www.broadwayworld.com: The Shakespeare Theatre Company (STC) has chosen Julie Taymor as the 2015 recipient of the William Shakespeare Award for Classical Theatre (Will Award), which recognizes artists who have made significant contributions to classical theatre in America. JM Zell Partners, Ltd. will receive the Sidney Harman Award for Philanthropy in the Arts. The awards will be presented at the Harman Center for the Arts Annual Gala on Sunday, November 1, 2015, hosted by STC at Sidney Harman Hall (610 F Street NW) and the National Building Museum (440 G Street NW).
7 comments:
I have been a huge fan of Julie Taymor for a long, long time and although this award may not be a Tony Award or a Drama Desk Award, I believe it signifies something larger. It symbolizes the shift that Julie Taymor has been leading in theatre of women in leadership positions. She was the first women to ever win this specific award and she was the first woman to ever win the Tony Award for Best Director. And although these awards do not directly translate into movement in the right direction for women in the industry, it is an indicator that there is a movement to the general public and people who pay attention to these awards. Taymor also shows that artistic adventures on classic works are being accepted by the general public theatre audience. These artistic adventures are great sign for the theatrical community and show development in new work.
I find it interesting that Julie Taymor has turned her vision toward classical works in the past few years and that the article overlooks the many years that she spent working on Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. I do believe that she has visionary work in her, exemplified in The Lion King and obviously in her work at Shakespeare Theatre Company. However, I think the author comes across somewhat biased because he completely overlooks her controversial efforts and work on Spiderman. I also find the comment about Across the Universe odd because although some people liked it, the movie became more of a cult classic and less of an art piece.
I do believe that she is talented and has an amazing amount of vision when placed in the right scope, but articles that fail to address an artist’s downfalls in addition to their successes metaphorically put my hackles up. What makes an artist’s successes interesting is the path they took to get there.
I think because this is an announcement about her receiving the Awards I think that is the only simple reason why this article talks only about her success stories. I don't think no one will ever put the failure part of the award-winning person into the public in this kind of article. I agreed that by doing such things like that may increase the level of richness and realness to the person’s achievement but I think that may be more appropriate to put it other circumstances. Like, maybe she could talk about that herself if she wanted to. Maybe after the award ceremony those media and write reports about the events and put this story of Spiderman as part of the one page newspaper article (did I just say newspaper? Yes I did) or online, which they might did and who knows if it will be inserted into out green page later, then we can comment about her downfall more, maybe?
Although I'm delighted that Taymor is a woman receiving this award, I'm not sure if I can agree. I am personally not a fan of TAymor, and have found the only redeeming art of hers was indeed Lion King. Perhaps it was a fluke, because even the Shakspeare they cited- the production with Helen Mirren- was a flop.
But I suppose if they're asking for reinvention, Taymor certainly reinvented The Tempest, with the main character now being a female, rather than a male, and making it a showy event, while perhaps while leaving out its true meaning and fervor.
Also, this article fails to cite her other failures as well, with the now infamous, Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark.
I am not sure if Taymor deserves her hype, or even this award.
I absolutely love Julie Taymor. I think that she is an amazing designer, director, and human being. She has always served as a role model for me as I realized I wanted to pursue theatre as a career.This makes me so happy to see her being recognized. I know that she has had her failures, but isn’t that what theatre is about? We all know that as theatre artists that at some point in our lives, we will make a mistake. So we should accept that in others as well, even those who have proved themselves before. Earlier this year, I saw a taped version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that she designed and directed. It was stunning, both visually and story wise. I am excited to see what she thinks up in the future!
Congratulations to Julie! This is an amazing award to bestow upon someone who works so tirelessly at what she does. Of course this article is going to list nothing but her most successful and interesting work, regardless of whether or not it was a flop, because all of these projects brought something new to the table that no one had seen before. And yes, of course the article isn't going to mention Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark because there's no reason to bring up something that she has probably tried to block out of her mind since the show's closing. But no one can deny that even that train wreck of a production wasn't something that certainly pushed and, quite literally, broke the boundaries of what people thought was possible in theatrical production. If we were to judge everyone by their failures and not by their successes, then there would be no reason for awards like this. Bottom line is, she has been one of the most innovative and tenacious minds in the arts for a long time, and for that, she deserves to be recognized.
I am so interested by the amount of projects and styles that Julie Taymor gets involved in. She clearly cares a lot about doing Shakespeare, she was the one who worked on the movie version of The Tempest that bombed pretty heavily, but it's pretty cool that she's still being recognized for a Shakespeare award. She's such a strange and bold person, and I would have loved to see one of her productions of any Shakespearean play. She has a pretty strange reputation right now due to all of her other failures, her methods of working with her team, her inability to take a budget into consideration - potentially running whichever theater she's working with into the ground in the name of art. Julie is a brilliant mind, that's for sure, but I am interested what she pursues after her recent failures...they don't seem to be stopping her.
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