Robert Wilson

Creates works which integrate a variety of artistic media, including movement, dance, painting, lighting, furniture design, sculpture, music, and text. By the late 1960’s he was acknowledged as one of the leading figures in Manhattan’s avant-garde theatre world. Working with his Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds, he developed such pieces as Deafman Glance (1970), and The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973). His 1976 opera Einstein on the Beach, written with composer Philip Glass, altered conventional perceptions of opera as an art form. In Europe, Wilson has staged not only original works including Death, Destruction and Detroit I-III (Berlin; 1975, 1987,1999), but has directed and designed productions from the original repertoire, including his 1987 version of Strauss’s Salomé at La Scala in Milan; Parsifal (Hamburg, 1991); Lohengrin (Zurich, 1991); Madam Butterfly (1993) at the Opera Bastille; Der Ring des Nibelungen (Zurich, 1999); and Faust (2008) for the Polish National Opera. Wilsons Awards and honors include the German Theatre Critics Award for “Best Production of the Year”; an Obie Award for direction; and the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for lifetime achievement. In 1986 his international epic CIVIL warS was the sole nominee for the Pulitzer Prize for drama. Other notable productions include: Alice (with Tom Waits and Paul Schmidt), 1992; Skin, Meat, Bone (with Alvin Lucier), 1994; Timerocker (with Lou Reed), 1997; Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck (with Tom Waits), 2002; Jean de La Fontaine’s The Fables, 2005; Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, 2005 (in Norway); Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera, 2007(in Berlin); Rumi, Polish National Opera, 2008; and scheduled for 2009 Sonnets based on Shakespeare’s Sonnets with music by Rufus Wainwright (in Berlin).

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Bio as of January, 2009.