Edris Stannus was born near Blessington, Ireland. At the age of seven, she moved to Kent, England, to live with her grandmother. At 10, she began to take ballet classes; three years later, she joined the Lila Field Academy for Children, where she got training from prominent ballet masters, such as Enrico Cecchetti and Edouard Espinosa. She danced in revues and music halls around London. In those days, ballet dancers had to have French or Russian stage names, so she changed her name to Ninette de Valois. In 1919, 21 years old de Valois received the role of a principal dancer of the Beecham Opera; two years later, she joined the prestigious Ballets Russes as a soloist, performing with the company throughout Europe. In 1924, at 26, she had to take a step back from intense dancing after discovering she had damage from an undiagnosed case of childhood polio. It changed the course of her career, and she decided to open a dancing school. In 1926, she founded the Academy of Choreographic Arts for girls in London and a sister school in Dublin. Only two years later, Lilian Baylis, the owner of the Old Vic Theatre, invited de Valois to provide dancers and coach actors in the theater’s productions. The collaboration was very successful, and in 1931, when Sadler’s Wells Theatre was re-opened, de Valois’ school moved in under a new name – the Sadler’s Wells Ballet School. In that same year, she founded the Vic-Wells Ballet Company. In 1956, the company and school were granted a Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth II and renamed the Royal Ballet. In addition to classic ballet production, such as Giselle, Swan Lake, and The Nutcracker, de Valois created original choreographies, such as Job, The Rake’s Progress, and Checkmate. In these productions, she withdrew from the traditional Russian convention, creating a distinctly English style of choreography, drawing from English tradition, themes, and sources, preferring British composers, and forming more prominent roles for male dancers. In 1963, at the age of 65, she retired as director of the Royal Ballet but headed the school for several more years. She continued to make public appearances and served as patron of various companies, including the Irish Theatre Ballet, the Cork Ballet Company, and the Irish National Ballet. She died at the age of 102. Read more...

Ava Marie DuVernay was born and raised in California. She studied English literature and African-American studies at the University of California. While at college, DuVernay was interested in broadcast journalism and interned for CBS News during the O.J. Simpson trial. Following been assigned to look through the trash of the jury, DuVernay decided to change her career path and get into public relations. After receiving her Bachelor’s degree, she began to work as a junior publicist at several production studios and PR agencies. In 1999, when she is 27 years old, she opened her PR firm, The DuVernay Agency, working on campaigns for films such as Shrek 2, Dreamgirls, and Collateral. At the time, she also launched numerous lifestyle and promotional networks, including the Urban Beauty Collective for African-American beauty salons and barbershops and HelloBeautiful for millennial women of color. As a PR agent, DuVernay frequently visited film sets, observing filmmakers on the job, figuring that she can be one as well. She bought books on the art of screenwriting, and in 2003 she began to work on her first script. In the following year, at the age of 32, DuVernay directed her first short film, Saturday Night Life, based on her mother’s experiences in a discount grocery store. At 38, DuVernay released her first narrative feature, I Will Follow, about a woman who losses her aunt to cancer. The film was the official selection of several film festivals, including the American Film Institute Fest and the Chicago International Film Festival. A year later, DuVernay’s film Middle of Nowhere premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won Best direction, making her the first African-American woman to receive the award. In the following years, she continued creating movies and TV series, winning awards as the first African-American woman. In 2018, she made history again by becoming the first woman of color to direct a live-action film with a budget higher than $100 million in the movie A Wrinkle in Time, featuring Oprah Winfrey. Between one feature film to another, DuVernay directed many TV documentary films, music videos, and commercials. She also founded the African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement (AFFRM) to support films made by black artists, later rebranded as ARRAY, expanding the movement’s mission to women artists. She also co-founded the Evolve Entertainment Fund, promoting inclusion and providing opportunities for under-served communities in the entertainment industry. Read more...

Barbara Joan Streisand was born in Brooklyn, NY, to a Jewish family. When she was a year old, her father had died, and her mother had struggled financially, working as a low-paid bookkeeper. Streisand received her early education in Jewish institutes. She was a shy child, been rejected by other children because of her looks, and spending much of her time watching TV and going to the movies. At 13, while on vacation at the Catskills, Streisand and her mother, a soprano in her youth, recorded songs on tape. That was the first time that she thought of herself as an artist. In the following year, after watching her first Broadway play, The Diary of Anne Frank, she decided to become an actress. She began to explore the profession, reading plays, acting theories, and biographies of stage actresses. At 15, she got her first job in the business as backstage assistance at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village. At 16, after graduating from Erasmus Hall High School with honors, Streisand moved by herself to the Theater District, sleeping with friends while trying to get roles on the stage. At 18, Streisand won a talent contest at the Lion nightclub and started to sing at clubs in the area. During that time, she began to develop her stage persona, creating emotional characters, working on her singing range, and speaking to the audience between songs. In 1962, after two years of performing in various nightclubs, Streisand landed her first role in a Broadway production, playing Miss Marmelstein in the musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale. It got her the first Tony nomination and her first husband, Elliott Gould. Their marriage lasted for 6 years, and they had a son together. Becoming an immediate sensation, Streisand made her first television appearance on The Tonight Show, and later on The Judy Garland Show and The Garry Moore Show, where she sang for the first time her signature song “Happy Days Are Here Again.” In 1963, Streisand released her first album, the Barbra Streisand Album, for which she won three Grammy Awards. In the following year, she returned to Broadway, playing Fanny Brice in Funny Girl, a role she played again in the movie adaption in 1968, receiving an Academy Award for her performance. During the 60s and 70s, Streisand established her status as a multi-talented performer, releasing a series of award-winning albums, such as Stoney End, You Don’t Bring Me Flowers, and Guilty, while starring in various box-office hits, including Hello, Dolly!, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, The Way We Were, and A Star Is Born. In 1972, she founded the Barwood Films production, making her directorial debut in the movie Yentl in 1983, for which she became the first woman to win a Golden Globe for Best Director. She continued to produce, direct and star in the films The Prince of Tides and The Mirror Has Two Faces. In 1985, Streisand released The Broadway Album, which reached No. 1 in the Billboard chart for three weeks, earning her quadruple platinum and her 8th Grammy award for Best Female Vocalist. Between 1986 – 1991 she released three more albums, including a four-disc box set, Just for the Record. For many years, Streisand avoided live performance, but in the 90s, she returned to the stage. Started as a two-night New Year’s event, her show turned into a multi-city tour with ticket prices reaching $1,500, making Streisand the highest-paid concert performer in history and earning her five Emmy awards. At the age of 55, after almost 10 years, Streisand released an album of new songs, titled Higher Ground, once again reaching the top of the Billboard chart and earning her two Grammy nominations. In 2004, after a leave of 8 years, Streisand returned to film acting in the movie Meet the Fockers. She continued to appear in various guest roles in many TV shows and TV specials, recording soundtracks and releasing singles and records, including her 2018 protest album, Walls. Streisand uses her fame and fortune to promote political and social causes, raising millions of dollars through live performances. She donated a building to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, gifted $5 million to the Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and with the Streisand Foundation she founded in 1988, she contributed more than $16 million to organizations that promote the preservation of the environment, civil rights, women’s issues, civil liberties, and nuclear disarmament. Throughout her career, she has recorded 50 studio albums and 10 live records. She appeared in 19 films, directed 3 movies, and produced approximately 30 projects. She received 52 gold albums, 31 platinum albums, and 13 multi-platinum albums, becoming the most decorated recording artist in history. Read more...

Gertrude Jeannette was born in Urbana, Arkansas, where she grew up on a farm with her six siblings. During the Great Depression, the family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas. She attended the segregated Dunbar High School and planned to enroll at Fisk University. On her prom night, she met Joe Jeannette, who was 35 years older than her, and just before her graduation, the couple eloped to NYC. There, Jeannette became involved in the civil rights movement. Jeannette’s husband, a heavyweight boxer and the president of the Harlem Dusters motorcycle club taught her how to drive a motorcycle. In 1935, she became the first woman in NYC to have a motorcycle license. During WW2, the city had a shortage of taxi drivers, Jeannette took the call, and in 1942, at the age of 28, she passed the cab driver’s test and became the first woman in NYC to have a taxi driver license. With her new income, Jeannette wanted to further her education, and while attending bookkeeping classes, she took a speech class at the American Negro Theatre to correct her stammer. As part of the theater’s curriculum, Jeannette was obliged to take an acting class, which changed the course of her life. At 31, Jeannette began her acting career, landing her first lead role in the play “Our Town,” and four years later, she performed in her first Broadway production – “Lost in the Stars.” Jeannette saw the lack of authentic black characters in the theater, so she started to write her plays. Her first production, “The Way Forward,” premiered in 1950. In this autobiographical play, Jeannette depicted the life of the sharecroppers in the South. As in her other plays, she presented strong African-American characters and dealt with topics such as racism, education, politics, and family issues. In the same year, Jeannette was featured in the TV Hour production of the “God’s Trombones,” adding another first to her list as the first African-American actress to appear on National Television. Jeannette continued to appear in various Broadway productions, films, and TV shows. Her credits include titles such as “Nothing but a Man,” “Cotton Comes to Harlem,” “Shaft,” and “Black Girl.” In 1979, Jeannette founded the H.A.D.L.E.Y. Players (Harlem Artist’s Development League Especially for You), a theater company, which gave artists a place to develop their skills, enriching the cultural life in Harlem. Jeannette acted, directed, and wrote until her retirement at the age of 98. She died at her home in Harlem at the age of 103. Read more...

Eleanor Caulkins grew up in Orange, New Jersey. When she was 24 years old, during a flight to a ski vacation in Europe, she met George Caulkins, and two weeks later, they got married. She moved with him to Denver, Colorado, where his oil company and business were. Four years later, Caulkins, who already had four children, decided to complete her studies and enrolled in the University of Colorado. She always had an interest in Opera, so she took a course titled Opera as Literature. It changed her life. She became involved with the art, helping with the auditions for the Rocky Mountain region for the Met and with the Met itself. In 1980, alongside her professor from college, she founded the Friends of Opera, a volunteer group that worked to bring Opera performances to Denver. Two years later, while she worked as a development director at Graland Country Day School, she was reached out by a director from the Met who offered her to establish the Opera Colorado. From that day on, Caulkins’s name became a synonym to Denver’s Opera, bringing performances to the city and promoting the art. She chaired the board of directors’ multiple terms, served on the Board of Directors of the Metropolitan Opera Association in NYC, chaired the Metropolitan Opera’s National Patron Program, as well as president of Metropolitan Opera’s National Council. In 2004, her husband and children secretly donated $7 million to name the new Denver’s Opera house in her honor. Opened in 2005, The Ellie Caulkins Opera House is the second-largest performing arts center in the world. Read more...

Julie Taymor was born in Newton, Massachusetts. Her interest in theatre began at a young age, producing family and friends’ performances in the backyard. At the age of 10, she joined the Boston Children’s Theatre, and by the age of 13, she joined Julie Portman Theatre Workshop, in which she discovered the art of “Living Theatre.” She graduated high school at 16 and went to Paris to attend the L’École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. There she learned mime and developed physical sensibilities, which later she used many times in her productions. At the age of 18, Taymor returned to the US and studied folklore and mythology studies at Oberlin College, graduating with Phi Beta Kappa honors. At 22, with the Thomas J. Watson Foundation fellowship, she traveled to Japan and Indonesia, studying the local theater and art forms. She stayed in Indonesia for four years, founding the Teatr Loh – a mask and dance company with actors, dancers, musicians, and puppeteers from all around the world. In 1980, Taymor came back to the US, settling in NYC. Around that time, she met the composer Elliot Goldenthal, who became her life partner and artistic collaborator. Her career took off in New York, designing masks, costumes, and puppets for various productions, including The Haggadah, Black Elk Lives, and Savages. At the same time, she promoted several projects of her own, adapting materials into the theater and directing numerous plays, including The Tempest, The Taming of the Shrew, and Titus Andronicus. In 1997, Taymor’s Broadway production of The Lion King had premiered. Not only she directed the musical but also designed the costumes, masks, and puppets. The musical became the highest-grossing Broadway production of all time, performing in more than 12 countries and seen by over 45 million people worldwide. Taymor became the first woman to receive the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical. In 1992, at the age of 40, she directed her first opera – Oedipus rex by Stravinsky. She loved it and continued to direct one production after another, including The Flying Dutchman by Wagner, Salome by Richard Strauss, and The Magic Flute by Mozart. In the same year, she also directed her first film – Fool’s Fire. Over the years, she adapted many of her opera and theater productions into movies, such as Oedipus rex, Titus, and The Tempest. In 2002, she directed her acclaimed film Frida, depicting the life story of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. Her next movie was Jukebox musical Across the Universe – a love story during the Vietnam War set to the soundtrack of The Beatles. In 2020, she released the film The Glorias, following the life of the feminist icon Gloria Steinem. Read more...

Niki Caro was born in Wellington, New Zealand. From a young age, she was interested in art, and after graduating from Diocesan School for Girls, she attended the Elam School of Fine Arts, where she studied sculpture. During school, she realized that her true passion is cinema, and chanced her academic path. After receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, she continued her studies at the Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, earning her Postgraduate Diploma in Film when she is 22 years old. Her theoretic knowledge wasn’t enough to be a director, and with no formal training, she mastered the filed by reading narrative film books and writing scripts. She began directing TV commercials, and in 1992 she got her breakthrough when she was signed to write and direct for the television series “Another Country.” She began working on short films, which were accepted in film festivals all over the world. In 1994, her short film “Sure to Rise” was nominated for the Golden Palm Award at Cannes. Four years later, she released her first feature film, “Memory & Desire.” Though the film did not succeed at the box office, it was chosen for Critics’ Week at Cannes and won the best new film at the New Zealand Film Awards. The next movie Caro wrote and direct was “Whale Rider,” in which she tells the story of a Māori girl who fights for her right to be a candidate for tribal chief. The film earned more than $41 million worldwide and was nominated for over 50 awards. Afterward, Caro gained world recognition and was asked to direct her first Hollywood feature – North Country, for which two of the actresses, Charlize Theron and Frances McDormand, were nominated for Academy Awards. Caro kept on directing films, both in New Zealand and in the US, featuring A list actors, such as Kevin Costner, Keisha Castle-Hughes, and Chloë Sevigny, and screening them in the most prestigious film festivals. In 2017, she directed the film “The Zookeeper’s Wife,” depicting the true story of the Polish couple, who hide and saved hundreds of Jews during WW2. For this adaptation, Caro won the Truly Moving Picture Award at the Heartland Film Festival. In that same year, she was elected to direct Disney’s live-action adaptation of “Mulan,” becoming the second woman and second New Zealander to direct a Disney film in a budget higher than $100 million. In “Mulan,” like in many of her films, Caro explores strong women characters that have to prove their strength and courage facing the society they live in. Read more...

Growing up in Los Angles, Dorothy Arzner spent time in her parents’ café in Hollywood, a gathering place for many silent film stars and directors. After graduating from Westlake School for Girls, Arzner started to study medicine at the University of Southern California but quit after two years, deciding it was not her destiny. At 22, a meeting with Lasky William DeMille, the director, and co-founder of Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, led her to explore the different departments of the movie set, deciding she aspired to be a director “because he was the one who told everyone else what to do.” Her first role was as a stenographer, then a synopsis writer. Arzner was promoted from script girl to film editor within a year. At 25, after editing more than 50 films, Paramount Studio asked her to edit the film Blood and Sand, starring Rudolph Valentino. Her work on this film impressed the director James Cruze, who then employed her as the editor of his following four films. Over time, her ambitions to become a director grew, and Paramount assigned her as an assistant director. When Arzner threatened to leave the studio to work for Columbia, Paramount offered her to direct a comedy film. At 30, Arzner debuted her first film – Fashions for Women. After directing three more silent films, she got to direct Paramount’s first talkie film – The Wild Party, making history by being the first woman director of a talking movie. In her films, Arzner examined the patriarchal systems and the expectations imposed upon women. She featured strong female characters and explored female relationships, marriage life, and the balance of power between the sexes. During WW2, Arzner left Hollywood and began to direct training films for the Women’s Army Corps. Afterward, she worked on several documentary films and commercials and as a consultant at Pepsi. In 1950, Arzner founded the filmmaking program at the Pasadena Playhouse and was its first teacher. She also produced theater plays and starred in a radio program. At 64, Arzner became a staff member of the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television and taught there for four years. In her last years, she left LA and moved to the desert, where she lived until she passed away at 82. Throughout her career, Arzner directed twenty films; to this day, she is the female director with the largest body of work in Hollywood. Read more...