Throwback Thursday Remembers Innovative Theater Director Robert Wilson

To say that writer and stage director/producer Robert Wilson was "innovative" would be a criminal understatement. As reported recently in The New York Times and The Advocate, the gay iconoclast died last week at his home in Water Mill, N.Y., after a "brief illness. He was 83.

As reported in the Times, Wilson was known for maddeningly creative stage pieces that focused more on the interaction of bodies, space, and light rather than linear and thematic storytelling and dialogue. Movement and feeling, impressions and emotions stirred were what he played with and attempted to instill. Creative, because he "shattered theatrical norms with stunning stagings of his own imaginative works as well as innovative collaborations." Maddening because these singularly brilliant pieces could run for hours at a time. The seven-hour "Deafman Glance” from 1971, and the 12-hour “Life and Times of Joseph Stalin,” from 1973, were entirely silent." (The New York Times)

His process for his own pieces would often begin with his 9x12 ledger, in which he would draw out "richly detailed visual images." Dialogue would, if at all, work its way in later. His work was, above all, visual.

Born in Waco, Texas, into a strict religious family, Wilson had an intense stammer as a child. His parents sent him to dance classes with Byrd Hoffman in hopes of improving his self-confidence. Hoffman recognised in Wilson his erratic energy, which came out in his stilted speech. She worked with him to slow down and direct his energy, which helped his speech. He would later immortalise Byrd in name with his first ensemble and his Byrd Hoffman Foundation.

Wilson moved to New York in 1963 to study interior design, but returned to TX at his parents' instance. Life in TX for a young, creative gay man proved emotionally crushing, and he attempted to end his life. After he was released from the hospital, he returned to NYC, where he taught acting to support his first ensemble. It was during this time that he witnessed the abuse of a Black teenager by police. He intervened, assisted the young man, and would eventually adopt him. Raymond Andrews was a deaf mute who would prove an inspiration for one of Wilson's early works, the previously mentioned "Deafman Glance."

In 1975, he began his longtime collaborations with composer Phillip Glass, first working on their most "durable" production, Einstein On the Beach. “'What it means exactly is hard to put in words,' John Rockwell wrote in The Times after the (1976) Avignon premiere. 'Mr. Wilson calmly accepts most interpretations people care to make. The phrase "on the beach" may have some reference to the post‐apocalyptic novel of that name. The overall theme of the play might be said to be a consideration of the same moral and cosmic issues that concerned Einstein himself in his later years, principally the role of science in the modern world and the relation of science to religion.'”

Got 4.5 hours to kill? Check out this stunning 2014 production in Paris in its entirety, with Glass and Wilson taking bows at the end. It'll blow your mind.

He would go on to collaborate further with Glass, but also to add his innovative style to productions around the world of Shakespeare, Chekov, Strindberg, Wagner, and Woolf, starting in the '80s. He would join forces with the likes of everyone from Tom Waits and William S. Burroughs to Lady Gaga on theater and museum art pieces. His work with Waits and Burroughs (“The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets,”) was described thusly in Opera News in its review in 1993: "'The show — and that is what it is, not a revue or an opera or musical theater in its more earnest, pretentious form — is in essence "Der Freischütz" meets "Cabaret," with a dash of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" on the side. Things keep zooming off on zany tangents, with a Joel Grey-style interlocutor, a campy devil, and Burroughs’s equation of soul-selling with heroin addiction.”

GAGA/MARAT was part of his "Video Portraits" installation at the Louvre in 2013, a looping video image of Gaga with a recording of her reciting lines from the Marquis de Sade as well as poses of other famous paintings. Brad Pitt, Isabella Rossellini, Alan Cumming, and others were also represented.

(From The New York Times):

"My theater is formal. It’s different from the way most directors work,” Mr. Wilson told Texas Monthly in 2020. “It’s another world I create; it’s not a world that you see wherever you are, if you’re in your office or if you’re on the streets or at home. This is a different world. It’s a world that’s created for a stage. Light is different. The space is different. The way you walk is different. The way you sing is different than the way you sing in the shower.”

Theater serves a unique function in society. It’s a forum where people come together and can share something together for a brief period of time. Art has the possibility of uniting us. And the reason that we make theater — the reason we call it a play — is we’re playing. We’re having fun. And if you don’t have fun playing, then don’t do it.”

Wilson's Instagram is a worthwhile deep dive into the history of his fascinating work.

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