Eleventh Annual Benefit & Cabaret Honoring Julie Taymor

SRT’s Eleventh Annual Benefit and Cabaret celebrated the career and artistic mastery of Tony, Academy and Emmy Award-winning, internationally regarded director, Julie Taymor. The event took place on November 12 at 92YTribeca. Thank you to all of our sponsors and participants for making the night a huge success!

About Julie Taymor

In 1998, Taymor became the first woman to win the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical, and also won a Tony for Best Costumes, for her landmark production of The Lion King. The musical has won three Molière Awards including Best Musical and Best Costumes, garnered Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Drama League awards for Taymor's direction, and myriad awards for her original costume, mask and puppet designs. For her latest Broadway production, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Taymor served as director and co-book writer. Taymor made her Broadway debut in 1996 with Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass, nominated for five Tony Awards. Other theatre work includes The Green Bird, Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, The Transposed Heads and Liberty's Taken. Taymor's feature film directorial debut, Titus, starred Anthony Hopkins, Jessica Lange and Alan Cumming. In 2002, her biographical film Frida, starring Salma Hayek and Alfred Molina, earned six Academy Award nominations, winning two. She took on the music of the Beatles, and earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, in Across the Universe.  Julie's most recent film, The Tempest, had its North American premiere at the 48th New York Film Festival in October 2010, following a world premiere at the 67th Venice International Film Festival.  Taymor's adaptation of the William Shakespeare play features an all-star cast including Helen Mirren, Russell Brand, Djimon Hounsou and Alfred Molina.  Beyond the theatre and screen, Taymor has directed five operas internationally including Oedipus Rex with Jessye Norman, for which she earned the International Classical Music Award for Best Opera Production.  A subsequent film version premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won her an Emmy award.  Taymor also directed Salome, The Flying Dutchman, Die Zauberflöte (which has been in repertory at The Met for six years), The Magic Flute (the abridged English version of Die Zauberflöte, which inaugurated a new PBS series entitled “Great Performances at The Met”) and Elliot Goldenthal's Grendel. Taymor is a 1991 recipient of the MacArthur "genius" Fellowship.

 2012 Benefit Host: Patrick Page 

The evening was hosted by Patrick Page.

Page's Broadway work includes: Cyrano de Bergerac, the Green Goblin in Spider-Man, Scar in The Lion King, Decius Brutus in Julius Caesar (with Denzel Washington), Lumiere in Beauty and the Beast, Scrooge (standby) in A Christmas Carol, and The Kentucky Cycle. Off-Broadway he played the title role in Rex, and Richard II (directed by Steven Berkoff). Some of Page’s regional work includes: Macbeth and Iago at The Shakespeare Theatre Company (with director Michael Kahn), Sergius at Long Wharf, Cyrano and Richard III at Pioneer Theatre Company, plus leading roles at Seattle, Indiana & Missouri Reps, ACT, Cincinnati Playhouse, Arizona Theatre Company, Oregon, Utah, Alabama Shakespeare Festivals, and more. 

Performers

Award-winning performers appeared, including: John Behlmann (Broadway’s Journey’s End; Off-Broadway’s The 39 Steps; Wild Animals You Should Know, MCC Theater; Are You There, McPhee?, McCarter Theatre); Nikki Renee Daniels (currently starring in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular; Broadway includes Porgy and Bess, Anything Goes, and many more); Jonathan Groff (Drama Desk and Tony Award-nominated for Best Actor for Spring Awakening; TV’s “Glee”); dancer and choreographer Ayo Jackson (Broadway’s Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark); Cheyenne Jackson (Broadway and Off-Broadway: The Performers; Finian’s Rainbow – Drama Desk nomination; Damn Yankees; Xanadu – Drama League, Drama Desk nominations; The Agony & the Agony; All Shook Up – Theater World Award, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle nomination; the premiere casts of Altar Boyz, Aida, and Thoroughly Modern Millie. Film: Mark Bingham in the 2006 Academy Award-nominated United 93; The Green, opposite Julia Ormond and Ileana Douglas; Price Check with Parker Posey. TV: “30 Rock” and “Glee”); Norwegian singer-songwriter Sondre Lerche; Singer-songwriter Martin Luther McCoy (former member of the Roots touring ensemble; performed alongside George Clinton, Kid Rock, Jill Scott, Eric Benet, Mos Def, 311, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Dave Matthews and Cody Chestnutt; starred in Taymor’s Across the Universe); the award-winning PigPen Theatre Company (The Old Man And The Old Moon; The Nightmare Story; The Hunter And The Bear; The Mountain Song); Heidi Rodewald (co-composer/orchestrator for Broadway’s Passing Strange – Tony nomination, Drama Desk Award; performer, arranger, producer and composer for both The Negro Problem and the multi-disciplinary ensemble know as Stew); Rema Webb (Broadway’s The Lion King; The Book of Mormon); and Alton F. White (Broadway’s The Color Purple; Ragtime; The Lion King; The Who’s Tommy; Miss Saigon; Smokey Joe’s Cafe).

There were video tribute appearances by Tony Award-winning and Emmy Award-nominated Alan Cumming; Academy, Golden Globe and Emmy Award-winning Helen Mirren; and multiple award-winning actor, Alfred Molina.

Composers, Musicians, and other Contributors

Contributing composers included: Elliot Goldenthal (various works for concert, theater, dance and film, including Across the Universe, The Tempest, the Academy Award-winning score for Taymor's Frida, the Tony Award-winning carnival mass Juan Darièn, The Green Bird, and Grendel, his original two-act opera with Taymor); Sondre Lerche; Ray Leslee (award-winning composer of over 75 original scores including works for the Actor’s Studio, the Acting Company, Steppenwolf Theatre, the Kennedy Center, ACT Seattle, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Great Lakes Festival, Theater for a New Audience; Avenue X at Playwrights Horizons; Standup Shakespeare directed by Mike Nichols); PigPen Theatre Company; Will Reynolds (The Greenwood Tree, Kennedy Center); Heidi Rodewald and Stew; and Ben Toth (composer for the musical of Sleepless in Seattle, scheduled for a 2013 world-premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse; recently completed the score for writer-director Josh Radnor’s Liberal Arts, which premiered at 2012 Sundance and stars Radnor, Allison Janney, Richard Jenkins, Zac Efron, and Elizabeth Olsen).

Marshall Coid (multi-faceted musician, actor, countertenor, composer, librettist, and current onstage violin soloist in Chicago) was featured on violin. Additional featured musicians: Jon Spurney (guitar) and Travis Horton (piano). E. Sara Barnes (The Tempest, Sonnet Rep) stage managed. 

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Based on the novel by Oscar Wilde

A new adaptation by Michael Raver
Directed by Quin Gordon

SRT celebrated a decade of classic theatre for the modern planet with The Picture of Dorian Gray. This world-premiere adaptation, produced in association with Jack Sharkey, enjoyed a limited engagement at The Studio Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center in August of 2012. 

COVERAGE HIGHLIGHTS: Playbill, Theatermania, Reviews Off-Broadway, Billi Pod  

Take a glimpse behind the scenes with our Indiegogo video.

 

Ned Noyes, William Connell, Sam Underwood and Roger Clark / Photo by Rachael Shane