Award-winning theatre, opera, and film director Julie Taymor will be honored at the 2013 Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art First Awards at the Brooklyn Museum on June 13 from 6:30 to 9 p.m. The award, which honors women who have broken gender barriers to make remarkable contributions in their fields, will be bestowed on Taymor, winner of the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical in 1998. It will be presented by Museum Trustee Elizabeth A. Sackler and followed by a conversation between Taymor and feminist icon Gloria Steinem.
Tickets to this event are $200 ($150 for Brooklyn Museum Members and Members of the Council for Feminist Art) and will include admission to a private cocktail reception following the presentation and conversation. Proceeds will benefit the exhibition and educational programming offered by the Brooklyn Museum and its Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, the first and only organization of its kind. To purchase tickets and for further information, contact Mira Abramsohn at mira.abramsohn@brooklynmuseum.org or (718) 501-6589. In 1998 Julie Taymor became the first woman to receive the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical, and won a Tony for Best Costumes, for her production of The Lion King. The musical has gone on to become Broadway's all-time highest-grossing show and the fifth longest-running show in Broadway history. Taymor's 1996 Broadway debut, Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass, earned five Tony nominations. Her other theater credits include The Green Bird, Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, The Transposed Heads, and Liberty's Taken. She is currently developing a new adaptation of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which will premiere in the fall of 2013 as the inaugural production at Theatre for a New Audience's permanent new home in downtown Brooklyn. Taymor's feature films include Titus; Frida, which won two Academy Awards; the Beatles-inspired Across the Universe, nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture--Musical or Comedy; and her adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Taymor has also directed five operas, among them Oedipus Rex with Jessye Norman, for which she earned the International Classical Music Award for Best Opera Production and an Emmy for a subsequent film version, as well as Salomé, The Flying Dutchman, Die Zauberflöte (in repertory at the Metropolitan Opera), The Magic Flute (the abridgEd English version, which inaugurated the PBS series Great Performances at the Met), and Elliot Goldenthal's Grendel.Videos