Robert Wilson & Theatre of Visuals
One of the most significant visionary artists of the 20th century
Sep 21, 2008 Tuirenn Hurstfield
Robert Wilson has been considered as being one of the most significant visionary artists of the 20th century. Since the late 1960s Wilson has staged over sixty full-scale postmodern theatrical works in the United States and Europe. His work, often called a ‘theatre of visuals’ or ‘theatre of images’ (as termed by New York critic Bonnie Marranca[i],) presents an artistic field of theatre where precise chroeographed gestures, movements, shapes of objects, textures of sound, and lighting aim to create a heightened experience for the viewer.
'His theatre produces a constant interplay of visual, verbal and auditory elements, which problematise the relation of image to language and challenges the onlookers…'[ii]
The Theatre of Visuals
Like Brecht and Artaud before him, Wilson reacted against the contemporary Western theatre, calling this style of acting and directing ‘fascist’.[iii] It was from this feeling that Wilson insisted on emancipating his audiences from the specific textual interpretation enforced by Western theatre directors, allowing them a freedom to translate and explore individual meanings from his visual and aural experiences.
In achieving this, Wilson employs a number of strategies which, including essentially non-linguistic montage, displace any univocal signification, thereby releasing a limitless play of language in a Derridean deconstructive method. Basically, as Johannes Birringer observes, Wilson contradicts the stage that was “once considered a close space of representation … primarily constructed by words and logocentrism and anthropocentrism of drama” and has now made it “conceivable as an open laboratory of image associations … polyphonic sound landscapes, abstract cultural designs, uninterpretable and self-recursive signs.”[iv]
Wilson integrates non-narrative drama (in the sense that it lacks a linear plot sequence), scenic spectacle, music, sound, silence and dance into a music theatre experience which refuses to enforce interpretation. Brechtian and Artaudian influences can be seen in this style as “Wilson challenges the dominant tradition of Western drama, grounded in idolatry of the word.
Wilson changed the way the theatre looks and sounds.”[v] Also reflecting Artaud and Brecht, Wilson states that his overall intentions are to reach a broader audience, to create works ‘on a scale of large popular theater’.[vi]
Wilson's Influences
Of enormous influence in his work is Wilson’s experience of working with mentally and physically challenged children. Of particular reference is his adopted son, Raymond Andrews – a deaf-mute boy, and Christopher Knowles – an autistic teenager.[vii] The psychology of Knowles together with the linguistic problems of Andrews generated a lot of material for Wilson. Andrews did not communicate through words and Wilson encouraged him to communicate through his drawings and body language. This influenced Wilson in developing a theatre that was independent of text and language, and which relied on visual signs and symbols.
Wilson’s ‘visual’ theatre techniques came entirely into fruition with the creation of a seven hour show entitled Deafman Glance, a ‘silent opera’ structured from pictures and stories inspired by Andrews’ drawings.
'Wilson talks about Deafman Glance as the culmination of his approach to … alternative theater: a determination not to impose on either text or characters the intentional resolution of the narrative tradition; a belief that words are not inherently more important than light, space, and movement, and that the performers may be considered as compositional elements.'[viii]
This style of theatre works as a type of collage, or series of montages; that is far removed from being an integrated whole; Wilson relies on disconnecting text from image and music, thus creating a similar effect to Brechtian defamiliarisation and disrupting traditional narrative.
Also there is no emphasis on the importance of any particular performer, this alienates the audience since they can no longer identify with any protagonist – a key ingredient in conventional theatre. As Birringer notes, “In his operas … Wilson claims, the audience is presented with pure visions and pictures not with interpretation of a text or story.”[ix] However, while Wilson draws on Brechtian Epic Theatre techniques he prefers his performers not to address the audience directly, maintaining that “he cannot tolerate a ‘fascist’ theatre, one that relies overmuch on ‘confrontation and absorption’.”[x]
Towards Einstein on the Beach
During his work on A Letter to Queen Victoria, Wilson met composer Philip Glass and, together with choreographer Andrew de Goat, conceived (over eight months) Einstein on the Beach, a five hour long performance with no interruption. For Wilson it is important that, on stage, ‘real events should occur in real time’, thus destroying the illusionary ‘telescoped’ narrative structure of traditional theatre.
Sources:
- [i] Goldberg R Performance Art Ch.7 p.185
- [ii] Campbell P (ed) Analysing Performance Ch.10 p.185
- [iii] Broadhurst S Liminal Acts Ch.4 p.89
- [iv] Birringer J Theatre, Theory, Postmodernism Ch.10 p.195
- [v] Holmberg A The Theatre of Robert Wilson p.76
- [vi] Goldberg R Performance Art Ch.7 p.189
- [vii] ibid Ch.7 p.187
- [viii] http://www.lib.berkely.edu/MRC/carlanotes.html
- [ix] Birringer J Theatre, Theory, Postmodernism Ch.10 p.194
- [x] Wright E Postmodern Brecht p.129
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