Our Show of the Week from 24 – 30 August is Disney’s The Lion King. Below we learn more about The Lion King’s visonary Director, Costume Designer, Mask/Puppet Co-Designer (plus writer of additional lyrics), Julie Taymor.
“There aren’t many shows whose Tony Award-winning director is also responsible for its costumes, let alone masks, puppets and additional lyrics: Julie Taymor’s multiple contributions on THE LION KING offer testament to what a unique theatre artist she is.
Julie Taymor had never directed commercially on Broadway when the call came from Disney’s Thomas Schumacher to adapt its blockbuster movie for the stage. Schumacher realised that if you’re going to translate so widely loved a work to a fresh medium, complete with its own dictates and demands, who better to approach than a visionary director who is also an innovator, someone who could push the celluloid source toward an altogether new place?
Julie Taymor believes in total theatre. Having seized upon the challenges involved in translating THE LION KING for the stage, she was keen to do something resembling a makeover. This was not to be the animated film simply transcribed to the stage. Instead, a re-imagining that could honour what the theatre does uniquely well.
To understand how Julie Taymor got to this place is to appreciate the appetite for artistic adventure. The Massachusetts-born artist began working in the theatre at the age of 11 and by 21 was on her way to Indonesia for four years. In Asian theatre and opera, she found a sense of economy of means and a visual metaphor; one that can express primal emotions and myth, as well as non-realistic responses to a shared experience. These influences would allow Julie Taymor to tell Simba’s tale with a theatrical gravity that would be amplified by as much stage magic as she could bring to the task. She also knew that there was no need to patronise her audience, whose imaginations could be spurred on by the ingenuity with which events unfold.
It was Julie Taymor who insisted that the stage musical chime to a multi-cultural beat and that the piece be widened so that it communicates a dream of Africa. Since theatre has the power to awaken the imagination, her governing approach to the material would celebrate exactly that, giving a human cast its due even as they bring to life the animal kingdom. Both human and animal aspects co-exist to defining effect throughout the show.
She refers to this dual perspective as “the double event”, whereby the techniques which bring the savannah to life remain in evidence. In this theatrical vision, the puppeteers aren’t hidden from view as they pull the strings; they are actors and dancers who incarnate a world populated by lions, yes, but also hyenas, ostriches, giraffes and more.
Away from the world of live performance, Julie Taymor’s unique vision can be seen in her screen work, including a pair of films, TITUS and THE TEMPEST, which tweak Shakepeare’s works in interesting ways to bring them to vivid cinematic life. Her FRIDA was nominated for six Academy Awards (including one for Julie Taymor for Best Song) and earned an Oscar for her partner Elliot Goldenthal’s original score. The 2007 Beatles-themed ACROSS THE UNIVERSE offers a magical mystery tour of a level of invention that doubtless even The Fab Four never quite envisioned.
In the 15 years since THE LION KING first opened on Broadway, one has often heard the show spoken of in relation to its opening number, “Circle of Life”, which turns the auditorium into a gathering of animals allowing anthropomorphised elephants and other species to brush against the audience on their way to the stage. (In much the same way, the second act at one point makes an aviary out of the playhouse.)
Here, Julie Taymor is celebrating the atavistic appeal to the imagination that lies at the heart of what the theatre is. That’s an achievement of which she, as the visionary behind Pride Rock and its inhabitants, should be immensely proud.”
Written by: Matt Wolf
Matt Wolf is London’s theatre critic for The International Herald Tribune, online at www.nytimes.com/global