Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire

Julie Taymor is the avant-garde theater magician who turned Disney's The Lion King into a Broadway smash -- and became the first woman to win a Tony Award for best director. This richly illustrated book, the first edition of which was published before Taymor's Broadway triumph, has now been expanded to include The Lion King and other recent Taymor productions, including The Flying Dutchman, The Green Bird, and her forthcoming film of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange.Award-winning theater critic Eileen Blumenthal traces Taymor's background and achievements in theater, opera, and film. Taymor herself provides notes on each of her projects, along with her original drawings for costumes and characters.j