The first comprehensive study of the leading American avant-garde theatre director Robert Wilson.

Robert Wilson, the leading American avant-garde theatre director, revolutionised the stage by making visual communication more important than words. His productions cut across the boundaries that traditionally have defined theatre, dance, opera and the visual arts to create a total work of art. This book, the first comprehensive study of Wilson, traces the evolution of the director's astonishing career as well as his complex relationship to language and his visual rhetoric. It explains how he renovated the stage and describes in detail major productions such as: Deafman Glance, Einstein on the Beach, and the Civil Wars. Arthur Holmberg's numerous personal interviews and first-hand observations of Wilson's creative process, provide an intimate, behind-the-scenes view of one of our most original directors. Photographs and sketches from Wilson's private collection are included, along with a chronology of his work.

Robert Wilson is an American–European director who is also a performer, installation artist, writer, designer of light and much more besides – a crossover polymath who dissolves both generic and geographical boundaries and is a precursor of globalisation in the arts. This second edition of Robert Wilson combines: an analysis of his main productions, situated in their American and European socio-cultural and political contexts a focused, detailed study of Wilson’s pathbreaking Einstein on the Beach a study of Pushkin's Fairy Tales as the foremost example of his folk-rock music theatre in the twenty-first century an exploration of his ‘visual book’, workshop and rehearsal methods, and collaborative procedures a study of his aesthetic principles and the elements of composition that distinguish his directorial approach a series of practical exercises for students and practitioners highlighting Wilson’s technique. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today’s student.

Robert Wilson's theatre is the stuff of legend. He has taught theatre-goers to see the world with different eyes. Stefan Brecht's book provides detailed documentation and analysis of a number of Wilson's earliest groundbreaking works including The Life of Sigmund Freud, Deafman Glance and Einstein on the Beach. "Never since I was born have I seen anything more beautiful on this earth, never ever has there been another performance to equal this one, because it is simultaneously life at its most vivid and life with its eyes closed, reality mixed with dreaming, the inexplicability of everything in a deaf man's glance." (Louis Aragon Open Letter to André Breton) "His theatre is a world of its own" (Heiner Müller)

Through 25 interviews with prominent figures in the performing and visual arts worlds, this is a complete and revelatory portrait of Robert Wilson and his inspired craft. Robert Wilson has put his original stamp on masterpieces from Mozarts The Magic Flute and Puccinis Madame Butterfly to William Shakespeares sonnets. Through his extraordinary use of light and his understanding of the significance of language in theater and the importance of movement on stage, gleaned from his experience as a dancer, Wilson has become one of the worlds most esteemed and revolutionary figures working in theater today. Wilson is well-known for pushing the boundaries of theater, and has won over sixty awards and honors for his work, including a nomination for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, an Obie, two Guggenheim Fellowship awards and the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement. A critical text features interviews with twenty-five world-renowned artists, composers, actors, writers, theater directors, costume designers, scenographers, scholars, and curators who offer their perspectives on Wilsons work and on working with Wilson. The artist and his craft are elucidated by Marina Abramovic, Pierre Bergé, Daniel Conrad, Giuseppe Frigeni, Gao Xingjian, Philip Glass, Sacha Goldman, Jonathan Harvey, Isabelle Huppert, Ivan Nagel, John Rockwell, Viktor & Rolf, Serge von Arx, Rufus Wainwright, and Robert Wilson himself. His creative development is further documented through images chosen by the artist for this publication, and a list of his complete works completes the monograph. This book celebrates the singular achievements of this unique artist, from his earliest works to his collaborations with the Berliner Ensemble to his most recent work, The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic.

The three plays collected in The Theatre of Images challenge the conventional understanding of performance. In Pandering to the Masses: A Misrepresentation, Richard Foreman, a philosopher as well as a playwright, creates a reality on stage that reflects his own reality - focusing on familiar, everyday events with the addition of recorded voice and projected image. A Letter for Queen Victoria, by Robert Wilson, is an opera without singers. Verbal declamations take the place of arias, creating a spectacle without narrative structure through tableaux and gesture. Represented in comic-book form, The Red Horse Animation demonstrates the play's reliance on cinematic techniques in its composition. It is what author Lee Breuer calls "caption literature", a radical alternative drama documenting the conception of dramatic work. With introductory essays by Bonnie Marranca, this reissue of The Theatre of Images brings back to print one of the most influential books on the American avant-garde in the last two decades.