Shakespeare wrote his plays for everyone, never just for aristocrats and nobles or the middle and lower class. He made his works to be relatable to all. As centuries passed, the original visions of his works were lost. Now a day, artists are often compelled to ‘dumb down’ his works so audiences can understand and relate to them. This loses a lot of the flair and intensity of Shakespeare’s work. Award winning director and designer Julie Taymor, has taken Shakespeare’s plays into her own hands. She adds her own personal flair to his works both on stage and in film, to bring back the power and genius Shakespeare so rightfully deserves. Taymor’s design and directing style is very imaginative and often provocative. She constantly uses spectacle and pushes any boundaries that develop during the production. In adapting Shakespeare’s works Titus Andronicus and The Tempest to the big screen, Julie Taymor uses her extensive knowledge and experience in theatre to take a more theatrical approach to her films.
In Taymor’s adaptation of Titus Andronicus, she captures the violent, ritualistic, and eerie tone of the play through the use of embellished theatricality. Titus Andronicus is a very violent and bloody play, filled with madness and betrayal. The whole play delights in the spectacle of insanity and viciousness. Taymor takes this and makes violence entertaining, no matter how gruesome. Every death is a show in her adaptation. For example, Lavinia’s death, one of the simplest, becomes one of the most beautiful as she enters the dining room dressed in white with a black vail covering her face. Titus, after his over-the-top conversation with his guests, breaks her neck almost gracefully in front of everyone. This causes an uproar among the noble guests as they leap from the table in horror. In contrast to this, the deaths of Chiron and Demetrius are one of the most gruesome yet comical deaths of the play. Taymor opens the scene with the men bound, and hanging from their ankles from the ceiling. Titus and Lavinia enter, Titus performs his intense monologue then slices their throats as Lavinia collects their blood in a large basin. He then goes on to make the two villains into two enormous pies in which he gleefully feeds to Tamora and Saturnius. Through these deaths, the cast acts through grand motions and exaggerates many of their lines, much like an actor would on stage. Alongside the entertaining violence, Taymor takes the character’s madness and exaggerates it with CGI. Scenes of flashing colors and images bombard the viewer, pulling them into the mindset of the insane. This parallels what Taymor could do onstage. Through the use of lights and projections, she can almost achieve the same spectacle as the movie as the audience watches the character spiral into madness.
Taymor’s adaptation of The Tempest uses spectacle in a different, non-violent way, mainly through the use of CGI and costumes; she translates the magic of Shakespeare’s play into a very visual display. Taymor employs CGI technology to truly make Ariel a spirit of the island. She creates a translucent, gender fluid spirit that appears at Prospera’s beck and call. As the spirit travels about the island, it leaves a trail of its own lucid shadow behind. Ariel is also often show floating amongst the elements, almost seeming to become part of them. Another form of spectacle Taymor uses in the film is the CGI demon dogs who chase down Trinculo, Stephano, and Caliban towards the end of the film. These grand gestures would be almost impossible to recreate on stage. The use of projections has the potential to aid in the magic but it would be nothing compared to Taymor’s realized vision. The choice in costumes in the film ranged from traditional, Renaissance period clothing, to modernized, colorful and outlandish costumes, to organic, nature inspired garb. Through these costume, Taymor shows who the character is, and emphasizes their characteristics. The nobles shipwrecked on the island wear dark colored, Renaissance period costumes. This helps further accentuate the wickedness of the character’s and represent their betrayal to Prospera. In a drastic juxtaposition, the characters of Trinculo and Stephano wear very eccentric and brightly colored costumes. Since these characters act as the comic relief of the play, it seemed very fitting for Taymor to have them dressed as so. Finally, the original inhabitants of the Island, Prospera, Miranda, and Caliban, all wear very natural looking clothing. Caliban wears a sort of loincloth made of a thick, dirty fabric, matching his living conditions and sentence to slavery. Miranda wears a white linen dress, representing her purity, both physically as a young woman, and in her character as well. Prospera’s costume is very ordinate and whimsical, and seems to represent the four elements with its colors of blue and grey, and the shape of flames reaching out from a fire.
Theatre constantly pushed boundaries. It drives people to think and see differently, and sometimes strives to make the audience uncomfortable. Julie Taymor’s artistic choices for her films push the envelope even further then she could on stage. In Titus Andronicus, Taymor didn’t just want her film to be all blood and guts, no matter how glorified they were. She adds the character of young Lucius, who eventually breaks the long cycle of gore and violence by rescuing Aaron’s son at the end. This change is dramatic, since in the original work the son is left for dead. This event threw a brick in the maw of the bloody machine that is Titus Andronicus, making the viewer think; can such an extreme change be added into a classic work, and still have the same effect?
In the Tempest, Taymor continues her streak of adding in a dramatic change to the play. In her adaptation, she makes the character Prospero into a woman, becoming the strong, independent mother, Prospera. The change in gender inherently changes many of the relationships of the play. The relationship between Prospera and her daughter, Miranda, is no longer a typical father-daughter relationship. For example, Ferdinand, the prince who courts Miranda, is not viewed by Prospera as competition for Miranda’s love and loyalty, but as someone from whom to protect her daughter from. As they, “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”, and Taymor’s Prospera represents this perfectly. Just from the beginning, her reason for creating the Tempest is even more fueled by her rage towards her deceitful brother, and all those who betrayed her.
Julie Taymor crosses the line drawn between theatre and film. She strives to push the limits of how we interpret Shakespeare as she makes strong choices and changes throughout her productions. Shakespeare is once again made enjoyable and easily understandable and relatable for audiences everywhere. Whether it’s changing a character completely, or making something horrifying and unsettling entertaining, Taymor has brought the flair of Shakespeare’s work through her brilliant adaptations.
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