-Broadway, and West End Scenic Design, including Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, American Idiot, and Spring Awakening, Jones is invested in inclusive public art and the wide reach of the digital realm. Her initiative Theatre for One, a mobile performance space designed for a single audience member and actor in collaboration with LOT-EK Architects, has held residencies at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Arts Brookfield, Cork Midsummer Festival, the Times Square Alliance for Public Art, and universities across the globe. Theatre for One’s accompanying digital platform, co-created with Jenny Koons, and designed by OpenEndedGroup, was launched during the pandemic.
The Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) is a non-profit theater in New York City focused on producing Shakespeare and other classic dramas. Its off-Broadway productions have toured in the U.S. and internationally.
G. W. "Skip" Mercier was an American costume, puppet, and set designer. He has designed for over 370 productions of theater, musical theater, opera, dance, film, and television. He is best known for his set and costume designs for Juan Darien: A Carnival Mass in which he received a Tony Award Nomination for Scenery and two Drama Desk Nominations for Scenic Design and Costume Design in 1997. He was a member of the faculty at the University of Washington School of Drama, where he taught scenic design and costume design to both graduate students and undergraduates.