Creative Team
Julie Taymor
Director, Costume Design, Mask/Puppet Co-Design, Additional Lyrics

In 1998 she won the Tony® Award for Best Direction of a Musical and for Best Costumes for The Lion King. In 2008 the musical won three Molière Awards including Best Musical and Best Costumes. She also won the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League awards for her direction, and myriad awards for her original costume, mask and puppet designs. Ms. Taymor made her Broadway debut in 1996 with Juan Darién: A Carnival Mask (Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater), nominated for five Tony® Awards. Other theater work includes The Green Bird (New Victory Theater, La Jolla Playhouse and The Cort Theater on Broadway). Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, and The Taming of the Shrew (Theatre For a New Audience); Juan Darién (Music-Theatre Group); co-adapter and director of The Transposed Heads (Lincoln Center and American Music Theatre Festival) and Liberty’s Taken (Castle Hill Festival). Opera direction: Grendel, (Los Angeles Opera and the Lincoln Center Festival); The Magic Flute (Maggio Musicale, Florence, now in repertory at The Metropolitan Opera); Oedipus Rex (Saito Kinen Festival, Japan); Salomé (Kirov Opera); The Flying Dutchman (Los Angeles Opera). Film direction: Across the Universe (2007); Frida (2002) winner of two Academy Awards, starring Salma Hayek; Titus (1999), starring Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange. Fool’s Fire (for American Playhouse) premiered at Sundance and aired on PBS in 1992. Books: Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire, spanning more than 20 years of her work (Abrams); illustrated screenplays for Titus and Frida (Newmarket Press); The Lion King: Pride Rock on Broadway (Hyperion). Ms. Taymor’s awards include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emmy for her film of Oedipus Rex, Obie Awards for Visual Magic and for Juan Darién, the Brandeis Creative Arts Award, the Dorothy Chandler Performing Arts Award, and the International Classical Music Award for Best Opera Production (Oedipus Rex).