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| Campaign Leadership Project Development Team TFANA Leadership |
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Julie Taymor and Elliot Goldenthal
Taymor made her feature film directorial debut in 1999 with TITUS, starring Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange. Based on Shakespeare's play, TITUS ANDRONICUS, her adapted screenplay is published in an illustrated book by Newmarket Press. Her film FRIDA (2002), staring Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina, garnered six Oscar Nominations and two Oscar Awards. An illustrated book on her career, Julie Taymor: Playing With Fire, was recently expanded and revised for the second time by Harry N. Abrams. Taymor has received numerous awards for THE LION KING which opened at the New Amsterdam Theater in 1997, including two Tony Awards: for best direction of a musical and for her original costume designs. She also co-designed the masks and puppets and wrote additional lyrics for THE LION KING, which currently has ten productions worldwide. Taymor directed Carlo Gozzi's THE GREEN BIRD on Broadway in 2000. It 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 original visual music-theater work, JUAN DARIÉN: A CARNIVAL MASS, presented at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater in 1996, received five Tony nominations including best director. Originally produced by Music Theater Group in 1988, JUAN DARIÉN was directed and designed by Taymor, and co-written with the composer Elliot Goldenthal. The recipient of two Obies and numerous other awards, it was also performed at The Edinburgh International Festival, festivals in France, Jerusalem and Montreal, and had an extended run in San Francisco. In September 1995, Taymor directed Wagner's THE FLYING DUTCHMAN for the Los Angeles Music Center in a co-production with the Houston Grand Opera. She directed Strauss' SALOME for the Kirov Opera in Russia, Germany, and Israel, under the baton of Valery Gergiev. Taymor originally directed Mozart's THE MAGIC FLUTE for the Maggio Musicale in Florence, Zubin Mehta conducting in 1993. 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. The opera featured Philip Langridge as Oedipus and Jessye Norman as Jocasta. Her film of the opera premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Jury Award at the Montreal Festival of Films on Art. The film was broadcast internationally in 1993, garnering an Emmy Award and the 1994 International Classical Music Award for best opera production. It is now available on DVD from Phillips/Decca. FOOL'S FIRE, Taymor's first film, which she both adapted and directed, is based on Edgar Allan Poe's short story, HOP-FROG. Produced by American Playhouse, it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and aired on PBS in March 1992. The film won the "Best Drama" award at the Tokyo International Electronic Cinema Festival. 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 (TFANA at the Stratford American Shakespeare Festival), 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. While on a Watson Fellowship in Indonesia from 1975-79, Taymor developed a mask/dance company, Teatr Loh, consisting of Javanese, Balinese, Sudanese, French, German and American actors, musicians, dancers and puppeteers. The company toured throughout Indonesia with two original productions, WAY OF SNOW and TIRAI (subsequently performed in the USA). In 1991 Taymor received a MacArthur "genius" Fellowship. She has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two OBIE Awards, the first Annual Dorothy B. Chandler Award in Theater, and the 1990 Brandeis Creative Arts Award. An illustrated book, Frida: Bringing Frida Kahlo's Life and Art to Film, is available from Newmarket Press. Her book, The Lion King: Pride Rock on Broadway, is published by Hyperion. A major retrospective of 25 years of Taymor's work opened in the fall of 1999 at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Ohio and toured the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington D.C.) and the Field Museum (Chicago). It is scheduled to be exhibited at the new National Museum for Art and Design in 2009. Taymor recently directed and co-wrote an original opera, GRENDEL, composed by Goldenthal, which premiered at the Los Angeles Opera on June 8th, 2006 and subsequently at the Lincoln Center Festival... Composer Elliot Goldenthal creates works for orchestra, theater, opera, ballet and film. Goldenthal's original opera, GRENDEL, directed by Julie Taymor, premiered at the Los Angeles Opera on June 8th, 2006 and subsequently at the Lincoln Center Festival. Goldenthal's large-scale symphonic piece, FIRE WATER PAPER, a commemorative tribute created for the 20th anniversary of the Vietnam War, commissioned by the Pacific Symphony Orchestra, was released in April of 1996 on Sony Classical Records featuring soloist Yo Yo Ma. It debuted at the Pacific Symphony Orchestra and was later performed in critically acclaimed performances at Carnegie Hall and at The Kennedy Center, with Seiji Ozawa conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In May of 1997, Goldenthal's Ballet of OTHELLO had its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and in March of 1998 its West Coast debut in San Francisco at the War Memorial Opera House. OTHELLO was co-produced by the ABT in partnership with the San Francisco Ballet and the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company and was choreographed by world-renowned choreographer Lar Lubovitch. The spectacular production is a new addition to the ABT repertory and was one of the most acclaimed events of the 1998 dance season. OTHELLO aired on PBS Great Performances in 2003. OTHELLO is scheduled for performances at The Kennedy Center, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and The Metropolitan Opera House in 2007. Goldenthal's other symphonic works include SHADOW PLAY SCHERZO (commissioned to honor Leonard Bernstein's seventieth birthday), and "Pastime Variations" (commissioned by the Saint Luke's Orchestra). Other commissioned chamber works include the song cycle LOS HERALDOS NEGROS by Cezar Vallejo, Sonata for String Bass and two Brass Quintets, the award-wining "Jabberwocky" for Bass-baritone and Woodwind Quintet, in addition to numerous works for the piano. Goldenthal's Obie-winning theatrical-oratorio JUAN DARIÉN, A CARNIVAL MASS, originally staged off-Broadway (1988), received five Tony nominations and four Drama Desk nominations for Lincoln Center's production at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre in the Fall of 1996. His other theatrical credits include the musical THE TRANSPOSED HEADS (1987), based on the Thomas Mann novella, commissioned by the American Music Theater Festival and Lincoln Center Theater. His incidental music for dozens of Shakespearean and classical productions include the highly acclaimed TITUS ANDRONICUS (1994) directed by Julie Taymor and music for Carlo Gozzi's three miracle plays, THE KING STAG, THE SERPENT WOMAN, and THE GREEN BIRD (Broadway's Cort Theater, 2000). Goldenthal's honors include the American Music Theater Festival's Stephen Sondheim Award, the Edinburgh Festival Critics Choice Award, the Toscanini Award for Musical Composition, the Richard Rodgers' Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, an Obie Award, the Golden Globe and the Grammy. He has been nominated for the Los Angeles and Chicago Film Critics' Awards and received the L.A. Film Critics Award for Best Score For A Motion Picture in 1998 for his outstanding work on "The Butcher Boy." He was a double-Oscar nominee for FRIDA (best score and best song), and won both a Golden Globe and an Oscar for his score for the film directed by Julie Taymor. Return to Campaign Leadership |
