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(Music)

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["Oedipus Rex"]

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["The Lion King"]

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["Titus"]

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["Frida"]

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["The Magic Flute"]

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["Across The Universe"]

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(Applause)

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Julie Taymor: Thank you. Thank you very much.

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That's a few samples of the theater, opera,

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and films than I have done over the last 20 years.

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But what I'd like to begin with right now

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is to take you back to a moment

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that I went through in Indonesia

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which is a seminal moment in my life

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and, like all myths,

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these stories need to be retold

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and told, lest we forget them.

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And when I'm in the turbulent times, as we know,

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that I am right now, through the crucible

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and the fire of transformation,

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which is what all of you do, actually.

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Anybody who creates knows there's that point where

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it hasn't quite become the phoenix or the burnt char.

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(Laughter)

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And I am right there on the edge,

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which I'll tell you about, another story.

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I want to go back to Indonesia

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where I was about 21, 22 years, a long time ago,

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on a fellowship.

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And I found myself after two years there

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and performing and learning on the island of Bali

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on the edge of a crater, Gunung Batur.

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And I was in a village where there was

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an initiation ceremony for the young men,

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a rite of passage.

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Little did I know that it was mine as well.

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And as I sat in this temple square

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under this gigantic [inaud] banyan tree,

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in the dark, there was no electricity, just the full moon,

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down in this empty square,

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and I heard the most beautiful sounds,

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like a Charles Yves concert

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as I listened to the gamelan music

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from all the different villagers that came

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for this once-every-five-years ceremony.

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And I thought I was alone in the dark under this tree.

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And all of a sudden, out of the dark,

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from the other end of the square,

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I saw the glint of mirrors lit by the moon.

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And these 20 old men who I'd seen before

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all of a sudden stood up in these full warrior costumes

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with the headdress and the spears,

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and no one was in the square, and I was hidden in the shadows.

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No one was there, and they came out,

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and they did this incredible dance.

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"Huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhuhu."

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And they moved their bodies and they came forward,

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and the lights bounced off their costumes.

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And I've been in theater since I was 11 years old,

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performing, creating, and I went,

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"Who are they performing for

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with these elaborate costumes,

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these extraordinary headdresses?"

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And I realized that they were performing for God,

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whatever that means.

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But somehow, it didn't matter about the publicity.

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There was no money involved.

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It wasn't going to be written down. It was no news.

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And there were these incredible artists

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that felt for me like an eternity as they performed.

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The next moment,

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as soon as they finished and disappeared into the shadows,

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a young man with a propane lantern came on,

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hung it up on a tree, set up a curtain.

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The village square was filled with hundreds of people.

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And they put on an opera all night long.

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Human beings needed the light.

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They needed the light to see.

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So what I gained and gathered from this incredible,

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seminal moment in my life as a young artist

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was that you must be true

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to what you believe as an artist all the way through,

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but you also have to be aware

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that the audience is out there in our lives at this time,

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and they also need the light.

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And it's this incredible balance

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that I think that we walk

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when we are creating something that is breaking ground,

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that's trying to do something you've never seen before,

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that the imaginary world

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where you actually don't know where you're going to end up,

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that's the fine line on the edge of a crater

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that I have walked my whole life.

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What I would like to do now is to tell you

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a little bit

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about how I work. Let's take "The Lion King."

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You saw many examples of my work up there,

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but it's one that people know.

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I start with the notion of the idiograph.

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An idiograph is like a brush painting, a Japanese brush painting.

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Three strokes, you get the whole bamboo forest.

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I go to the concept of "The Lion King"

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and I say, "What is the essence of it?

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What is the abstraction?

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If I were to reduce this entire story

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into one image, what would it be?"

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The circle. The circle. It's so obvious.

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The circle of life. The circle of Mufasa's mask.

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The circle that, when we come to Act 2 and there's a drought,

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how do you express drought?

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It's a circle of silk on the floor

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that disappears into the hole in the stage floor.

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The circle of life comes in the wheels

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of the gazelles that leap.

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And you see the mechanics.

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And being a theater person, what I know and love about the theater

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is that when the audience comes in

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and they suspend their disbelief,

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when you see men walking or women walking

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with a platter of grass on their heads,

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you know it's the savanna.

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You don't question that.

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I love the apparent truth of theater.

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I love that people are willing to fill in the blanks.

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The audience is willing to say,

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"Oh, I know that's not a real sun.

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You too pieces of sticks.

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You added silk to the bottom.

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You suspended these pieces. You let it fall flat on the floor.

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And as it rises with the strings, I see that it's a sun.

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But the beauty of it is that it's just silk and sticks.

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And in a way, that is what makes it spiritual.

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That's what moves you.

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It's not the actual literal sunrise that's coming.

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It's the art of it.

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So in the theater, as much as the story is critical

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and the book and the language,

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the telling of the story, how it's told,

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the mechanics, the methods that you use,

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is equal to the story itself.

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And I'm one who loves high tech and low tech.

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So I could go from --

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For instance, I'll show you some "Spider-Man" later,

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these incredible machines that move people along.

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But the fact is, without the dancer

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who knows how to use his body and swing on those wires,

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it's nothing.

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So now I'm going to show you

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some clips from the other big project of my life this year,

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"The Tempest."

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It's a movie. I did "The Tempest" on a stage three times

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in the theater since 1984, '86,

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and I love the play.

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I did it always with a male Prospero.

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And all of a sudden, I thought,

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"Well, who am I gonna get to get to play Prospero?

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Why not Helen Mirren? She's a great actor? Why not?"

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And this material really did work for a woman equally as well.

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So now, let's take a look at some of the images

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from "The Tempest."

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(Music)

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(Video) Helen Mirren: Hast thou, spirit, Perform'd to point the tempest that I bade thee?

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Ben Whishaw: I boarded the king's ship. In every cabin, I flamed amazement.

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HM: At first sight, they have changed eyes.

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Felicity Jones: Do you love me?

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Reeve Carney: Beyond all limit.

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HM: They are both in either's powers.

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Russell Brand: Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

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(Music)

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Actor: Looking for business, governor?

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Djimon Hounsou: Hast thou not dropped from heaven?

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Alfred Molina: Out o' th' moon, I do assure thee.

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HM: Caliban!

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DH: This island is mine.

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HM: For this, be sure, tonight thou shalt have cramps.

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Chris Cooper: Here lies your brother no better than the earth he lies upon.

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Alan Cumming: Draw thy sword.

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And I, the king, shall love thee.

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HM: I will plague them all, even to roaring.

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BW: I have made you mad.

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HM: We are such stuff as dreams are made on.

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and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

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(Music)

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JT: Okay.

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(Applause)

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So I went from theater, doing "The Tempest"

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on the stage in a very low-budget production

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many years ago,

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and I love the play, and I also think

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it's Shakespeare's last play,

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and it really lends itself, as you can see, to cinema.

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But I'm just going to give you a little example about

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how one stages it in theater

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and then how one takes that same idea or story

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and moves it into cinema.

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The idiograph that I talked to you about before,

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what is it for "The Tempest?"

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What, if I were to boil it down,

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would be the one image that I could

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hang my hat on for this?

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And it was the sand castle,

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the idea of nurture versus nature,

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that we build these civilizations

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-- she speaks about it at the end, Helen Mirren's Prospera --

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we build them, but under nature,

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under the grand tempest, these cloud-capped towers,

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these gorgeous palaces will fade

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and there will leave not a rack behind.

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So in the theater, I started the play,

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it was a black sand rake, white [unclear],

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and there was a little girl, Miranda, on the horizon,

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building a drip castle, the sand castle.

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And as she was there on the edge of that stage,

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two stagehands all in black

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with watering cans ran along the top

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and started to pour water on the sand castle,

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and the sand castle started to drip and sink,

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but before it did,

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the audience saw the black clad stagehands.

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The medium was apparent. It was banal. We saw it.

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But as they started to pour the water,

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the light changed from showing you the black-clad stagehands

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to focusing, this rough magic that we do in theater,

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it focused right on the water itself.

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And all of a sudden, the audience's perspective changes.

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It becomes something magically large.

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It becomes the rainstorm.

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The masked actors, the puppeteers, they disappear,

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and the audience makes that leap into this world,

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into this imaginary world of the tempest actually happening.

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Now the difference

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when I went and did it in the cinema,

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I started the actual movie

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with a close-up of a sand castle, a black sand castle,

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and what cinema can do is,

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by using camera, perspective,

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and also long shots and close-ups,

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it started on a close-up of the sand castle,

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and as it pulled away,

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you saw that it was a miniature sitting in the palm

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of the girl's hands.

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And so I could play with the medium,

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and why I move from one medium to another

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is to be able to do this.

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Now I'm going to take you to "Spider-Man."

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(Music)

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(Video) RC: ♪ Standing on the precipice,

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I can soar away from this. ♪

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JT: We're trying to do everything in live theater

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that you can't do in two dimensions

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in film and television.

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RC: ♪ Rise above yourself and take control. ♪

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George Tsypin: We're looking at New York from a Spider-Man point of view.

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Spider-Man is not bound by gravity.

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Manhattan in the show is not bound by gravity either.

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RC: ♪ Be yourself and rise above it all. ♪

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Ensemble: ♪ Sock. Pow.

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Slam. Scratch. ♪

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Danny Ezralow: I don't want you to even think there's a choreographer.

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It's real what's happening.

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I prefer you to see people moving,

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and you're going, "Whoa, what was that?"

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(Music)

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JT: If I give enough movement in the sculpture,

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and the actor moves their head, you feel like it's alive.

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It's really comic book live. It's a comic book coming alive.

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(Music)

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Bono: They're mythologies.

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They're modern myths, these comic book heroes.

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RC: ♪ They believe. ♪

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(Screams)

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(Music)

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(Applause)

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JT: Oh. What was that?

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Circus rock n' roll drama.

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What the hell are we doing up there on that stage?

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Well, one last story, very quickly.

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After I was in that village, I crossed the lake,

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and I saw that the volcano was erupting

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on the other side, Gunung Batur,

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and there was a dead volcano next to the live volcano.

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I didn't think I'd be swallowed by the volcano,

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and I am here.

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But it's very easy to climb up, is it not?

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You hold on to the roots,

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you put your foot in the little rocks

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and climb up there, and you get to the top,

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and I was with a good friend who was an actor,

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and we said, "Let's go up there.

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Let's see if we can come close to the edge

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of that live volcano."

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And we climbed up and we got to the very top,

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and we're on the edge, on this precipice,

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Rolon disappears into the sulfur smoke

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at the volcano at the other end,

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and I'm up there alone

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on this incredible precipice.

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Did you hear the lyrics?

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I'm on the precipice looking down

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into a dead volcano to my left.

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To my right is sheer shale. It's coming off.

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I'm in thongs and sarongs. It was many years ago.

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And no hiking boots.

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And he's disappeared, this mad French gypsy actor,

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off in the smoke, and I realize,

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I can't go back the way that I've come. I can't.

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So I throw away my camera. I throw away my thongs,

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and I looked at the line straight in front of me,

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and I got down on all fours like a cat,

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and I held with my knees to either side

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of this line in front of me,

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for 30 yards or 30 feet, I don't know.

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The wind was massively blowing,

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and the only way I could get to the other side

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was to look at the line straight in front of me.

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I know you've all been there.

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I'm in the crucible right now.

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It's my trial by fire.

320
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It's my company's trials by fire.

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We have survived because our theme song is "Rise Above."

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Boy falls from the sky, rise above.

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It's right there in the palm of both of our hands,

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of all of my company's hands.

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I have beautiful collaborators, and we as creators

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only get there all together.

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I know you understand that.

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And you just stay going forward,

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and then you see this extraordinary thing

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in front of your eyes.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)