Julie Taymor

She is renowned as an innovative director of operas, theater performances, and especially for her visually stimulating films. She was also the first women to have won a Tony for the distinction of Best Direction of a Musical for the very successful Broadway show, The Lion King. So deserving, Julie Taymor created a new style to showcase a story on stage by designing the set, masks and costumes to be worn, as the actors transformed into their animal characters but still showing their own facial expressions. Some actors used their bodies as parts of an animal, for example, the legs of an elephant, four people would be needed to create the whole costume and puppeteers were also used to manipulate animals. With an outstanding soundtrack, Julie Taymor brought to life a beautiful and spectacular show about the coming of age for the little cub, Simba.


Like bell hooks cited in her essay, "Movies make magic. They change things. They take the real and make it into something else right before our very eyes," Julie Taymor does just that in her total body of work. Whether it be on stage or film, she transforms her visual message like an imaginative auteur into her own interpretation of a reality. Stemming from her childhood in Massachusetts, she always thought outside the box by creating her own stories and costume designs for performances with her sister. She also experienced other cultures by living in India and Sri Lanka and then studying miming in Paris during her adolescence. She attended Oberlin College to study Mythology and Folklore. From there, she received a Watson Fellowship to Japan and studied their traditional puppetry; eventually traveling and living throughout Asia for some years. Immersed in this culture, she was taken by how theater was so much a part of their culture and everyday life and even started a theatre company Teatr Loh in Bali. In the eighties through the nineties, Julie Taymor continued to direct, design costumes for theater even collaborating with composer Elliot Goldenthal who became her husband. Together, she and her husband gained recognition for their work, moving into productions of opera earning multiple awards including an Emmy for Oedipus Rex.
With all of her success, Julie Taymor moved her talent into film by making her reinterpretation of Shakespeare's story, Titus. The film starred Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange among other great actors. Her husband composed the soundtrack for the film as well as for another film, Frida, in which it won for Original Score and Make Up Design. Having well deserved 6 nominations, the film, one of my favorites, was an biopic of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. The film starred Selma Hayak, Alfred Molina, Ashley Judd, and many other actors made cameos. In this film, Julie Taymor put forth her visually stunning storytelling inserting puppetry, compelling musical accompaniment, and bringing Frida Kahlo's painting to life. Frida's life had many interesting encounters mixed with tragedy and wonderment, with Julie Taymor's auteuristic eye, she was the right person to deliver it to the masses.