The Green Bird and the specter of Julie Taymor’s Broadway production

Julie Taymor’s The Green Bird (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I started an adaptation of Carlo Gozzi’s The Green Bird* back in 2002 but abandoned it… only to pick the project back up again this year. There are three big reasons why I walked away and ultimately came back to this play and I’m going to devote a full blog post to each in the coming weeks as I work on this show.

The first big reason was that I took issue with some of the themes of the original play but I figured out how to overcome that obstacle… I’m just going to change stuff and everyone can kiss my butt (but, like, in a scholarly way. See Faithful to the original: Adapting something where theme goes against your beliefs). The second biggest has to do with the characters and we’ll delve into that in greater detail some other day. But third factor is Julie Taymor. You know, the Broadway living legend behind such massive hits as The Lion King and the Spiderman musical (and Titus which was one of the most disturbing but visually striking movies I have ever seen). In 2000, she did a highly successful, critically lauded, award-winning adaptation of The Green Bird. This high-profile production gave me a couple of worries.

• I really like Taymor’s work and have a great amount of respect for her as an artist. Isn’t it insulting to redo something she’d so recently redone herself only two years earlier? Her version was universally lauded… what could I hope to contribute?
• How could my version ever stand on its own without constantly being compared and contrasted with the Broadway production? Mine would always be in her shadow. For that matter, given the option between my version and the one by the very famous person, who in their right mind would pick mine? No one would ever produce it so what was the point! With The Love of Three Oranges, there hadn’t been a modern version in decades so the field was wide open for mine… such high-profile competition was terrifying.
• I haven’t actually even seen it! I want very badly to see or at least read Taymor’s version but I can’t find it anywhere for purchase, rent or loan. (If you know where to get a copy of the script or a film of the production, I’ll even take VHS or shaky handheld home video, PLEASE let me know.)

A fan once contacted me that he was thinking of writing his own version of The Green Bird and did I have pointers on adaptations? I did give him some pointers but I was also brutally honest with him. I told him all about how the reason I hadn’t already done that play myself was that there was no point when there was already a popular modern version out there like Taymor’s. I was generally the world’s most defeatist pep-talker because that’s how futile adapting the show felt to me then. Someday he’s going to read that I am doing a version after all and think I was trying to scare him off my material which couldn’t possibly be farther than the truth.

The reality of the situation is that I have grown, become more confident in my writing abilities and… changed my mind. It happens.

I realized that Taymor’s production hadn’t been as recent as it felt (it’s already been a decade and a half!) so enough time had already passed that it wouldn’t be disrespectful to revisit the show, even if people did care about that kind of thing and I’m not sure that they do. My fear that my poor little show would forever be competing against this Broadway powerhouse is greatly mitigated by the fact that it’s apparently near impossible to actually find a version of her script anywhere. And while I would still really like to see what she did with the show, I’ve come to realize that nothing I come up with can ever be all that similar to what she did for several reasons.

Firstly, I’m changing so much about the show and she stayed pretty close to the original and that’s bound to create different end products. Secondly, her focus is usually most on the visuals with huge puppets and spectacle and I have a tendency to think in terms of low-budget, minimal staging, and my focus is the comedy. We are writing for completely different audiences. Lastly, and more importantly, I’m me and she’s her. We’re completely different people with completely different backgrounds and life experiences and that guarantees us each a unique perspective no matter what other factors there are.

In the end, I realized that there’s no escaping the specter of Taymor’s production and it’s probably only a matter of time before people start claiming that she wrote my version or otherwise getting everything all mixed up. But just because the audience may immediately think of hers when they hear of mine, doesn’t mean mine can’t be something worthwhile in it’s own right. If it’s something I’m passionate about, it’s absolutely worth doing.

At least, I hope so.

*=I originally wrote THREE Green Bird up there which… just… oranges, yo. It’s in my brain.