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Robert Wilson: Man of the Modern Theater
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12295 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1987 |
2,508 Words |
| Author
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Henri Behar
Henri Behar, author and film critic, is cultural correspondent
for Le Monde (Paris). |
Fabulous or fake? A theatrical guru - bordering on the messiah - or a splendidly orchestrated P.R. job? An innovator, a revolutionary, a visionary - or a prankster who, in 1971, at a "press conference" in Yugoslavia, repeated the word, "dinosaur" over and over for twelve hours while peeling then cutting an onion? What is this fellow all about? Is there a similarity between Jean-Luc Godard and Robert Wilson insofar as, some would say, they are their own best jokes?
Terming him 'controversial' is a masterpiece of understatement. Yet he sets himself apart from - admirers say "above" - the controversy and carries on with his work. From The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud to Deafman Glance to Einstein on The Beach to CIVIL warS through A Letter for Queen Victoria, I was Sitting On My Patio This Guy Appeared I thought I was Hallucinating and DIALOG, Robert Wilson has consistently broken every rule in the book and created his own language.
Normal running time? Stage? Dialogue? Plot? Who says a play has to last two or three hours? Or eight as is the case for Nicholas Nickleby? Why not a day? Or two? Or three? His presentations last as long as he feels they have to: from whatever to one hundred and sixty eight - seven days and seven nights non-stop, a feat he achieved at the Shiraz Festival in Iran in 1972.
A stage? Why not - but then why? He feels free to use opera houses, auditoria, arenas, football fields, or mountaintops. "I work best on a large scale," he says.
Plot? "What is it about?" may very well be the single, most constantly irrelevant question one can ask about any of Robert Wilson's works. The man shudders at the idea of a story line, yet there always is an architecture, a dramatic arc to his presentations: they are divided in acts, punctuated (and at times climaxed) by inter-acts, joints, articulations. He calls them "knee plays" and some of them, written in collaboration with filmmaker and Talking Heads leader David Byrne, were performed in early December 1986 at the Lincoln Center.
Numerous Techniques
Wilson uses the techniques of theater, painting, sculpture, music and movement. Dance. His is a theater of images in which incongruous juxtapositions, aiming at disorientation, far from embarking you on a hallucinatory experience, take you on a trip in sharpness and focus. Overwhelmingly. Hypnotically. Non-linear, but with a
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