Robert Wilson needs more time.
The eminent theater artist, known for his languorous, meditative, shape-shifting productions, is in a meeting Monday afternoon and asks me to call again in 15 minutes.
Robert Wilson is giving a three-hour lecture and performance Thursday, March 10, at the University of Hartford’s Lincoln Theater.
It’s not the first time I’ve waited, with anticipatory pleasure, for an audience with the wondrous, time-warping Wilson. As a college student in the mid-1980s, I saw him perform at an AIDS benefit in Cambridge, Mass. Wilson’s entrance took 25 minutes, as he walked with ultra-slow, angular physical grace toward the center of the stage. Once there, he quietly recited leisurely excerpts from the text he and David Byrne had prepared for their multi-media collaboration “The Knee Plays.”
I’d already had my mind blown by Wilson’s magnum opus, “the CIVIL warS” at the American Repertory Theatre. “the CIVIL warS” was a 12-hour theater piece created for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, though it ended up not being produced there at all, and has still never been staged in its entirety in one place. It consisted of grand visual vignettes that shifted with glacial pace while forcing a prolonged confrontation with challenging moments from American history.
The A.R.T. presented several other Wilson productions during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including “The Knee Plays” and a peaceful rethinking of Euripides’ death-strewn “Alcestis.” That turned out to be Wilson’s most fertile period as a director in the U.S., though he remains a potent force in American arts due to the new-works development mecca The Watermill Center that he founded and still runs in Water Mill, N.Y.
Since the 1990s Wilson’s worked primarily in Europe. When he finally gets to the phone Monday — he’s in Germany, where he recently had an exhibit of his video portraits. He is about to premiere a new radio play and is working on a new musical based on E.T.A. Hoffman’s “The Sandman” — he admits, “I’m just not in the States that often. Theaters are still coming to me, but mostly abroad. I did nine productions in one season in Paris.
“My work in the states was never really commercial,” Wilson continues, bemoaning the “boulevard appeal” of Broadway.
“It’s very different in Europe,” he said. “In Paris, we play to sold-out houses. It’s a bit confusing. I’m the most-produced playwright in Germany.”
His biggest hit has been “The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets,” which has songs by Tom Waits and a libretto by William S. Burroughs. “Black Rider” has enjoyed years-long runs in Germany and elsewhere, and toured internationally. Other high-profile Wilson projects include “Shakespeare’s Sonnets” (with a score by Rufus Wainwright), the Frank Wedekind play “Lulu” (containing the last songs written by Lou Reed) and a show of video portraits of Lady Gaga. Wilson’s massive, meandering-friendly multi-structure art installation “14 Stations” was created in 2000 for the centuries-old Oberammergau Passion Play performances, then brought to MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass., in 2002.
Hartford was able to get the legendary, and incredibly busy, Wilson for an appearance this week because he’ll be in the U.S. to perform his rendition of the Samuel Beckett classic “Krapp’s Last Tape” at Montclair State University in New Jersey March 17-20. It’s a show that Wilson has done on and off since 2009. He also directed Beckett’s “Happy Days” in Luxembourg in 2008 and is currently preparing a production of “Endgame.”
Thursday at the University of Hartford, Wilson says “I will talk about the roots of my work, and project images from some of the productions.” That event will be followed Friday, March 11, at 11 a.m., by what the university is calling “a direct encounter” with Wilson: a question-and-answer session moderated by former Hartford Courant theater reporter Frank Rizzo, followed by the awarding of an honorary doctorate of fine arts degree and a “celebratory reception.”
Ken Steen, a professor of composition and theory at Hartt School, arranged the Wilson appearance and has augmented it with a series of performances created in response to what they’ve learned of Wilson’s work. Earlier this month an exhibit at the gallery of the Hartford Art School, “Everything You Can Think Of is True: works on paper by Robert Wilson,” became the site of daily student performances. The series also featured double-bassist Robert Black playing works by Philip Glass (who notably collaborated with Wilson on the landmark opera “Einstein on the Beach”) and a dance performance by Miki Orihara.
As for Wilson’s highly anticipated performance Thursday night, Steen says he doesn’t know exactly what to expect.
“He leaves it up to the moment,” Steen said. “Materials are prepared, but the actual thing that happens is him being present in the moment. It’s definitely a career retrospective, with images from his productions, but for him it’s a more interactive performance.”
“AN EVENING WITH ROBERT WILSON” takes place 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 10, at the Lincoln Theater, on the University of Hartford campus, 200 Bloomfield Ave., West Hartford. A “direct encounter” with Wilson is scheduled 11 a.m. Friday, March 11, also in the Lincoln Theater. Tickets to the Thursday event are $20; the Friday program is free. Information: 860-768-4228, hartford.edu/boxoffices.aspx.
