The death has taken place in New York of groundbreaking actor, director, designer and visual artist Robert Wilson. Known for his many stage collaborations with artists as varied as William Burroughs, Philip Glass and Tom Waits, Wilson is also noted for highly individual and stylised productions of three plays by Samuel Beckett.
His production of Oh les beaux jours premiered at the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg in 2008 with the role of Winnie taken by Italian actress Adriana Asti. The following year, Wilson directed and took the title role in Krapp’s Last Tape, in a production which opened in Spoleto in Italy and which toured widely subsequently. In 2016, Wilson collaborated with the Berliner Ensemble in a new production of Fin de partie in German, employing some of his favourite actors Traute Hoess, Jürgen Holtz, Martin Schneider and Georgios Tsivanoglou.
Wilson’s striking visual sense brought a singular aesthetic to his productions of Beckett’s work born out of his sense of the artificiality of his theatre writing. In a 2022 interview with the Guardian he argued: ‘The best Beckett works are those that are treated very artificially, like Keaton or Chaplin. It’s all dance, it’s all timing, and the makeup is artificial. It is this other world and I’m always surprised that people try to do him in this more naturalistic way. He wrote an image that goes with the text and you can’t have this woman sitting on the street waiting for a bus.”
A comprehensive record of Wilson’s work is contained at his excellent website and is highly recommended.
Masthead: Robert Wilson as Krapp
The Samuel Beckett Society 