Julie Taymor

Julie Taymor (born December 15, 1952) is an American director and writer of theater, opera, and film.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 2007, The Lion King was performed in Johannesburg, and had its first French language production in Paris.

Taymor was the 2010 commencement speaker for her alma mater, Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio.