Julie Taymor

Behind the Scenes, Vol. 2: Theatre, Sculpture and Photography
$24.95
Bought this product because it was suggested as an essay source for a Photography class. We were to review only the photography section, and I will be using it in a first class of photography I teach as an introduction. There are two other sections to this DVD, Sculpting I know nothing about, but I do know quite a bit about Theatre. The theatre portion is lacking in structure, unlike the photography section.

Julie Taymor: Playing with Fire
$50.00
I bought this book after looking at a friend's copy, and I can say that this was one of the finest investments in my Theatre Arts library that I have ever made. This book is filled with brilliant pictures and vivid writing that will keep many in awe and almost child-like wonder at the genious of Ms. Taymore. This isn't just a book for those that appreciate theatre - I suggest it for anyone who is interested in puppetry or film, not to mention anyone who can appreciate art in general.

Across the Universe (Two-Disc Special Edition)
$19.94
First of all I'm not going to break this movie down to what it means, it's plot, it's historical value, or whatever. The thing is that it is a fun movie to watch. I truly liked the visuals, and the music scenes. I thought it was great on how the started doing "With a Little Help From my Friends" Beatles style, and finished it like the Joe Cocker version. Very clever. Musical scenes of "Let it Be", and "Strawberry Fields" were moving. While the scenes of "Why don't We Do it in The Road", and "Helter Skelter" just rocked! The absolute best song of this movie is "A Day in The Life" by Jeff Beck(studio version). You only hear a bit of it. I first hear the whole song on [...]. Now for those of you who hated this movie, or got offended by it like some reviewers did, first of all LIGHTENED UP a bit. I think it's awesome listening to Beatles tunes from a different perspective. It's just entertaining folks, don't take it so seriously!

George Tsypin Opera Factory: Building in the Black Void
$75.00
This is a splendid book that makes one hunger for the stage productions depicted. Photographs show a production style that is illuminating, rich, emotional, focused and engaging, and most importantly, which takes in the whole world-view through the prism of the work being performed. One cannot escape such designs nor divorce them from the world in which we live. The soaring yet tortured set for West Side Story (on, of all places, the Bregenz Festival floating stage on Lake Constanze) is a prime example of scenery that grabs you and makes contemporary the tragedy about to unfold. Paradoxically, it creates intimacy, through its monumentality, in a wide-open outdoor setting which could easily have dissipated the emotional force of the play. Mr. Tsypin demonstrates how to conquer ungainly space to let the musical sing with its own voice. And that anxious voice, Mr. Tsypin, a New Yorker by adoption reminds us, harks back not only to Romeo and Juliet, the Jets and the Sharks, but to 9/11, now as much a part of the New York collective unconscious as Jerome Robbins' initial conceit was in its time. Similar connections although to different realities and in different terms can be made about his orchestra placement and the swirling ramp in the Amsterdam Ring (pace the dramatically relevant circular ramps in the Schneider-Siemssen/Karajan Salzburg/Met Rings of another generation). The stage imagery is always connected to some emotional reality within our experience. These are but two examples of the several productions discussed. The riches portrayed in the photographs are many, and make one hungry to see the actual productions. Mr. Tsypin is keenly aware that opera (theatre) design, even if thoroughly "plugged-in" to what is contemporarily or mythically relevant, stands not alone, but, with direction and musical realization, to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. Some pictures are of design miniatures whereas others are of actual productions. This raises my only reservation about the book: I think it is a bit small. Larger plates would have better conveyed the scale of the designer's work, particularly when actual production photographs are used. Photographs are all excellently reproduced in vibrant colors which (I hope) replicate accurately the nuances of stage lighting.

It appears Mr. Tsypin has defined the direction of theatre/opera design for our time, much as Wieland Wagner did for his, as did, in their very different ways, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and Robert Wilson later on (it is informative to see this book juxtaposed to the Quadri, Bertoni, Stearns book on Robert Wilson). We have certainly moved on. The text including an essay by Julie Taymor who collaborated with Tsypin in the Met's Zauberflote, is illuminating: one can actually see realization of ideas in production photographs.

Though on one level this book is art-by-approximation in that there is no substitute for actual performance, it also can stand alone, as a primer on influential, arguably seminal, contemporary ideas about stage design demonstrated by illustrations from instances in which those ideas were realized.