Speaking in front of 1,000 people attending the TED2011 conference in Long Beach, California, Taymor said of the show, "Anyone who creates knows — when it’s not quite there. Where it hasn’t quite become the phoenix or the burnt char. And I am right there.”
She drew comparisons to what's been going on with Spider-Man to a trip she took to Indonesia when a friend disappeared while they were scaling the side of twin volcanoes. "I am on the precipice looking down into a dead volcano on my left, on the right it is sheer shale,” she reflected. “I am in thongs and sarong and no hiking boots. I realize I can’t go back the way I have come. I can’t. So I throw away my camera. I throw away thongs and I look at the line straight in front of me. And I got down on all fours like a cat. And I held with my knees to either side of this line in front of me — 30 yards or 30 feet, I don’t know. The wind was massively blowing and the only way I could get to the either side was to look at the line straight in front of me. I know you have been there. I am in the crucible right now. It is my trial by fire. It’s my company’s trial by fire.”
Pointing to one of the show's songs, "Rise Above," she felt she could identify with the lyrics and said of the musical itself, "It’s right there in the palm of my hands. In all of my company’s hands. I have beautiful collaborators. We as collaborators only get there all together. I know you understand that. You stay there going forward and you see this extraordinary thing right in front of your eyes.”
“You must be true to what you believe as an artist all the way through,” she added, “but you almost have to be aware that the audience is out there in our lives at this time and they also need the light. And it’s this incredible balance that I think we walk when we are breaking ground, that’s trying to do something that you’ve never seen before, that the imaginary worlds, where you actually don’t know where you are going to end up. That’s the fine line at the edge of the crater as I have done my whole life.”