Julie Taymor, creator of Broadway's The Lion King and The Green Bird, will bring her puppetry to the Royce Hall Stage March 29-31, 2001, in an exclusive Los Angeles engagement of The King Stag. The production revolves around the world of castles, damsels and sorcery.

Other theatre programs scheduled as part of UCLA Performing Arts' upcoming 2000-2001 season include India's 30-member Ratan Thiyam Chorus Repertory Theatre in its North American debut tour. The company will present an Indian historical epic, Utar-Priyardshi--The Final Beatitude, on Oct. 12-14 at Royce Hall.

Rounding out the theatre season with performances at Freud Playhouse are the GATE Theatre of Dublin's Waiting for Godot; Kwaidan, three Japanese ghost stories, told through puppetry and co-produced by the Japanese Cultural and Community Center; and Spirit, by Britain's Improbable Theatre, which recently scored a critical and popular success at UCLA with its production of Shockheaded Peter, a macabre but imaginative adaptation of the 19th-century children's-book classic "Struwwelpeter," written by Heinrich Hoffman.

UCLA's new season will also feature such dance, music and spoken-word performers as mezzo-soprano Audra McDonald, Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, jazz pianist Keith Jarrett and the Mark Morris Dance group, among others.

For a complete listing of events, go to http://ww.performingarts.ucla.edu or call the UCLA box office at (310) 825-2101. -- By Willard Manus
Southern California Correspondent