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[00:00:00] Carmen: That was, of course, the opening of Disney's The Lion King, performed at the 1998 Tony Awards. That night, Julie Taymor made history as the first woman to win Best Director of a Musical. She also nabbed a Tony for her groundbreaking costume design.

Since then, The Lion King has been presented on every continent except Antarctica and seen by more than 100 million people worldwide—including my triplets, who were about six or seven years old at the time, waiting for the moment when they saw giraffes on the horizon.

Much of Taymor's inspiration behind her acclaimed work can be traced back to her time here at 91ֱ��. After creating her own major in mythology and folklore, Taymor traveled around the world studying various forms of cultural performance, which she credits as a catalyst for all of her endeavors.

Whether in film, opera, television, or Broadway, she is what I like to call a quintessential memory maker. She creates indelible images and experiences that last a lifetime. That’s because she’s willing to take risks—to do things that are unproven and to push past established limitations, bringing us something wholly new while forging connections across race, class, and culture.

Something we need now more than ever.

I'm excited to talk about those early beginnings and more with one of the most imaginative and provocative artists working today.

I’m Carmen Twilley Ambar, President of 91ֱ��. Welcome to Running to the Noise, where I speak with all sorts of folks who are tackling our toughest problems and working to spark positive change around the world.

Because here at 91ֱ��, we don’t shy away from the challenging situations that threaten to divide us.

We run toward them.

[00:02:00] Carmen: So I’m so excited to have Julie Taymor on Running to the Noise. Welcome, Julie.

[00:02:05] Julie: Good to see you.

[00:02:07] Carmen: Good to see you too. So I guess I wanted to start with—you are such a prolific creative, and I’ve heard you call yourself a playmaker.

Even though, oftentimes, when we think of you, we think of film, television, and Broadway—so many ways that you inhabit the creative space.

Maybe you could help our audience understand what you mean by that when you describe yourself as a playmaker.

[00:02:30] Julie: Well, I don’t think it fully encompasses my film work, because the word play is in it. But I think in opera and theater, I have been a designer, a director, a writer, a lyricist, a costume designer, a set designer, a puppet designer, a mask designer—because all of those things can be part of one show, like The Lion King.

Then how do you give one credit? You know, trying to put me into one box is a little tricky.

[00:03:00] Carmen: Right. I don’t know if you know David Adjaye, but he’s the architect who designed the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.

He came to 91ֱ�� a couple of years ago, and we were sitting and listening to him talk. About 20 minutes in, I turned to the person next to me and said, 'Oh, this is what a genius sounds like.'

As I was preparing for this conversation with you, I was talking to someone, and as I was describing you and how I think about your creative work, that same sort of phrase came to mind.

For those of us who are not geniuses, help us understand—how do you start to think about a project? How does Julie Taymor approach her work?

[00:04:00] Julie: Well, it depends on if the project originates from me and I’m not 'work for hire'. So let’s make that distinction.

The Lion King preexisted. It was an animated film. Disney came to me and said, “We are interested in having this go on Broadway. We think a Broadway stage, but we don’t know if it can.”

I hadn’t seen the animated film. I was brought up on Disney, like a lot of people, but aesthetically, it had never been my style. I had been in off-Broadway avant-garde theater and opera and world theater, and I had no interest in Broadway. None.

[00:05:00] Carmen: Really?

[00:05:02] Julie: And still don’t, frankly.

[00:05:04] Carmen: We’ll have to talk about that.

[00:05:06] Julie: Yeah. I mean, it’s great if you can have a hit—that’s wonderful. But in general, it’s the material that interests me. And there can be varied places where you can make that material have meaning.

When I did look at the animated film, I thought it was beautiful. I thought it was incredibly inspiring. But what got me was the challenge. I like challenge, and I love the idea of—how am I going to put a stampede on stage? How do I put hundreds of animals, herds, flying creatures, all of this, on stage?

There are no human beings in it. The closest would be Rafiki, in a way. She’s a shaman baboon.

[00:06:00] Carmen: Right.

[00:06:02] Julie: And Disney was very open. They said, “We don’t even know what the story should be,” because their animated film was short and incomplete. And they were aware of that.

What I really was interested in was shamanism. And I studied shamanism at 91ֱ��—folklore and mythology. I focused on Northwest Coast Indigenous culture and Inuit traditions, especially their masks.

A shaman exists in every culture. In South Africa, it’s the Sangoma. In Indonesia, it’s the Dukun.

After 91ֱ��, I had a Watson Traveling Fellowship—MacArthur came later—to study in Eastern Europe, Indonesia, and Japan.

[00:07:00] Carmen: And you were there for like four years, right? Wasn’t this a long time?

[00:07:04] Julie: I was. I intentionally went. My project was Visual Theater and Experimental Puppet Theater in these places—where, in Indonesia and Japan in particular, the forms of Bunraku and Hachioji puppetry are considered the highest forms of theater.

In our culture, puppetry was considered children’s theater, and I hated it. Literally did not like it—Muppet-style puppetry, Lamb Chop, all that. I just didn’t.

But in Indonesia, it is by far the most respected, elevated form.

So I went to Indonesia for three months. I was so blown away in those three months that I decided to stay. I was encouraged to stay by one of their great experimental, radical, and political theater directors, W. S. Rendra, to come and live in Yogyakarta in his kampung.

And I did choreography there. And then he said, “Julie, you stay and do your own work. We’ll support you.”

[00:08:00] Carmen: Wow.

[00:08:02] Julie: I became a director in Indonesia, in Java.

[00:08:05] Carmen: Julie, how old were you at the time when this was happening?

[00:08:07] Julie: Twenty-one or twenty-two. I had just finished 91ֱ��. And that’s where, as an artist, I was born.

Seriously. I mean, I had been doing theater since I was eleven. I did some theater at 91ֱ��—major theater—but I was also always interested in academics.

Because you can’t really do theater if you don’t know literature, if you don’t know religion, if you don’t know the origins—anthropology.

[00:09:00] Carmen: Well, I love this because, in preparation for this conversation, I looked up how many students at 91ֱ�� are doing their own individual majors. And there are about twenty students doing that now—just having the space to create their own major.

And I love that out of that experience came these four years—this piecing together of all these different disciplines.

I guess one thing I wanted to ask is, how do you view the through line of your work?

I was having this debate back and forth with folks about how to characterize Julie’s work.

I said, “If I were to give a through line—and I’m sure she’d probably disagree with it—it seems to me that the visual elements of all of her work have a consciousness.”

When I think about everything I’ve ever seen you do, the visual elements are so captivating.

[00:10:00] Julie: I think our culture puts people into boxes.

You’re a visual director. You’re a book director. You’re a this director, a that director.

I don’t think I’m a visual director. I am a director.

Even with The Lion King, the story came first. That’s the first thing I worked on—the expansion of the story. The second act was all about the prodigal son story. That came from my folklore and mythology classes—understanding how those stories are structured.

It was about making sure the entire story was together first. Then came the music. And then the visuals happened.

You know, I embrace all forms of what can be visual, but the language starts to become fundamental in the storytelling.

It wasn’t until Jeffrey Horowitz’s Theatre for a New Audience in New York offered me Shakespeare that I really got excited about the power of poetic language.

Not just naturalistic language—but the imagery in Shakespeare.

And you’ve probably seen my films Titus, The Tempest, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I’ve done three Shakespeare features.

[00:11:00] Carmen: Yes.

[00:11:02] Julie: His work is so visual. 'Rome is a wilderness of tigers, and they prey on me and my own'—something bastardized like that.

So, as an artist, as a theater maker, I hear 'Rome is a wilderness of tigers', and I immediately see the image of tigers.

Now, you don’t necessarily want to show those images right when the words are said. But they come somewhere in the play or in the film.

That’s the power of Shakespeare—you can have these incredibly beautiful visual expressions because he didn’t have any sets in his original productions.

[00:12:00] Carmen: Right.

[00:12:02] Julie: The visuals were done through language. But in a contemporary theater environment, you can have visuals.

You just don’t want to Mickey Mouse it—don’t have the image appear exactly at the same time as the words.

[00:12:15] Carmen: How do you find the collaborative process with your other creatives?

Do you find yourself bleeding over into their space in ways that are comfortable—or sometimes uncomfortable?

For those of us who work in collaborative processes, how would you describe your approach to that part of the work?

[00:12:35] Julie: Oh, it’s incredibly important.

You’re only as good as your tools.

You’re only as good as the people you work with. And I have a lot of collaborators I’ve worked with over and over.

Elliot Goldenthal is my major collaborator. He’s also my sweetheart, and we’ve been working together for forty years. We’ve done films, opera, and theater together.

And we have a new musical that we’re presently working on.

[00:13:00] Carmen: Oh, wow.

[00:13:02] Julie: It’s really critical for me to hire designers who will go further than I would go.

I mean, I could design the costumes for everything I do, but that would take me away from focusing on the book or the directing.

And I like to have a conversation. I like to have a dialectic—a back-and-forth discussion—about what these designs should be.

So, I heavily lean into it. But I don’t think I trespass their boundaries.

I let them do what they do.

One thing about my work—you’ll notice it looks very different from most other people’s work.

Because I take chances.

And I take chances because I know it can be done.

I may not know how to get there, but I’m willing to let those artists go further.

[00:14:00] Carmen: When you say, Julie, that you want someone who will go further, what does that look like?

If you think someone’s not quite going far enough, what do you do?

[00:14:10] Julie: I will be ready with concepts.

And sometimes I may not have the concept—they may come in with the concept.

But I will give a lot to the designers and collaborators.

I have to have an idea.

Like, it was easy for me with The Lion King—I’m using that because most people have seen it.

It’s a no-brainer to ask: What is the ideograph?

[00:14:30] Carmen: The ideograph?

[00:14:32] Julie: Yes—ideographs are when you take a story or an image and reduce it to three brushstrokes.

I describe it like a Japanese brush painting.

Instead of painting the entire forest in detail, you paint the essence of the forest in three strokes.

It’s poetry. It’s like a haiku.

You take the concept and reduce it to one image.

[00:15:00] Carmen: Right.

[00:15:02] Julie: After studying The Lion King movie and listening to the music—then adding the music with Lebo M, which I brought in—it was very easy to find the ideograph.

It’s the circle.

It begins with the sunrise. It begins with the Circle of Life.

If you look throughout the entire production, you’ll see the wheels of the gazelle moving. You’ll see the circle of water—the silk that gets pulled through a hole in the floor. The silk starts to move toward that hole until it disappears—that’s drought.

[00:16:00] Carmen: Wow.

[00:16:02] Julie: You can go throughout The Lion King and see the emblem of the circle.

[00:16:07] Carmen: And that, my friends, is how a genius’s mind works—helping us go further and think further.

So you said something really powerful, Julie.

You talked about taking risks—your willingness and desire to take risks.

Is that a part of every project you work on? Or is there something specific that defines what taking risks means for you?

[00:17:00] Julie: My motivation isn’t to take risks.

That’s not where it starts. That just happens to be the way it is.

I’m sure I repeat myself, but I don’t try to repeat myself.

When I did The Lion King, the next thing I did was Titus, the film with Anthony Hopkins.

I could have gone off and done something else—Steven Spielberg even offered me a film, The Cat in the Hat.

And honestly, I think my response was—and remember, this was 27 years ago—if the cat is black.

But I did not want to be thought of as just a family-friendly, children’s theater, puppetry person.

So I went to the greatest writer in the English language—at least, the greatest we think—Shakespeare.

And I took his darkest and nastiest play, Titus Andronicus, and adapted it into film.

[00:18:00] Carmen: Wow.

[00:18:02] Julie: I had already directed Titus before, and I loved it.

And after the play, I did some readings for the film adaptation and invited some young, hip, cool film directors.

And they were shocked—because Shakespeare did violence better than they did.

Really.

When Shakespeare investigates violence in Titus, he doesn’t just show it—he dissects it.

At the time, I was thinking about Colin Powell—what if Colin Powell comes home, they ask him to become President of the United States, and he ends up baking his enemy’s children into pies?

Let’s just think about that.

[00:19:00] Carmen: Right.

[00:19:02] Julie: There’s a movie out right now called Emilia Pérez.

It’s about a cartel leader who wants to be a woman.

And he’s a monster. But his whole life, he’s wished he were a woman.

So he undergoes a sex change.

And the question the film raises is: Are we going to forgive him?

When does redemption begin?

[00:20:00] Carmen: That’s powerful.

[00:20:02] Julie: And that’s what Shakespeare does—he gets to the inner monster inside a good man.

And the good inside a monster.

For me, the story is what attracts me first.

Do I think there’s something new to say?

Is it something that I believe I could do in a way that potentially no one has done yet?

[00:21:00] Carmen: Right.

[00:21:02] Julie: I could do another Ring Cycle, but my god, then I’m just competing with the last director who did it.

I’d rather do John Gardner’s Grendel, which is what Elliot and I did at the L.A. Opera.

We adapted Beowulf—but from the monster’s perspective.

We did that way ahead of its time.

[00:22:00] Carmen: Julie, what do you think about Broadway right now?

[00:22:02] Julie: I don’t think there’s much creativity on Broadway.

And I don’t think producers are looking for it.

They’re scared.

Money is hard.

I hardly ever go, if at all.

I think a lot of great composers aren’t doing musicals anymore.

They’re going into television or film.

There are musicals I love—West Side Story, for example.

But generally, it’s not my cup of tea, musically speaking.

If I were to say who I’d like to hear writing songs for Broadway?

I’d love to hear Billie Eilish write a whole musical.

[00:23:00] Carmen: Interesting.

[00:23:02] Julie: I’m sure Barbie is going to be a musical.

Whether she writes it all, I don’t know, but Billie wrote a beautiful song for that movie.

I think Olivia Rodrigo writes incredible songs.

But I worry about just recycling the same musicals over and over.

I want to see new musicals written by people who aren’t steeped in the history of musicals.

And honestly? I don’t like calling them musicals.

Because that word comes with an image—a certain type of song.

[00:24:00] Carmen: You want something more creative.

[00:24:02] Julie: Yes.

I want you to create new works, without feeling obligated to the structure of the classic musical.

When you look at something like Emilia Pérez, there’s not one song you can come out humming.

But does it have the storytelling sensibility of Andrew Lloyd Webber? Of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story? Of Queen?

Yes.

Elliot and I—when we saw it—we could see those influences.

But they fused into something new.

And that’s what I think needs to happen more often.

[00:25:00] Carmen: That’s really compelling.

Julie, I want to shift gears for a moment.

One of the things I like to talk about is how you move between theater and film.

What are the things that cross over?

And what are the differences that you think need to be celebrated and amplified?

[00:26:00] Julie: That’s a great question.

When you move from theater to film and back, you have to understand the medium.

Theater is ritual. It’s live. The audience is present in the experience.

Film is immersion. You control exactly what the viewer sees and when.

One of the biggest mistakes people make when adapting theater to film is that they don’t take advantage of what film can do.

[00:27:00] Carmen: Right.

[00:27:02] Julie: In theater, you can’t cut away to a close-up. You can’t shift perspectives in an instant.

So, in film, you need to embrace that.

But you also need to understand that theater has a different kind of power.

There’s nothing like the energy of a live audience.

I think about Frida, the film I did about Frida Kahlo.

That movie was very much structured like theater, because Frida’s paintings came to life in a theatrical way.

[00:28:00] Carmen: Yes, I remember that.

[00:28:02] Julie: That film blended realism with symbolism—it played with theatricality while still being a film.

And that’s the balance—when you move between mediums, you use the best of both.

[00:28:20] Carmen: That’s really interesting.

Julie, I want to talk about something that’s been a big discussion in the creative world lately—who gets to tell what stories?

There's been a lot of debate about cultural appropriation versus authentic storytelling.

You’ve worked across so many cultures in your career. What’s your take on this?

[00:29:00] Julie: It’s a huge conversation right now.

And I understand why—representation matters.

But I also believe that storytelling is universal.

If we say that only certain people can tell certain stories, then we lose the entire point of being an artist.

The authenticity of a story comes from how it’s told, not who tells it.

I lived in Indonesia for four years.

That doesn’t make me Indonesian, but it does mean I was deeply immersed in their culture.

And when I tell a story that draws from that experience, I do it with respect and understanding.

[00:30:00] Carmen: That’s so important.

[00:30:02] Julie: Look—African Americans have spent generations watching movies about white people.

They understand white people better than white people understand them, because they’ve had to.

And now, that’s shifting—we’re seeing more stories from different perspectives.

And that’s great.

But I don’t believe in saying, “Only this person can tell this story.”

What matters is: Are you telling it well? Are you doing the work? Are you collaborating with the right people?

[00:31:00] Carmen: That makes a lot of sense.

And I know that for The Lion King, you played a huge role in opening doors for Black actors and performers in Broadway musicals.

I’ve heard so many people say that you helped create space for them.

[00:31:20] Julie: That means a lot.

When I did The Lion King, I made it very clear—on stage, these roles had to be played by Black actors.

That wasn’t a debate.

James Earl Jones voiced Mufasa in the animated film, but Simba was voiced by Matthew Broderick—a white actor.

For live theater, that wasn’t going to fly.

So we cast Black performers.

And I fought to bring South African actors into the Broadway production, because the sound—the choral style—was completely different from American R&B or gospel.

[00:32:00] Carmen: Right.

[00:32:02] Julie: The Broadway unions did not want us bringing in South Africans.

They said, “Why can’t you just hire Black Americans?”

And I said, “Because this music is South African—it’s a completely different tradition.”

This wasn’t just about representation—it was about authenticity.

And now, The Lion King has always had South African performers in it.

[00:33:00] Carmen: That’s incredible.

And I think that’s why so many people credit you with helping to expand opportunities for Black actors in musical theater.

You made it possible for them to be in a hit Broadway show that wasn’t about racism or oppression—it was just a great story.

[00:33:20] Julie: Exactly.

Before that, Black performers were always in plays about racism.

They couldn’t just be in a play.

Except maybe in Shakespeare, where there’s been colorblind casting for a long time.

But on Broadway? That was rare.

So yeah—I do think The Lion King helped change that.

[00:34:00] Carmen: It definitely did.

Julie, before we wrap up, tell us—what’s next for you?

What are you working on right now?

[00:34:15] Julie: Oh, so many things.

One of the big projects I’ve been working on for years is a new musical called The Grand Delusion.

It’s based on The Transposed Heads, a novella by Thomas Mann, which itself was inspired by an ancient Indian myth.

I first staged it as a dance drama years ago, then developed it into a full musical.

Now, we’ve completely rewritten it, and it’s finally coming to life.

[00:35:00] Carmen: That sounds amazing.

[00:35:02] Julie: It’s wild—it blends contemporary New York, modern India, and mythology.

It’s comic, demonic, surreal—it’s like nothing else out there.

And I love projects like this because they break expectations.

I don’t want to do something that’s been done before.

I want to take people to places they didn’t even know they wanted to go.

[00:36:00] Carmen: That’s the perfect way to describe your work, Julie.

And it’s why 91ֱ�� is so proud to call you one of our own.

Our students are obsessed with your work, and I just want to say thank you—for inspiring us, for pushing boundaries, and for making art that challenges us to think in new ways.

[00:36:30] Julie: Thank you so much. That means a lot.

[00:36:35] Carmen: Thanks for listening to Running to the Noise, a podcast produced by 91ֱ��.

Our music is composed by Professor of Jazz Guitar Bobby Ferrazza and performed by the 91ֱ�� Sonny Rollins Jazz Ensemble, a student group created through the support of the legendary jazz musician.

If you enjoyed the show, be sure to hit subscribe, leave us a review, and share this episode online so Obies and others can find it too.

I’m Carmen Twilley Ambar, and I’ll be back soon with more great conversations from thought leaders on and off our campus.