Julie Taymor
American director of theater, opera and film.
In our culture, we think that happy and color is trivial, that black and darkness is deeper. But Nietzsche said which is a line that I firmly believe "Joy is deeper than sorrow, for all joy seeks eternity." And if you see Grendel, you'll see, as he's on the edge of the abyss, ready to leap to his death, he sings, "Is it joy I feel? Is it joy I feel?" And it's so, so moving. You can have a lot of different explanations for the ending of that opera, but there is something so palpable that you will feel when he sings those lines.
Even though she is enduringly fond of her creations, Ms. Taymor never operates any of the puppets herself. "I can't do everything," she said.
Becoming renowned for puppets is not easy finding a new galaxy or making the draw at Wimbledon is easier.
People sometimes sum her up simply as a puppeteer, which aggravates her to no end. She prefers to be thought of as a writer and director who happens to use puppets.
American culture, she believes, does not pay due homage to the idea of the puppet.
She believes it might be better to allude to her puppets as "kinetic sculpture."
I'm not religious, but I believe in the ecstasy that art and religion can create in human beings, the ecstatic or the awe as I like to call it, you know, "a-w-e" that it makes people feel in a way that isn't their banal, everyday feel. That they go, "My God, it transformed me. My life changed."
Limitations force you to find the essence of what you want to say, which is one of the most important things to know for an artist.
I really do believe that if you don't challenge yourself and risk failing, that it's not interesting.
Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.
A lot of what I do in theater is cinematic, and a lot of what I do in film is theatrical, but there are different rules to it.
each art form makes me more interested in the other art form because I try and bring in those techniques and those ideas and put them into a different way of using them.
Where I live is not necessarily in New York City. That's where my apartment is, but I live in Mexico, or I live in Indonesia. I live in Japan. I feel as comfortable in those other cultures, because, in a way, I'm always uncomfortable. I can't explain that, exactly, but I put myself into situations where I'm forced to do something, to create, to respond, to see differently.
Spider-Man is a genuine American myth with a dark, primal power
but its also got this great superhero, and hey! he can fly through the theater at 40 miles an hour. Its got villains, its got skyscrapers, its colorful, its Manhattan. I knew it would be a challenge, but I saw the inherent theatricality in it, and I couldnt resist.
I've never been a puppeteer, I conceive and I write and I design and I direct. And not just puppets. I direct actors, I direct dancers, I direct singers, I direct films. I also direct puppeteers. I'm really a theatre maker, but there's not a word for that.
I read a lot of books that are, for lack of a better word, cross-cultural. I find movies and books that take me transport me to another culture are the things that I'm most interested in, and always have been.
I would never do something with just puppets. . . But I like the things puppets allow you to do. I had this puppet Dinah Donewell, and she had this hand puppet named Mr. Pleaser. He was her lap dog who was constantly under her skirt. Now if you did that with actors, people would be offended. But in this case, so what? It was a puppet with a puppet.
Julie Taymor's definitely a magician. And I think that's what you call a person who, even though they put the rabbit in the hat, is really surprised when it comes out: that's her.
The concrete world isn't necessarily the most powerful world. The world of the mind whether you're watching Matrix or whatever the world that's inside here has the power to do a lot of good and a lot of damage.
Oh, yeah, I'm scared. If you don't have fear then you are not taking a chance. But what I do have is a team. If your collaborators are there, which is what answers the fear question, and they all are as impassioned as you are, and believe in it, then your fear is mitigated.
We always write stories of tragedies because that's how we reach our human depth. How we get to the other side of it. We look at the cruelty, the darkness and horrific events that happened in our life whether it be a miscarriage or a husband who is not faithful. Then you find this ability to transcend. And that is called the passion, like the passion of Christ. You could call this the passion of Frida Kahlo, in a way.
When I talk about passion, and I'm not a religious person, but I absolutely am drawn and attracted to the power of religious art because it gets at that most extreme emotion of the human experience.
You know, we still hear the word "puppet" and we get this nauseating image of some kind of Muppet or something. Puppets really are the origin of theater. Even the shadow on the wall of Plato's cave was a puppet. The very first actor was some kind of hand creating some kind of animal.
I'm not one of these people that go, "Oh well, I'm just going to do my art and I don't give a shit what anybody thinks." I don't feel that way. I really, really love to have people honestly be moved and inspired. And whether it's just here or just here it's always better if it's the both. That's why Shakespeare is so great, because he gets you from the gut to the heart to the head, and that's what I aspire to do, more than anything.
I can't design a mask and say to someone else, "Just do it." It's partly because I'm a better sculptor than I am a drawer. Considering the amount of time it would take me to draw exactly what I want, I might as well sculpt it. I paint most of it too. It's incredibly time consuming so I end up turning down a lot of jobs I want to do.
I'm trying to make the theatrical experience an environmental experience. We want to have the theatre of it right in the laps of the audience
You don't know until the last half second that he's going to be that close.
She painted what she painted because she had to, because she was passionate about it. She didn't care at all if people bought her paintings. As she said, she painted her reality.
I find that I make as an artist the kind of choices that I have to be impassioned about. I'm not going to spend two years on a film or four years on an opera if I don't feel like I can put my own self into it. That doesn't mean it has to be about myself. That's a difference.
Frida painted her own reality, her life. I'm a director and I paint many other people... Other people's realities. But I do have to invest in it.