Robert Wilson was born on 4 October in 1941. He is one of the world’s leading theatre and visual artists. His stage works unconventionally combine a variety of artistic media including dance, movement, lighting, sculpture, music and text. His work is aesthetically striking and his performances have earned acclaim from audiences and critics around the world. After the education at the University of Texas and Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute, Wilson founded the New York-based performance collective “The Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds” in the mid-1950s and created his first major original works, including “Deafman Glance” and “A Letter for Queen Victoria” and the seminal opera “Einstein on the Beach” he wrote with Philip Glass. Wilson’s artistic collaborators include many writers and musicians such as Heiner Müller, Tom Waits, Susan Sontag, Laurie Anderson, William Burroughs, Lou Reed, Jessye Norman and Anna Calvi. Wilson is the founder and artistic director of the Watermill Center, an arts laboratory in New York.

Photo by Lucie Jansch

Interview with the director