Bitef

much easier to force it into that and then it makes a big dramatic . . . and so forth. I don’t think that's the content, anybody can make up their own content, as long as they see what s going on. As in a dream, or as in watching clouds. They ... I think you’re given enough to be able to do that. But the idea that you can uderstand it only if you can verbalize it is what I don't think is true or useful. And that is unfortunately usually done by people trying to tell each other what happened. Many people for instance have said, Oh ,1 can't there’s no way of describing what happens in Wilson’s pieces. That isn’t true at all. You can describe those images one for one, you can describe 30 or 40 of them, if you have the time, perfectly dearly, because you can remember them. But what you can’t describe is the logical narrative connection. And the psychological connection. But you don’t have to describe that. That’s not what he's showing you. It might be that later on on he would. Since his work adds so much from year to year.

edvìin denby

silence

women’s wear daily, december 13, 1973 This weekend and next, Robert Wilson will present his theater piece, The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The piece lasts 12 hours (from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.), and the cast includes Queen Victoria, George Washington, Sigmund Freud, Alexander Graham Bell and 32 dancing ostriches. Despite the title and the dramatis personae, the piece is not historical. Despite the presence of Dr. Freud, it is not, in a conventional sense, psychological. Rather, it is about ways of perceiving, ways of communicating. Wilson’s theater pieces (the French call them silent opers) do not respond to conventional approaches because Wilson’s approach to theater, both in his background and his objectives, runs contrary to normal expectations. No summer stock. No Mama Rose. He studied painting and has a degree in architecture and is most likely to describe his works as pretty pictures or structures. Wilson, whose works have prompted both deep praise and deep hostility (in Copenhagen a photographer asked permission to shoot during a performance it turned out all he wanted were shots of people in the audience yawning), is a tall, unassuming young man who speaks in a soft, low voice, occasionally breaking into high-pitched laughter. He wears tinted glasses, which seem to keep him at a distance and which maintain a certain reserve even when he is being open and cordial. Im interested in communication, in what happens when we try to communicate with people

we call senile. Before my mother died, she was in in a coma for six weeks how do you talk with her? How do you talk to a baby? What happens when people of different social stations talk to one another? Most of my works don’t have any words. They’re structured silences. The communication comes from body movements. This new work does have words, but a lot of them are just’hm’. A lot of the shifts that occur within one second of time. Think of it in terms of sound. Let’s take your name. How do I locate different shifts of feeling located in sound energy? Even within the first letter, when I say H, I can break it apart and find shift. We are moving at a crazy rate now- I think that’s good, but sometimes we have to slow down. Most theater is speeded-up time everything is concentrated. It’s hard to stand off and think. Of course, it’s hard to think any time during code it to correlate with the multiplicity of thought we’re capable of I can be thinking about five things at the same time, but I can communicate only one at a time. Dr. Dan Stern, an anthropologist, has done some extremely important work with films of a mother picking up a baby. Ordinarily, film runs at 16 frames a second. Stern enlarged each frame so that you could become aware of completely different things than you do watching a simple action at norma! speeds. You become aware of rapid shifts of emotion, words we use in everyday speeéh are like that just ’hm.’ I never thought about how often we use ’hm. ’ A couple of weeks ago, I decided I would see how far I could get one day just saying’hm’ you have a certain license to be mad being an artist. I didn’t annoy too many people. I got through the day. Most of our verbal structures do not allow me to convey all the things I'm thinking at one time. I’m interested in finding ways to restructure sound, to retile day. That’s an adjustment too we’re not used to having time to think, as audiences or actors. In my pieces everything is slowed down. If it’s going to take me five minutes to pick up a spoon, first of all i’ts going to be painful just to control it. But what happens with my awareness of my body as I do it? In these plays, audiences evidently blink more. But blinking changes our perceptions, and that s what I want. Interior images become more mingled with exterior images ■ —- it’s as if youre in a semisleep state. That’s interesting too in terms of visual communication. Well, what does all this have to do with Joseph Stalin? Wilson says he structures the play around an unusual equation in which one key moment is made to equal a man’s whole life. In 1907, Stalin’s first wife died. This is a point or interval where, perhaps, his life was altered. No one really knows about Stalin all the documents about him have been altered like Nixon. But it’s possible that after 1907 all information coming into his mind was distorted. Freud said that he was never depressed before the death of his nephew, when Freud was 68. He said, Something within me passed away forever. I just learned recently that the same year he developed cancer. In terms of his life, that one moment can outweigh all the rest. The construction of these plays is not literary, but mathematical, visual,” When Wilson gives these explanations there is a faintly ironic tone no artist likes to reduce his works to a simple formula. He adds: Really, I just like pretty pictures. All these other things I don’t know so much about. 1 just like looking at pretty pictures.

Ionesco

» Knjizevne novine«, Issue Belgrade, No. 399 of September 16, 1971. An excerpt from an interview granted by EUGENE lONESCO to Vladimir Predic, under the caption »BEAUTY IS ONLY A REFLECTION OF SOMETHING LONG FORGOTTEN AND LOST« V. P. : Where to after you and Beckett? E. L: I don’t know. I could only state a fact: Beckett has succeeded in creating a few minutes of silence on the stage, while ROBERT WILSON was able to bring about silence that lasted four hours! He has surpassed Beckett in this: Wilson being richer and more complex with his silence on the stage. This silence is a silence that can speak. However, what is interesting about both Beckett and Wilson is the fact that they are above politics. They are interested in the existential not social destiny of man. In this, Wilson has gone farther than Beckett, for in his play, Deafman Glance, despite silence, he conjures up the whole tragedy oy man and his history. Wilson speaks of the metaphysical defeat of man. The whole of existance has been condensed here into four hours which bring us to an apocalyptic end: but this end, at the same time, announces the arrival of a new Adam and a new Eve who will start again a new cycle.

Robert Wilson

theater presentations 1965 Dance Event, New York World's Fair, New York 1967 Solo Performance, Byrd Hoffman Studio, New York 1967 Theater Activity, Bleeckcr Street Cinema, New York 1968 Byrd Woman, Byrd Hoffman Studio, New York 1969 The King of Spain, Anderson Theater, New York

61