Julie Taymor

Julie Taymor has been a highly influential figure in the realm of puppet theater, performance, and then cross-combining of cultures to create an amazingly, moving visual display. She traveled to Indonesia and Japan to study traditional Bunraku puppetry, and while in Indonesia she formed the Teatr Loh in Bali which included Javanese, Balinese, Sundanese, and Weatern Actors uniting the cultures. Taymor received her BFA in Mythology from Oberlin college and found a particular interest in Shamanism and Balinese ritual. She traveled to Toraja to witness a royal death Ceremony where the people would leave the royal bodies out to decompose and sacrifice bulls on their behalf. During the dance and sacrific one of the bulls would not dies and an old man told her it was because of black magic. The ritual had a lasting impact on her life and work. Major Themes in her work include cultural transition, madness, boundaries, cultural differences, taboo, personal limits, religion, shamanism, deprivation, and progress. Her magnificently crafted puppets "always tease an audience about the nature of identity and aliveness of her figures" She likes to combine many styles of performing and puppetry into one like in her production of The King Stag in which there are aspects of Japanese Kabuki Theater, Balinese ritual, and Italian Commedia dell'arte. She even invented a new type of puppet for the Broadway Lion King Performance by combining a Javanese rod puppet and a Japanese Kuruma ningyo dolls by rigging the heads, limbs, and torso of the puppet to the actor behind it. Her commitment to her work and expanse of knowledge across fields is very inspiring and I seem to find myself sort of following in her footsteps.