Robert Wilson (director)

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Robert Wilson (born 4 October 1941) is an internationally acclaimed American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'" ^[1]. Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video artist, and sound and lighting designer. He is best known for his collaborations with Philip Glass on Einstein on the Beach, and with numerous other artists, including William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Tom Waits, and David Byrne.

Wilson was born in Waco, Texas, and studied Business Administration at the University of Texas from 1959 to 1962. He moved to Brooklyn in 1963, receiving a BFA in architecture from the Pratt Institute in 1965. He also attended lectures by Sibyl Moholy-Nagy (widow of László Moholy-Nagy), studied painting with George McNeil, and studied architecture with Paolo Soleri in Arizona.

In 1968, Wilson founded an experimental performance company, the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds (named for a dancer who helped him overcome a speech impediment while a teenager). With this company, he created his first major works, beginning with 1969's The King of Spain and The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud. He began to work in opera in the early 1970s, creating Einstein on the Beach with Philip Glass, which brought the two artists world-wide fame.

In 1983-1984, Wilson planned a performance for the 1984 Summer Olympics, the CIVIL warS: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down; the complete work was to have been 12 hours long, in 6 parts. The production was only partially completed — the full event was cancelled by the Olympic Arts Festival, due to insufficient funds. In 1986, the Pulitzer Prize jury unanimously selected the CIVIL warS for the drama prize, but the supervisory board rejected the choice and gave no drama award that year. ^[2]

Wilson is known for pushing the boundaries of theatre. His works are noted for their austere style, very slow movement, and often extreme scale in space or in time. The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin was a 12-hour performance, while KA MOUNTain and GUARDenia Terrace was staged on a mountaintop in Iran and lasted seven days.

In addition to his work for the stage, Wilson creates sculpture, drawings, and furniture designs. He won the Golden Lion at the 1993 Venice Biennale for a sculptural installation.

Louis Aragon praised Wilson as: "What we, from whom Surrealism was born, dreamed would come after us and go beyond us". ^[3]

[edit] Works

The King of Spain, 1969
The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud, 1969
Deafman Glance (with Raymond Andrews), 1971
KA MOUNTain and GUARDenia Terrace, 1972
The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin, 1973
A Letter from Queen Victoria, 1974
Einstein on the Beach (with Philip Glass), 1976
Death Destruction & Detroit, 1979
the CIVIL warS, 1984
King Lear by William Shakespeare, 1985
Death Destruction & Detroit II, 1987
The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets (with William S. Burroughs and Tom Waits), 1990
Richard Wagner's Parsifal, Hamburg, 1991 [1]
Alice (with Tom Waits and Paul Schmidt), 1992
Timerocker (with Lou Reed), 1997
Skin, Meat, Bone (with Alvin Lucier), 1994
Monsters of Grace (with Philip Glass, 1998)
Lohengrin for the Metropolitan Opera, 1998
Death Destruction & Detroit III, 1999
Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, Zurich Opera
Hot Water (with Tzimon Barto), 2000
Georg Büchner's Woyzeck (with Tom Waits), 2002
Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten, Opéra National de Paris (Opéra Bastille), 2002
Jean de La Fontaine's The Fables, 2004
Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, 2005 (in Norway)
Heiner Muller's Leonce and Lena

[edit] References

^ John Rockwell. "Staging Painterly Visions", The New York Times, 1992-11-15, p. 23 (sect. 6).
^ Mel Gussow. "At Home With: Robert Wilson; The Clark Kent Of Modern Theater", The New York Times, 1994-01-06, p. C1.
^ Design Musem. Robert Wilson: Theatre Director + Designer. Retrieved on 2006-05-21.