Julie Taymor

Taymor first directed Shakespeare in 1986 with The Tempest, for which she also designed the masks. This production, made with Theatre for a New Audience, was abridged and designed to be performed for schools and combined Taymor’s masks with ideographs and scenery that was almost entirely incorporeal[1].

One of her best known productions of Shakespeare, however, came in 1994 with Titus Andronicus. In this production, Taymor made the setting contemporary and combined realistic and stylised violence to reach an audience used to the vivid depictions of gore that movies brought to their everyday lives[2]. Taymor also made the children, minor characters in Shakespeare’s text, the point of the production. Taymor spent 4 months auditioning and selecting her cast for Titus Andronicus and had a definite focus on the use of visual motifs and ideographic gestures.

[1] Blumenthal, Eileen; Monda, Antonio; and Taymor, Julie. Julie Taymor Playing with Fire. 3rd ed. New York: Abrams, 2007. Print.

[2] Richards, David. “Theatre in Review, Titus Andronicus.” New York Times. 16 March 1994. Accessed 18 May 2016.