Julie Taymor, director of theater, movies and opera, held court in New York City recently. Looking about a decade older than her glam publicity handout, but still a decade younger than she actually is (60), she wowed the audience and her fellow panel members, who although they had good information, seemed to be puppets too boring for Taymor to have invented.

The Shakespeare Society of New York sponsored the event, called “Shakespeare Talks: Shakespeare’s Imagery,” featuring Michael Whitmore, director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, and one other talking head, but the night belonged to Taymor.

They discussed the imagery in Shakespeare’s language and how an image can resonate throughout a play as Shakespeare returns to it again and again. Two actors read snippets to illustrate the point.

Taymor talked about how she takes the imagery from Shakespeare and attempts to portray it to the audience. She discussed her films “Titus” and “The Tempest” and how Shakespeare’s imagery affects everything she does from the scenery to the staging to the costumes. Regarding the last, rather than creating them based on the time the play is supposed to depict, she said she gets her inspiration for the costumes directly from the imagery in the piece.

This fall Taymor will direct A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Fort Greene’s Theater for a New Audience in Brooklyn as its debut performance. At this point, she indicated, she still doesn’t know how she’s going to direct the play. She said she tends to read a play or script over and over until she has practically memorized it. Her intensity is such, it seems to me, that she can almost commune with the playwright.

Finally, she talked about where she gets her inspiration. She states that she frequently wakes up early in the morning with interesting ideas for stories or staging. The main difference between her and the rest of us aspiring artistic types is she writes them down or types her ideas into a computer while the rest us, when we get up early with brilliant ideas, think “How nice,” and roll over and go back to sleep.