Robert Wilson at 80

Bühnentechnische Rundschau

Congratulations Robert Wilson! One of our day’s most outstanding theatre-makers, he turned 80 this year. Much more than a director, he conceives, choreographs, and constructs stage spaces – for which he himself painstakingly designs the light – and sometimes even performs. In short, he embodies the total artworks he creates. He presents his own artistic cosmos in his productions.

And in his eighty-first year he is still active across the globe, switching between his own latest productions and his artistic home in America, the Watermill Center for Performing Arts near New York.

Robert Wilson, or “Bob” as he is generally known, was born in 1941 in Texas. Young Bob had a speech impediment. Having a stutter pushed him to the margins and made him an outsider. Developing an interest in dance early on, he took children’s ballet classes with the dancer Byrd Hoffman, where he managed to overcome his stutter. Many years later he named his first performance collective The Byrd Hoffmann School of Byrds after his early dance teacher. It was his collaboration with Philip Glass, and especially the enigmatically titled opera Einstein on The Beach, that first drew him to the attention of the West German theatre-going public. Philip Glass’s music stood out not only from conventional rock and pop but also from cool jazz, fusioninspired Krautrock, and the hyper-intellectual tendencies of Neue Musik. The visual and musical world Wilson conjured was intriguingly new.

As Wilson gradually became better known in Germany, experimental or ‘progressive’ theatre groups were keen to appear in his productions as players, openly jumping in and out of their roles. To the world of Brechtian Epic Theatre, where the curtain is often just a drape and the stage sets are simple, pragmatic, and flexible, Robert Wilson’s aesthetic was a provocation. Experimental theatre wanted to break down the notorious ‘fourth wall’, an invisible divide between the stage and the audience, and immediately address the public. Wilson’s theatre, in contrast, not only clearly and unequivocally put up a ‘fourth wall’, it cultivated one. His productions appear cool, almost mechanical. Wilson constructs a stage world that does not try or even intend to depict reality. He puts an enclosed, artificial world – detached and dispassionate – on the stage. His productions seem rather like illustrations come to life, with solid, vivid colours and vibrant colour contrasts, sculptural costumes, and fully choreographed movements. Wilson works out concepts for the on-stage action in sketches and drawings – and that is how they appear on stage.


BTR Ausgabe 6 2021
Rubrik: English texts, Seite 111
von Herbert Cybulska

Weitere Beiträge
Markt 6/21

01. Vectorworks 2022 – neue deutsche Version

In den neusten Versionen von Vectorworks Spotlight, Braceworks, ConnectCAD und Vision findet sich fortschrittliche Technik, die neue Möglichkeiten für schnellere Arbeitsabläufe und eine attraktivere Art des freien Gestaltens bietet. In der neuen Version wurden vor allem die Kerntechnologien und Schnittstellen weiterentwickelt, um Vectorworks...

Szenischer Raum im Bühnenturm

Das Gebäude wurde als Dramatisches Theater Karlshorst 1948/49 auf Befehl der sowjetischen Militäradministration als Reparationsleistung Deutschlands erbaut (siehe auch BTR 1/2016). Architekt war zunächst der Chefarchitekt der Roten Armee, General Kriwuschenko. Die technische und künstlerische Bauleitung verantwortete später der Berliner Architekt Hans Schaefers (1907–1991). Am 31. Juli...

Triumph der Kunst

Der verpackte Triumphbogen in Paris war der letzte europäische Traum von Christo und Jeanne-Claude. Im Frühjahr 2020 sollte das Werk an der Place de l’Etoile entstehen. Doch es wurde, bedingt durch Covid-19 und den Lockdown, Herbst 2021 – und Christo sollte das Ereignis nicht mehr erleben. Er verstarb am 31. Mai 2020, im Alter von 84 Jahren, knapp elf Jahre nach seiner Gefährtin...