More About Julie
Taymor
Julie Taymor, director, costume designer, and mask/puppet
co-designer for "The Lion King," has always created theater. Born in 1952
outside of Boston she began at a very early age to put on small shows and
imagine new worlds. She became interested in all types of theater, including
musicals.
At college she created her own major in the ritual
origins of theater. After graduating, she studied Javanese shadow puppetry
and was granted a fellowship that allowed her to travel to Indonesia, where
she gained a great inspiration for her theatrical vision:
"What grabbed me was seeing theater in its original
function, its absolutely most powerful creative state ... theater there
is sacrosanct, a daily part of your life that is essential to your being."
On the island of Bali, she formed her own theater
troupe, whose first work was called "Way of Snow," based on an Eskimo legend.
She returned to the U.S. and designed diverse theater projects such as
"Odyssey," "Haggadah," and "Liberty's Taken," a wild and earthy take of
the American Revolution.
More and more, Taymor became known for what Eileen
Blumenthal calls "braiding together of global stage forms." In 1986 she
directed and designed William Shakespeare's "The Tempest." In this production,
the sprite Ariel was portrayed by only a ghostly mask, manipulated by an
actor dressed all in black. The audience could plainly see the actor. On
one level they could see the puppeteer and appreciate the innovation
of the craft and the actor's skill. But on a more imaginative level, they
could forget the actor and just see the spirit, floating through the air.
This is the essence of Taymor's theater: Do not fool the spectators, but
spark their imaginations by creating the story with them.
