Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
--Julie Taymor is a theatrical icon who just celebrated the 20th anniversary on Broadway
of her smash staging of The Lion King, which is a hit on stages around the world.
She's also brought David Henry Huang's Tony-winning M. Butterfly back to the boards in a stunning
-ly new staging starring Clive Owen. The Tony-winner talked about her inspiration behind both projects
, Broadway dreams for her film Across the Universe, the man she's been happily unmarried
to for over 30 years and so much more on this week's
Show People. --Welcome Julie. --Thank you, Paul.
--So great to see you . --You too. --Congratulations on The Lion King. --Oh,
thanks. Another milestone, right? 20 YEARS. --Yes.
--How was the event? How was the gala? --Oh, you weren't there?
--I was out of town. I missed it. I'm so sorry. I saw a video of Elton John was there which
is exciting. --Well it reminded all of us of our first
preview in Minneapolis because when the animals started down
well first when you get that chance. People started --LaLoca?
Yeah, well this is not Sadie LaLoca. --Right, right, the first preview.
--Oh, the first preview, yes. Both of them, Sadies. It was a rock concert. People started
screaming. And you couldn't hear a thing. Same thing
happened here. We had so many performers who had
been in the show over the 20 years, so every little moment, the ant lady on the toe shoes
or the the gazelle wheel. Everyone was screaming
for every character and just the thrill and excitement of that.
was it just jolted us 20 years ago to what it was like. --When you got involved with
the project, was there something that you said, that's
a theatrical moment? Or I know I'm gonna pull that off
on stage? A lot of people were like how are you going to do The Lion King on stage?
The thing that I thought would be the hardest thing is the stampede. So, that was the thing
that propelled me to want to do it because I thought okay even
though I've made films, I'm going to do this with absolutely no
rock bottom the most old fashion theatrical techniques out there. So even that little
mouse That's right after the Circle of Life. That's
just a cut out of a mouse and a little flashlight on a stick.
Going along in it's own follow spot. But, something like the stampede, I was reminded
of the old dayd when they would have rollers, you know, and
they do waves. Old fashioned theater that has forced perspective.
I thought well I'll take these rollers and little wildebeests and a piano roll will be
behind that. Where it'll be painted.
And I knew that because I was going to use masks and all level of puppetry, I play with
scale So that kind of thing, and then you have it
in the gazelle wheels. And I think actually one of the most, for
me, major decisions and sort of set the tone is the sunrise.
Because 20 years ago people were starting to get hooked into projections. Now they're
ubiquitous. They're too much actually. I like them. I
use them but not all the time. M. Butterfly, no, except for one.
But I thought, I'm gonna do what I know is the origin of theater, which is take something
that, like the stick and the silk, and the wires or the threads,
and let the audience know that's what it is. Just fabric
and bamboo, so that when it pulled up and it rises and they see the mechanics of it,
they are going to be moved in a very poetic, spiritual way because of
its obviousness, now people would think it would be the reverse. They would
think that if you show the magic, or you make it apparent
that it's just a bunch of fabric and sticks that it would lose its depth, but it isn't
that way because everything about playing and creating theater
from the beginning of time is about the suspension of disbelief. So, okay, I know that's not
the sun, but you're making me, reminding me, it's the color the way the
air in the room pushes the fabric. It's that it becomes that circle from a mound. So that
pulls upon our DNA, our DNA of what it is to be
creative. And I think that's the soul of the show on a visual level.
--Yeah, I think that's the beauty of the work. I guess I'm remembering the simplicity of
why theater works is always important. Something you just always
have to remind yourself. --Absolutely. That people think oh I do such
overly complex or sometimes they get that, but I don't ever
use techniques unless I feel like it's absolutely essential to the story telling. It has to
be integrated. It has to have meaning in the
technique. Meaning in the medium. Messages in the medium.
--Do you revisit your shows often? Lion King is playing all over the world. Do you drop
in to a random country and drop in at the Lion
King? --No. No. Sometimes in London I've done that
but I think I'm not gonna drop into China or Japan, but usually, no, actually when I
last went to Japan, It was for the screening of The Tempest, of
a movie, and so it wasn't Disney that brought me, so I did call
up The Lion King company Shiki and say I'm here. I'll come and see it and I'll do some
rehearsals, and they were delighted. --Got two tickets on
the aisle? --Julie Taymor. --Just one I needed, but so
I did, and I worked with the performers because a lot of those people have
never worked with me because it's been 18 years.
Why would they have worked with me? --What do you look for when you are watching
say The Lion King. You drop in The Lion King on Broadway. What are you paying attention
to? --Is the story being told well? And sometimes
it can be simple, like this afternoon, I'm giving notes to
my associate director for what I saw Sunday night even though it was a wonderful performance
Sunday night, there were certain things like sentences
or words that get too much overlapping, and words dipping.
off on the ends, so that's your are we getting whether it's the story or the dialogue or
the joke You're stepping on a joke.
Because people who are working on it day by day can get very used to it. And they have
to keep throwing themselves back to being virginal. I mean,
it's not the easiest thing to do, but you have to. And hear it
with ears that have never heard it before. I'm not trying to be a dictator about it,
but there are certain ideas and things that have to remain, and
those are the things that I'm there to remind them of.
I mean I'm very happy with the Broadway show. It's wonderful.
--Obviously you had a great experience working with
Disney. -- Yes, I did.
on this project. Have you ever been tempted by any other
Disney properties?
--Sure yes.
--To bring them to the stage? --- We we started to work on
Pinocchio years ago, which I still would be interested in, but I I think that why
we didn't really-- we there was a difference of opinion-- as they say-- for
how close it should be to the Disney movie version, or how close it should be
to the Khiladi original Disney--- not original Disney, excuse me-- original book
And and so I probably I wanted to go
more towards the Khiladi, and and so we never really continued on that one.
But there are other there are other ones that I think would be fun to do.
--You think that might be possibility at some point? Like we might see another?
--I it's
not it's not on the table right now, but that doesn't mean anything.
--Well I want to talk about B. Butterfy, so we're gonna take a quick
break, and we're gonna talk about your beautiful new production of M. Butterfly.
--Okay we right back with you later boys
And we're back with Julie Taymor. Now of
course the Lion King is continuing to play on Broadway. Will be playing
probably forever. Until I die I'm sure Lion King will be playing at the
Minskoff Theater, but three blocks north, there's this beautiful new staging of M.
Butterfly, which is a play, I was telling you this earlier, is a play that I really
fell in love with M. Butterfly the original production in 1988, that John
Dexter directed. Did you see that production?
--Yeah I did. -- It was was a obviously won
best play, was a big... --Eiko Ishioka designed it and she's spectacular.
And similar Julie Taymor productions, I can picture it in my head, like it's so distinctive
in my head when you see something so beautifully designed and staged, like it
really sticks with you. And I'm sure the new M. Butterfly will stayed with me too
because I thought it was also stunning in in a totally different way. It's not
at all the original production. David Henry Hwang has reworked the script and
it's a totally different visual vocabulary, and I think it's beautiful. So
congratulations and I was so excited when they announced you were doing it. I
knew, I thought this is the perfect person with the perfect project, and why
did you think yes this is something I'd like to do?
--Well I love David Henry Hwang
I think he's a wonderful writer. I myself have spent many years in Asia. I
went when I was really young about 15 or 16 to Sri Lanka and then years later at
age 21 I spent four years in Indonesia, and traveled to Japan, Singapore, Thailand.
I just I've been and now because of Lion King, I've been to more countries. We just
did a Lion King in China. So Asia, and if you know Lion King, then you know it's
very inspired by my time in Asia. So Asia itself is a place that I am the Asia
it's so huge. But various various countries and China fascinates me
and I've spent time there and I feel like the the play itself is such an
incredible opportunity to fuse both Western opera. I direct a lot of opera
at the Met, that that you know Magic Flute is there now.
And then what happened is that since David wrote the play, all of this
information about the true story came out--post the original play.. And the
facts of the that real story of these two characters of these two real people
and what went on was so amazing to me, I asked David if he would be willing to
relook at his play because, I don't know if you know some of the story, but it's
not just in the original script, it was we keep it a secret that this is real
this what peers to be a Chinese diva female opera singer, at the end turns out
to be a guy.
--It was genuinely shocking in the original production. --It was.
--And they were it was and it was all
built up to this sort of shocking moment. --And that's what it was about
yes more than anything. And that doesn't shock today it doesn't shock. And any way
a lot of people know know it. And it doesn't feel like that is the most
important thing of their story. In the real story it's a much more gender fluid,
which felt so contemporary. We didn't we didn't have to work on that. It was there
inherent in the story, so our shock is really about the kind of love story. I
find I find it equally, if not more so shocking, to see how these two people
have to navigate being truly in love with each other in in such an unusual
situation, and kind of love that cannot be named. We cannot put you know binary
genders on on one of these characters, and this is based on the real story, so I
find that that kind of carousel, or roller coaster of is she is he? Or
she he or she is she? And then the fact that both societies the Chinese during
the Cultural Revolution and the French during the 1970s, which is supposed to be
about freedoms and personal freedoms, doesn't allow for this extraordinarily
unique romantic love story to flourish. And so it's it's, David's a very comedic
writer, he's got you know there's tons of wonderful comedy, but it's an
extraordinary tragedy. Ultimately what goes on. And there was also this
other opera that David didn't know about called Butterfly Lovers that was very
integral to the story. So we've got much more of the Chinese
point of view in this version. Much more Song, the character's point of view. But I
also think that what David was able to do here, the other one was more political
was really about, you know the Asia as representing the feminine mystique, the
feminine, inscrutable feminine. Well right now America is not on top. China is on
top. So certain kinds of relationships between Asia and America or the East and
the West is changed radically in 20 years. So he still has his
incredibly potent political point of view in the play, but I think what I
stress for him to do, and I think that I hope you felt this, that the
individuality of these two people, and their love story is much deeper than the
original script. Than the original play. They're not just tropes, they're not just
set up there to be symbols of East and West and male and female. It's much more
complex.
--Right, and it reminded me how great you are with actors. I mean
directing actors because it's very easily to think of Julie Taymor is just
great visual.
--Constantly and put into the box and yet I've worked with Anthony
Hopkins and Titus and Helen Mirren and Alan Cummings and I mean just brilliant
actors and I love them and you know it's it for me it starts with the
script, the story, the writing, the actors, and then the visual has to support that
always.
--And these performances are spectacular in M. Butterfly. Clive Owen
is he someone you knew before?
--No I didn't know him personally.
--I was so blown away by
his work and and the way his performance builds over over the evening. I mean it's
really beautiful beautiful work. What were your first meetings like with him?
--Very exciting because we met a year before we did the show. We were supposed
to do it last spring, and Clive said he would really be interested in doing it
but he would want to spend more time preparing for it, so would we postponed
to the fall, and we said yes, because he didn't want to go movie to movie to movie to or
TV or whatever he's doing. So we met early, he had liked the original script,
so he was hooked, but then what really got him interested was the fact that
David was going to re was going to rework it, and was completely open to
reworking, and Clive would come to me in my kitchen. We met in restaurants. We
met in New York, we met in London, and with David, and then we also did this
really very critical workshop in the spring, one of these 29 hour workshops,
and that helped, and then he kept working on it in the summer, and whenever he
wanted to come to rehearsal in the September, he was there if we wanted him,
so we've had a great collaboration.
--You also, it's another collaboration with
Elliot Goldenthal, the man the man in your life. You you guys have been
together a long time.
--Over 30 years. --That's amazing yeah that's amazing.
--Happily unmarried, as they say --Happily unmarried, and
you collaborate on basically all of your
projects. I mean.. --Well no, I I've done some
dead composers in the Opera, you know, Vaughn, Mozart
Stravinsky, and they're all great, and then I've done Eliot's opera Grendel,
which was my favorite to be honest, but yes he did the score to M. Butterfly with
Puccini. So you've got Puccini from Madame Butterfly then Elliot literally
had to write Chinese opera, and we have this wonderful Chinese musician you saw
the percussionist, who does really has to be live with the dancers, but and then
Elliot wrote all the other score music for it, but he's done he's done all my
movies. Most of my theater, obviously not Spider-Man, which is probably the reason...
No I'm just kidding, but I love working with Elliot. I met Elliot working together. We
worked together five years, and then it was, what? Who's that?
-- Was that love at
first sight for you? --No. It took five years! Yeah it
was, he's cute, he's cute and I like him, but the thing is it was really the
working together that made us... Which means that you know our
relationship working is really so vital and exciting and sexy because that's how
we fell in love.
--Are you creative soul mates?
--Yes we are, totally. -- But it feels
like you have all these projects you work on together. Do you guys ever just
like Netflix and chill?
--We did last night. What did we watch last night on Netflix? We saw an
unbelievable documentary last night called One of Us about Hasidic, about oh
the Hasidic I know you're talking about wow we just we're doing this
I couldn't get into Filmstruck, couldn't remember my password, didn't
know, I had to. So no we do that a lot, and we travel, and you know he works with
other directors. --It's not all work with you guys.
--No, no, and I've worked with other
composers but but rarely.
--Okay we're gonna take another break. We'll be back
with more Julie Taymor.
And we're back with more Julie Taymor.
Can we talk about your childhood for a minute because when you
read about like I was reading about your childhood on Wikipedia, as you do, and it
sounds so like lofty and intimidating, and I mean like but before you like
graduate in high school you'd been to like everywhere. I mean you'd been all
over the world. I mean you you've had a very worldly childhood. You were you were
going off but you were 11 years old, is that true, you were going off into Boston
yes doing theater. --Yeah, yes. -
--It sounds kind of crazy when you hear about it.
--But I think those days nobody had fear. There was no fear, so I was
probably yeah at 9 10 11 or something, and I would take the subway, or not the
subway, the T, from the suburbs, and go into Boston. And what was fantastic
about being a part at Boston Children's Theatre is that the kids came from all
over. In your suburbs, you're with people who live in the suburbs, but in Boston at Boston
Children's Theatre, I met kids from Roxbury, South Boston, you know all races
much more diverse, which I think started my wanderlust. You know
which is to take myself out of my own comfortable environment and put myself
into the places that challenge me, and meet people who are different than I am.
So then my brother and sister are well now you know everything because you've
read Wikipedia, but they're seven and eight years older, and and so they when
they you know I watch my parents go through the 60s with them, go through the
hell of the 60s. Across the Universe the movie that's a very very good example of
what my family was like because that's the closest thing to being a
more biography but not really, but just a little bit. And we can talk about
that, but I I was really really hungry to travel, so when I was about 15, I went on
the experiment in international living to say lon which is now Sri Lanka yeah
travel through South India and went to say lon and lived with a family and you
know I remember being out on the Indian Ocean, and it's, yes traveling and and
really going out living in, living in other cultures. Not just traveling. I
don't know. My parents gave me more independence and freedom. After they went
through the hell of my older brother and sister, rebellious-ness, the whole thing
they kind of left me alone, and let me go off, and then at 16 as you know, I went to
Paris, graduated high school early. I had been in a theatre company, experimental
theatre company in Boston, not children's theatre, adult theater, and I wanted to
study mime, so I went to Paris for a year and studied at Ecole de Nimes Jacques
Lecoq, and that's not that I wanted to study mime. It was more understanding how
to use the body, how do how to really tell visually work with actors, but
really use your bod, as an expressive means of of creating a part.
--Which of your
projects do your parents love? What do you think they really like?
--Well my
father never got to see Lion King. He went into the hospital the day it opened.
No, it's not a good story. It was it was the best of times, the worst of times.
And I didn't know till my mother sat down, and there was an empty seat, and
Sadie Laloca started to sing. And I said where is he? You know my
father, and she said don't worry, he's in the hospital, never got out of the
hospital. He died that year, so it can't be the Lion King. There there were
many many shows you know before the Lion King that my parents want and
you know which is something that happened many times and with Green Bird,
you know there there were shows that they all came to.
--It just seems like they were so supportive of creating this woman that's in front of
me. How creative you are, and how a worldly you are, and how open
you are like you said to people, and cultures, and it seems like they really
fed that.
--They did and they treated me as an adult and I treated them as comrades.
I don't know how come that happened. I guess it's partly because I watched them
try and discipline and be deal with the 60s and the drugs and the whole thing,
which is, but there was a real mutual respect that my parents had
for me and I had for them, which gave us the ability to enjoy each other's lives.
--When I went off to Indonesia at age 20 21. I went for supposedly for three
months and stayed four years. I came back after two, but I had harrowing adventures
in Indonesia, harrowing accidents, motorcycle, volcano, unbelievable. Started a
theatre company. They got it through mail. There was no internet. And one time they
did come over and visit me, but again there was just this tremendous respect,
and that allowed me to flourish as a young woman. And not have to feel like it
was out of rebellion, but it was out of real my own my own drive and my own
sense of direction. My mom is 96 and she just saw him
butterfly this week. She came to New York. She keeps saying oh it's gonna be the
last time. And I keep saying uh-huh. She called me and she was discussing it
and she was she, would, she-- I saw the original M. Butterfly with my parents
30 years ago. I sat-- this is a good one-- I sat in the front of the mezzanine. I knew!
It wasn't a big shock for me. I mean you you can't get past the opening night and
not know. --Some people don't read the newspaper I
suppose, but my mother and I knew. And my father didn't, so my mother and I--
here's my father's my mother--we're looking over and were watching him
discover the truth about this diva. --B.D. Wong.
--This diva as Galimar is discovering as the
lead character. And my father was in Japan during the war. He's a gynecologist,
or was a gynecologist, but you know when you're in the front mezzanine,
you're not close enough. I mean you you you can really, the illusion can work.
We've had people in this M. Butterfly in the first row. I remember
during previews, a guy came up to me a film producer, he came up to me in the
intermission, and said oh she's glorious. Oh my god, and that husky beautiful voice. She's
just transcendent. And then at the end it was a full standing ovation. And I
looked over to see. He was in the first row, I knew where he was, and he didn't
stand and I'm wondering maybe he was humiliated. You know what I mean? Maybe
felt by the time he knew the truth, I'm wondering what he felt like
embarrassment, whatever, but uh we've had a number of people, friends of mine, who
still, and I that's a tribute to Jin Ha because because we don't try in the
show to mimic a female. My voice is low, I mean I you know I feel like there was a
way, and we don't want to do a drag queen thing, and and he is who he is. I mean
he's very comfortable in his body --And so I I mentioned in our morning
meeting today to to the staff here that you've said Across the Universe may become
a stage -- How many years have I said that?
--musical and everyone got very excited,
and people love this movie. I love this movie. Is this actually happening?
--As of last week it was. I mean it's just you know how hard it is to keep pushing
projects and keep pushing, cause I don't just do the normal, you know. If we just
would go straight to Broadway, it could have happened ten years ago, but we we
want to create it in a different kind of theater. A new kind of theater, and so I
did have a good meeting last week. I'm not gonna say with who because I don't
want to jinx it, but I have not felt how could you fall out of love with the
Beatles? I don't. And I also think, quite honestly, that piece like M. Butterfly,
has the love story, but it's also extremely political, and it's about how
young people must take responsibility, get up off of their chairs, and their
couches, and out of their iPads, and out of their iPhones and and and take charge,
and if you don't like what's happening to the world, you better change it. And I
think we're in a very dangerous time as we were in the 60s. I think it's equally,
if not more so-- No not more so, but what got people motivated to protest in the
60s was the draft because it was happening to them personally. Well it's
going to be happening personally in one way or another whether
it's global warming or whether it's abortion or whether it's whatever your
views are freedom of speech, freedom to you know to to protest! I think that that
this is a time again where it doesn't matter that it's set during the Vietnam
War. It's it's it's about young people for all time, across the universe, and
those songs transcend time. I have a bunch of people who are really committed
to making this happen, so hopefully within the next two years because
musicals take at least a year and a half to two years, we will finally get to see
Across the Universe on the stage./
--You capture the period so
beautifully in that movie. What would be the biggest challenge of putting that on
stage?
--I'll tell you the biggest challenge is that the movie-- there are
very few movie musicals that are created as a movie musical first. And there were
200 scenes in that film. I mean Vietnam, bombs, Detroit, Lower East Side, all,
it's just it was very very vivid. Very visual and 5,000 extras. Well the thing
that's hard is trying to compress it into less scenes without without losing
the power of Across the Universe, of it being in Liverpool and being here and
being on the ocean and being in swamps in Vietnam and in helicopters, so
that's hard. I am going to change out a few songs, and I'm also have to limit it
to hopefully around the Lion King size, which means 20-25 people who are dancers
and singers, and six wonderful principals. And maybe two adults or three adults, who
can do all the adult roles, and in musicals you don't have for the most
part you don't have stars because that that will limit the musical, so you have
to have tremendous actor actor singers who can who can do these parts, and I
think it's gonna be a lot of fun, and a lot of choreography. But that's the good
part! We threw away a lot of choreography for the movie because I didn't want it
to be-- I want it to be more real in the movie, so even in something like A Little
Help from My Friends, the choreography is all around being in chairs and falling
over and going through. It's it's a different kind of
choreography, but Danny Ezralow, who did did it, will do it again, and now we'll
be able to we have about a hundred hours of stuff that we know we compiled, and
he'll do new stuff, but it will be very exciting. Like the the bowling alley,
remember that? Okay how you gonna do that on the stage? You have to create a
bowling alley! But Danny and I did an opera years ago, where we did-- it was The
Flying Dutchman-- and we had naked men sliding across the stage on water, you
know, like a slip and slide with with women in 18th century dresses and boats
on their head moving in the other direction, this was to create the storm.
So you'd see men going shooo as women were moving against the wind. So we've
done some pretty interesting techniques to be able to do the sliding down the
bowling alley.
--Is it already playing in your head? -- Oh yeah
--Like when you walk
around the streets are you like are you already visualizing Across the
Universe? -- Yes.
--If I could see inside your
brain, I could already see this. -- You'd see
an exhausted brain, yes you would. Because
I've been wanting to do it for so many years, and I
still you know-- I don't know where it will open, but probably Europe somewhere
or or in the Far East, even, maybe. I think people all over the world know the
Beatles, and so it's not exactly like the Lion King in that sense, but in in that
Lion King the story is is a kind of fable mythic story that really does fit
anywhere. This one, even though it's in English, people in Russia people
everywhere sang the Beatles songs, and know the Beatles songs. So I'm hoping.
--I hope. I'm hoping too. I can't wait.I think it'd be exciting, and we you know I could
talk to you forever, but we didn't even talk about Spider-Man! How do we do an
interview and not talk about Spider-Man? --Very smartly, so.
--Well, Julie, thank you so
much for coming by. Everyone really needs to check out M. Butterfly. It's at the
Court Theatre. It's a stunning production, and of course the Lion King, playing at
the Minskoff, or anywhere anywhere Across the Universe. [laughs]
--Well done. --Thank you so much for being
here.Really was a pleasure. --Great to see you.
--Thank you for watching. We'll
see you next time.