Wednesday, October 06, 1999
Lioness of the theater
Wexler exhibit showcases works of 'Lion King' designer Julie Taymor
BY JACKIE DEMALINE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
COLUMBUS — Long before The Lion King ignited at the Broadway box office, Julie Taymor was playing with fire.
As a designer and director, Ms. Taymor was making extraordinary theatrical art for 20 years before she became a Tony Award-winning overnight sensation. Now the first-ever retrospective of her work, Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire,fills the entire gallery space at the Wexner Center for the Arts on the campus of Ohio State University.
“Fire,” Ms. Taymor said the day before the show opened. “I love the word. It cast the first shadows on cave walls. Hands creating shadows on walls were the first puppets.”
These days Ms. Taymor is famous for her puppets. When The Lion King opened, antelopes leaped and giraffes ambled across a Broadway stage transformed into an African savannah while paper birds flitted overhead. Audiences were ecstatic.
What they were witnessing was indeed remarkable: Julie Taymor has melded ancient theatrical forms of masks and puppetry to modern sensibility and technology. And for the first time, a large audience is seeing her preferred terrain of cultural identity, myth and folklore.
Indonesia inspiration
Ms. Taymor majored in folklore and mythology at Oberlin College. After graduation, she spent four years in Indonesia, working, studying and creating a theater company.
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IF YOU GO
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• What: Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire.
• When: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m.-9 p.m. Thursday, noon-6 p.m. Sunday, through Jan. 2.
• Where: Wexner Center for the Arts, 1871 N. High St. (at 15th Avenue)Ohio State University, Columbus.
• Tickets: $3, students and seniors $2. Free Thursdays from 5-9 p.m.
• Information: (614) 292-3535.
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One night in Bali, she was sitting alone under a banyan tree under a full moon, a dozen gamelan orchestras all playing to their own melodies in the distance. She was an unseen watcher as “30 men in full warrior costume gave the most powerful performance for 30 minutes. And it was extraordinary because nobody was watching.
“Something clicked for me. Who were they performing for? What was the spirit within? They were performing the dance for something larger than themselves.
“We're so product oriented in this society, it's all about numbers, we forget the origins. What performing art was there for in the beginning was a medium to bring together man and nature, it was a way to address health, social ills, death.”
So she goes back to techniques from the beginning of theatrical time to ask her own large questions at the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st.
"Meaning in the medium'
In her envisioning of The Tempest, monster Caliban's round, rock-like, dehumanizing mask was inspired by the New Guinea “mud men.” Spirit Ariel was manipulated by an actress using techniques inspired by Japanese Bunraku puppetry.
Her production of the opera Oedipus Rex featured a butoh (Japanese) dancer, totemic masks, a colossal set with a shimmering cliff-like backdrop and a pool of water, evoking the natural world that so fascinates her.
“There's always meaning in the medium” for Julie Taymor. There is never a false step. “Art isn't arbitrary,” she says. “You feed yourself with books and ideas and the origins of the stories, then it's a process of filtering it through the imagination.”
When she uses masks and puppetry in a production “it's because I have no other means” to translate the epic stories she loves. You won't find her working with “four walls and two or three characters.”
Shakespeare, in particular, is a favorite source. “I'm inspired to visual imagery by visual language,” she says.
It's all here
It's all here at the Wexner Center, from early work with her Indonesian theater to grand opera starring Jessye Norman, in costumes, scene re-creations and, most importantly, video clips.
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SPECIAL EVENTS
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There's a list of events related to Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire. All events are at the Wexner Center unless otherwise noted:
• Thursday, 7 p.m.: New York Times theater critic Mel Gussow on “Julie Taymor and Art of Transformation.” $5. Reception 6 p.m.
• Nov. 11, 6:30 p.m.: Theatrical producer Diane Wondisford discusses “Getting to New: Making New Music Theatre in America.” Free. Drake Union. Reception at 6 p.m.
• Nov. 18, 7 p.m.: Symposium featuring theater and film experts sharing perspectives on Ms. Taymor's work. $5.
• Dec. 9, 6-9 p.m.: Decorative Drama: Floor Cloths is an art-making workshop for adults. Design and make a functional floor cloth. $30. All materials provided. Advance registration required. (614) 688-3334.
• Gallery Talks: 1 p.m. Oct. 15, 29 and Nov. 12.
• Young Arts Workshops ($4 per person, $12 per family) 1-4 p.m. Oct. 24, Nov. 21 and Dec. 12. Advance registration required. (614) 292-6493.
• Walk-in hour-long guided tours are 6 p.m. Thursday and 1 and 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Jan. 2 (except holidays). Free with gallery admission.
• Taymor on Screen: Most Saturdays and Sundays complete versions of Fool's Fire (2 p.m.) and Oedipus Rex (3:15 p.m.) will be screened. Free. Call to double-check times.
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Screens pepper the four galleries. Between the puppet maquettes from The Lion King and the costumes from The White Stag that reference both its commedia dell'arte origins and Japanese inspiration, there are film clips and conversations with the artist about her art.
Clips from The Tempest and Oedipus Rex stop you in your tracks with their astounding marriage of intellect to imagination.
There are more set pieces and film clips from Ms. Taymor's upcoming Titus, adapted from Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, whichis due out in December.
Her first feature film stars Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange. She calls it “the greatest dissertation on violence ever written.”
The move to film might be considered a natural because Ms. Taymor's stage work has always been cinematic. She is fascinated by problems of scale and scene transitions that seem impossible to solve in live theater.
“What's exciting to me is the difference between opera, theater and film and where each crosses into the other,” she says. “I like to find theatrical ways of doing cinematic techniques.”
That was the enormous challenge of The Lion King, she says. “Taking an animated feature that almost everyone has seen and transforming it for live theater. How do you put the herds of animals there? People said, "it can't be done' and that's the kind of challenge I like.”
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