director julie taymor

Theater, opera and film director Julie Taymor made her feature film directorial debut in 1999 with TITUS, starring AnthonyHopkins and Jessica Lange. Based on Shakespeare's play, "Titus Andronicus", her adapted screenplay is published in an illustrated book by Newmarket Press.

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 codesigned the masks and puppets and wrote additional lyrics for "The Lion King", which has productions in Japan, London, Toronto, Los Angeles and Germany.

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 Darien: A Carnical 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 Darien" 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. In June 1993, she directed Mozart's "The Magic Flute" for the Maggio Musicale in Florence, Zubin Mehta conducting.

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.

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, an international company of Javanese, Balinese, Sundanese, 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 on her career, Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire - Theater, Opera, Film, was recently expanded and revised by Abrams. 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).

Taymor is currently collaborating with Goldenthal on an original opera, "Grendel", to premiere at the Los Angeles Opera in 2005 and subsequently at the Lincoln Center Festival. She will also be directing a new production of "The Magic Flute" for the Metropolitan Opera in the fall of 2004.

the writing team

Gregory Nava is a screenwriter and director who, along with his wife and co-writer Anna Thomas, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his 1984 film EL NORTE. Critics hailed the movie, which Nava also directed, for its innovative departure from stereotypical Hispanic roles and themes. In addition, reviewers applauded EL NORTE for its moving depiction of the striking contrast between the oppressive poverty of Mexico and the ostentatious wealth of the neighboring United States. +He attended the University of California in Los Angeles, where he studied filmmaking. At the age of 28, Nava wrote The Confessions of Amans with Thomas, and then directed the movie. Released in 1977, it details a tragic love affair during the medieval period. Nava's second movie as co-author and director was THE END OF AUGUST, released in 1982.

He wrote and directed the critically acclaimed 1995 film MI FAMILIA, MY FAMILY, starring Jimmy Smits and Edward James Olmos. Nava's 1997 film, SELENA, tells the story of the slain Latin singer's rise to stardom and tragic death. +In 1998, Nava released his latest film, Warner Brothers' music-based drama WHY DO FOOL FALL IN LOVE, starring Halle Berry, Vivica A. Fox, Lela Rochon and Larenz Tate. Nava served as director as well as executive producer along with Harold Bronson. Nava currently serves as a creator and writer of the critically acclaimed PBS series "American Farnily."

Clancy Sigal is a screenwriter, novelist and journalist. His movie credits include IN LOVE AND WAR, starring Sandra Bullock. Clancy Sigal's novels include Going Away, Weekend in Dinlock, Zone of the Interior and The Secret Defector. Although U.S.-born, he lived in England for some time where he was a BBC broadcaster and journalist. He was a film critic (Spectator, The Listener) and reporter and feature writer for The Observer, Sunday Telegraph, Vogue and other British newspapers and magazines. He continues to write for the UK (Manchester) Guardian. He writes Op Eds for The Nezii York Times and Los Angeles Times.

Anna Thomas is an Academy Award nominated screenwriter, as well as a producer, director and author. She is the producer and co-writer of the film EL NORTE, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, and which was elected to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1995. She is also the co-writer and producer of the acclaimed MY FAMILY, MI FAMILIA, a multigenerational saga set in East LA. The film marked Thomas'fourth collaboration with director GregoryNava, with whom she began working in 1973 while they were UCLA film students.

Thomas made her first feature in 1977 when she wrote, produced and directed her Master's thesis film, THE HAUNTING OF M,A turn-of-the-century ghost story shot in Scotland. Other film credits include the 1986 drama A TIME OF DESTINY, which she co- wrote and produced. TV credits include the PBS one-hour drama AMERICAN FAMILY.

Thomas is one of the founders of the IFP west, and is on the faculty of the American Film Institute. She frequently works as a screenwriter in between film productions.


Diane Lake has a script, Distance. based on the French Impressionist Berthe Morisot in development at Columbia Pictures.In addition, she has written an original screenplay, Nancy, for Paramount based on the life of British aristocrat Nancy Cunard; Picasso, a mini-series for NBC; and A Thousand Cranes, an original screenplay for Digital Domain that looks at all of the sides of what led to the bombing of Hiroshima in WWII Additionally, she has projects in active development with Wendy Finerman and Viacom Pictures.

Diane is presently adapting the novel Wendover Whale for Four Boys Films and putting together financing for her adaptation of the acclaimed Katie Schneider novel, All We Know of Love. She is also at work on a Civil War novel based on the true story of two young women who became spies for the confederacy. Her original screenplay, Close Your Byes, a film noir based on the life of Raymond Chandler, will soon be going out as a spec.

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