[4] After graduating High School at 16, Taymor went to Paris to study with L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq.

Hearing that director Herbert Blau was moving to Oberlin, she returned there and auditioned successfully, becoming, once again, the youngest member of a troupe.

Taymor graduated from Oberlin College with a major in mythology and folklore and with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1974.

In Indonesia, she developed a mask/dance company, Teatr Loh, consisting of Japanese, Balinese, Sundanese, French, German and American actors, musicians, dancers and puppeteers.

Her next project, The Haggadah, came from the desire of The Public Theater director Joseph Papp to create an annual Passover pageant that would be culturally inclusive.

In 1984, Taymor worked in collaboration with Theatre for a New Audience on a 60-minute version of A Midsummer Night's Dream presented at The Public Theater.

She went on to direct three other productions at that theatre, including The Taming of the Shrew, Titus Andronicus and The Green Bird by Carlo Gozzi.

Taymor is known for a distinct visual style, with extensive use of puppets and masks, developed largely from her time in Indonesia working with Teatr Loh.

Her original music-theatre work, Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass, presented at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater in 1996, received five Tony Award nominations including Best Director.

Originally produced by Music Theater Group in 1988, Juan Darién: A Carnival Mass was directed by Taymor, and co-written with Elliot Goldenthal.

The play was delayed for several months due to numerous injuries, and Taymor was fired and replaced by Philip William McKinley.

The play officially opened on June 14, 2011, having set the record for the longest preview period in the history of Broadway at 182 performances.

[13] In November 2011, Taymor sued the show's producers, Michael Cohl and Jeremiah J. Harris, claiming that they were profiting from her creative contributions without compensating her.

Taymor's first film, Fool's Fire, which she co-directed and adapted from Edgar Allan Poe's short story, Hop-Frog, was produced by American Playhouse.

[24] In November 2008, Taymor directed a film version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, released in December 2010 starring Helen Mirren, Alfred Molina, Djimon Hounsou and Ben Whishaw.

Working behind the camera with Taymor on The Tempest were the Academy Award winners Elliot Goldenthal for music, Sandy Powell for costumes, and Françoise Bonnot.

[25][26] She also completed a cinematic version of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, starring David Harewood, Max Casella and Kathryn Hunter, and filmed during her critically acclaimed, sold-out stage production that ran at Theatre for a New Audience's new home in Downtown Brooklyn.

Taymor's first opera direction was of Stravinsky's Oedipus rex, for the Saito Kinen Orchestra in Japan, under the baton of Seiji Ozawa in 1992.

[28] She directed Richard Strauss' Salome for the Kirov Opera in Russia, Germany, and Israel, conducted by Valery Gergiev.

[2] Taymor's first direction of The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), was for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in Florence, with Zubin Mehta conducting in 1993.

[33] A major retrospective of 25 years of Taymor's work, titled 'Playing With Fire' opened in the fall of 1999 at the Wexner Center for the Arts[34] and toured the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington D.C.) in 2000 [35] and the Field Museum of Natural History[36] (Chicago) in 2001, and was extended due to popular demand in each venue.