Julie Taymor, Playing With Fire: Theater Opera Film. This item is unavailable.Julie Taymor, Playing With Fire: Theater Opera Film

One of the most imaginative and provocative directors and designers working today, Taymor draws on elements from the West, Indonesia, Japan, traditional theater, Asian dance-drama, puppetry, masked dance, contemporary cinema, and other performing arts to bring her extraordinary theatrical hybrids to life. Tracing her extensive career, this volume includes 195 illustrations, 110 in color, as well as Taymor's personal production notes.

To a mainstream theater world startled by the design and staging brilliance of The Lion King, Julie Taymor seems to have landed like a meteor. But as this handsome coffee-table volume attests, she's been a master of masks and puppets for 20 years, spending most of that time creating idiosyncratic visions in fringe theaters. But all of the elements have been brewing: the mythic puppets in Way of Snow, grotesque masks in The King's Stag, and the human/animal connection in Juan Darien are all evidence of Taymor's talent. Consider Playing with Fire to be her playbook for future endeavors.