The director, who brought to Portugal several of his creations, and directed “The Corvo Branco”, by Philip Glass and Luísa Costa Gomes, had on the scene in Lisbon, S. Luiz – Municipal Theater, last March, the play “Pessoa – Since Been Me”, inspired by the author of the “Book of Disassessment”.
American director Bob Wilson, who put on the scene “Einstein on the Beach”, from Philip Glass, died on Thursday in Water Mill, New York, at the age of 83, Robert Wilson Arts Foundation announced.
“We are devastated to announce the death of Robert M. Wilson, artist, theater and opera director, architect, set designer and illuminator, visual artist,” wrote the foundation that preserves his work, in an Instagram post, adding that Bob Wilson “died peacefully.”
The director, who brought to Portugal several of its creationsand directed “The Corvo Branco”, by Philip Glass and Luísa Costa Gomes, had on the scene in Lisbon, S. Luiz – Municipal Theater, last March, the play “Pessoa – Since I’m Been Me”, inspired by the author of the “Book of Deassie”, which will debut last year in Italy.
“Robert Wilson was one of the most radical and poetic figures of contemporary theater,” writes the Salone del Mobile.Milano festival today, who welcomed in his latest edition one of the direction of the director, “Mother”, a vision of Miguel Ângelo’s “Pietá”, with music by Arvo Pärt.
For Wilson, “The stage was an abstract, mental, built space”says the Italian festival, which recalls the influences of the theater of Giorgio Strehler and Luchino Visconti in his work, as well as the piece that determines his consecration in the 1970s the opera “Einstein on the Beach” (1976) by Philip Glass.
“An opera that breaks with all traditional patterns,” reads the Salone del Mobile.milano page. “No plot, no acts, no Arias. Just visions.”
Bob Wilson, as he was known, gave everything.
“A stage is different from any other space. I hate naturalism. Being on stage is artificial. And when trying to act naturally, it seems artificial,” said the director, quoted by the Milan festival. But “when accepted [o palco] As something artificial, it becomes more natural. “
Robert Wilson was born in Waco, Texas, on October 4, 1941. First, he graduated from Business Administration in his home state. Then he opted for the architecture, which concluded at Pratt Institute in New York. In this city, he was assistant to architect Philip Johnson. And also founded byrd Hoffman School of Byrds, Interdisciplinary Artistic Community which gave the name of the dancer Byrd Hoffmann.
It was here at Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds, that he developed the first works and where his work gained transdisciplinary dimension. It was here that your work began to gain worldwide dimension.
Later, Created Watemill CenterInterdisciplinary Laboratory for Arts and Humanities, which completed in 2006 in Long Island, New York. A place to welcome young artists, a place where they could work, learn, create and grow together.
Throughout his career, Bob Wilson has worked with actors, authors, creators such as Susan Sontag, Marina Abramovic, Willem Dafoe, Tom Waits and Lucinda Childs, has signed more than 200 productions, all of them capable of marking the history of stage in the last six decades, such as “Lulu”, “Threepenny Opera”, “Passion of St. John” “Quartett”, “Shakespeare’s Sonnets”, “Life and Death of Marina Abramovic”, among others.
“In your work, [Bob Wilson] He has never recognized boundaries between disciplines, “reads in the biography published by Salone del Mobile.Milano.” Light, space, gestures, objects, sound were tools of unified visual language. “He liked empty rooms and silences. And with all the elements transformed his scene, according to the festival.
RTP’s documentary “The Robert Wilson Experience” places Bob Wilson’s first passes in Portugal in the 1960s. But It is in the 1990s that it gains regularity. First with a ‘workshop’ at the S. Carlos Theater, then with the play “Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights”, from Gertrude Stein, at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 1993, and in Lisbon 94 – European Capital of Culture, with Tom Wait “Alice” about Lewis Carroll, who also entitled to an installation in the old Gallery Louis. Serpa, “Alice – Two Rooms”.
Four years later, Expo’98 ended with the premiere of its staging D ‘”The Crow Branco”by Philip Glass, at the Camões Theater, which would later go to the Real Theater of Madrid and Lincoln Center in New York.
In 1999, two years from Porto Capital of Culture, presented in the city the opera “The Days Before”. Portugal would also bring “4 Santos in 3 acts”, a piece inspired by Ignatius of Loyola and Teresa de Ávila.
The Almada Festival featured Robert Wilson in different editions, as in 2019, when he presented “Mary Said What She Said”, with French actress Isabelle Hupert, and 2023, with “I Was Sitting on My Patio”, designed in partnership with choreographer Lucinda Childs.
Last year’s edition of the Theater Festival featured “Relative Calm”, a work originally created in 1981, also in collaboration with the American choreographer, revisited at the end of 40 years in France, in pandemic time.
Last March, Wilson brought to Lisbon the play that will debut in May 2024 at the Della Pergola Theater in Florence: “Person – Since I’m Been Me”evocation of the “various atmospheres of the works of person, the fluidity of mood, meditative or comic, rational or anarchic”, according to the presentation that revisited “a life shared with heteronical personalities such as Alexander Search, Bernardo Soares, Vicente Guedes, Alberto Caeiro, Alvaro de Campos or Ricardo Reis.”
Salone del Mobilie.Milano recalls today the reaction of the French poet Louis Aragon, when he watched one of Bob Wilson’s stagings in 1971: “I have never seen anything more beautiful in the world since I was born. Never has approached this, because it is at the same time the wake-up and the life of eyes closed, the confusion between the daily life and the life of each night. Inexplicable in life … that’s what we, others, who generated surrealism, we dreamed that it could come after us, besides us. “
