Robert Wilson
Robert Wilson
An American author, philosopher, psychologist, and essayist, he co-authored The Illuminatus! Trilogy with Robert Shea. His other popular works include Schrodinger's Cat (a novel) and Wilhelm Reich in Hell (a play).
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth18 January 1932
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
based work
My work is formal, not based on psychology.
brothers business college gave great grown insurance loved mother poor secretary time type worked
My mother was a great typist. She said she loved to type because it gave her time to think. She was a secretary for an insurance company. She was a poor girl; she'd grown up in an orphanage, and she went to a business college - and then worked to put her brothers through school.
downtown illusion movement theatrical work wrong york
At the end of the 1960s, I was part of the downtown theatrical movement in New York that was making work in alleyways, garages, gyms, churches, non-traditional spaces. The idea was to get away from the illusion of the conventional theatre. But then I thought, what's wrong with illusion?
compelling man performance says sit though visual
Usually in theater, the visual repeats the verbal. The visual dwindles into decoration. But I think with my eyes. For me, the visual is not an afterthought, not an illustration of the text. If it says the same thing as the words, why look? The visual must be so compelling that a deaf man would sit though the performance fascinated.
I never studied theatre; I learned it by doing it. If I had studied theatre, I would not be making the kind of theatre I am making.
fast life theater
My theater is slow and calm, yet my life is fast and hectic, going in all directions.
notice seen slow
If you slow things down, you notice things you hadn't seen before.
landscape texas work
The landscape of Texas is in all my work. It's that light; it's that sky.
interpret music served staging work
Everything in Wagner's work - the music, the acting, the staging - stemmed from the text. Everything served to interpret the text.
rehearsal start work
I start any work the same way. I start a rehearsal with silence.
shakespeare work
Christopher Knowles, Buechner, Heiner Mueller, Burroughs, Chekhov, Shakespeare - it's all one body of work.
nature work
I think it's just my nature. I can't work on one thing. I have to work on many things.
baroque both items maybe
If you take a Baroque commode and put a Baroque clock on top of it, maybe it is not so interesting as when you put a computer on top of it. Then you see both items in a new way.
broader material opera presented range
I think that opera in Europe is 30 years ahead of America. There is a broader range of material presented to the public. They value contemporary opera.