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Julie Taymor To Be Honored At Library Dinner
The Desmond-Fish Library’s annual Associates’ Awards Dinner June 3 will honor a Garrison and New York City resident who is arguably Broadway’s hottest director, Julie Taymor. Taymor is the creator and director of the Tony Award-winning Broadway production of The Lion King which debuted in 1998, the new feature film Titus adapted from Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, and the new Broadway adaptation of Carlo Gozzi’s eighteenth-century fable The Green Bird, which opened recently at the Cort Theater.
Known for her delightful and eclectic mixes of Asian and European theater traditions ranging from the masks of the commedia dell’arte to Indonesian shadow puppetry, Taymor has almost singlehandedly effected an elevating reassessment of American theater’s relationship to world theater traditions in the age of the Disneyesque commercial blockbuster.
"Who else would dare present a long, philosophical fairy tale, performed in commedia dell’arte style of a length and whimsy unsuitable for most children, in the land of ‘Footloose’ and ‘Saturday Night Fever’," asked The New York Times in its glowing review Taymor’s production of The Green Bird. Her works in progress include a collaboration with composer Elliot Goldenthal on an original opera, Grendel, based on John Gardner’s novel retelling the legend from the monster’s point of view.
A self-described child of the suburbs, Ms. Taymor says a traveling fellowship in visual theater profoundly influenced her as a student in her 20s. She spent four years in Indonesia that "were almost a rebirth for me. It’s where I got rooted in what I wanted to do in the theater and where I started to create my own pieces and work as a director."
But Taymor’s works are more than studies in foreign traditions. The characters she shapes from exotic material are often resolutely American, even New Yorker, sporting Brooklyn accents and using topical inside New York humor. "I never apply traditions from another culture literally,"she told New York Times critic Robert Brustein in a recent interview. "The tradition implies more than just technique - the cultural milieu, the style of presentation, the specific story, and the characters themselves. Shadow, hand and rod puppets are traditions that belong to everybody."
Taymor will be the speaker and honoree, along with children’s book author Jean Craighead George, at this year’s Associates Award Dinner, an annual fund-raiser which also marks the 20th anniversary of the Desmond-Fish Library. The dinner will be held on Saturday, June 3 at the Garrison Golf Club. Cocktails start at 7 pm; dinner is at 8 pm. Reserving early is recommended, and reservations close May 26th. Proceeds from the evening help fund library operations and special programs such as scholarships, Sunday hours, and automation.
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