Heralded as the most imaginative director and designer working in the performing arts today, Julie Taymor is the creative mastermind behind the spectacular Broadway production of The Lion King. She directed the play, designed the brilliantly colored costumes, wrote additional lyrics and co-designed the show’s ingenious masks and puppets. Active in theater from an early age, she studied folklore and mythology at Oberlin College while pursuing her interests in ritual performance, masks and puppetry in Japan and Indonesia. The recipient of a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, Taymor is also the director of daringly imaginative major motion pictures, such as the critically acclaimed Frida, recreating the turbulent life and magical art of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. Taymor has directed operas by Mozart, Wagner and Stravinsky in Russia, Germany, Italy and Japan as well as at the Metropolitan Opera. Recent projects include a film version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and the Broadway musical Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, with music by Bono and the Edge of U2 fame.