WILSON, ROBERT

1941–, dramatist, director, and designer, b. Waco, Tex. He began his arts career as a painter. A leading figure in postmodern theater, since the 1960s he has created lengthy, often controversial multimedia events that combine drama, dance, and gesture with contemporary instrumental music, opera, and art. Extending the tradition of surrealism, exploring the theatrical parameters of time and space, and usually created in collaboration with other artists, his theater art pieces frequently include visually dazzling tableaux and stylized presentations of text or song.

Wilson's works include the 12-hour Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973); the five-hour Einstein on the Beach (1976, rev. 1984), a collaboration with Philip Glass and his best-known work; the day-long Civil Wars (1984), with Glass, David Byrne, and others; 1990s operatic extravaganzas (again with Glass), including White Raven and The Palace of the Arabian Nights; and The Days Before: Death, Destruction, and Detroit III (1999), a collaborative multimedia meditation on the Apocalypse. Working in Europe and the United States, Wilson has been a phenomenally prolific director, mounting brilliantly strange productions of opera and theater classics, including Wagner's Parsifal, Büchner's Danton's Death, and Shakespeare's King Lear.

See L. Shyer, Robert Wilson and His Collaborators (1989).

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright© 2004, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved.

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