Cold, warm, cold, warm – why Robert Wilson’s theater attracts and repels us

WHow should one grasp such a theatre? Should we go back to the light that falls so precisely on the faces that they seem to be illuminated by an inner spirit? Should one describe the theme, the various threads and fragments of thought in a collage evening about space and time, loosely inspired by the life and thinking of astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and the texts and imagery of Lebanese author Etel Adnan? One could also start with the biographical process, as described in the program booklet by Thalia director and production dramaturge Joachim Lux: how Wilson wants to return to the Hanseatic city thirty years after his Hamburg global success “The Black Rider”, how he wants to return to a subject is looking to tie in with its origins in the New York avant-garde of the 1970s and 1980s, and in the midst of the pandemic the artistic director’s gaze falls on a Christmas present from his daughter – Stephen Hawking’s book “Brief Answers to the Big Questions”. After a while, when asked if this could be material for Wilson, the Texan, who just turned eighty, allegedly replies: “Why not?”

Let’s leave technology, theme and theater history aside for now and try to do justice to this art event in a different way. As is so often the case with Wilson, during this performance one thinks less about the material and what is communicated than about artistic standards and aesthetic reality. What is it, the constant question is, that draws you in and leaves you cold at the same time about Robert Wilson’s theatre?

Three attempts to answer, three paradoxes

First: the arrangement. From the initial deafening bang, from the first white-painted grimace, one is enraptured by Wilson’s unconditional will to form. The aesthetic universal program that is strictly staged here. “Dream world” is often said about it, but Wilson’s pictures are actually too mathematical, too precise. Nothing unexpected, nothing wild has its portrayed game. The anti-naturalistic affect nips everything dreamy and chaotic in the bud. The intention to achieve a formal effect is paramount, leaving its traces in the gaping mouths and the spread fingers of the actors. On the one hand, this is exciting, because one rarely sees such absoluteness in the theater, but on the other hand, every subsequent image raises new doubts as to whether the whole thing could not also be a hopelessly over-orchestrated attempt at overpowering.

Second: unreasonableness. Wilson’s basic anti-rational impulse must be defended per se against all criticism. Not to come from the didactic, but from amazement, to think of the theater not from the seminar room, but from the circus or fair – that was and is of great value, especially in our unimaginative theater days. However, sometimes the effect wins over the thought. As sympathetic as Wilson’s identification with the naïve children’s question is, it is often used strategically so that the production process is not disturbed by instances outside of Wilson’s world.

This goes hand in hand with a third factor: unconditionality. Wilson’s theater has no right of veto of the sources. The text is completely subordinate to the events, the thoughts come and go as it suits the visual dramaturgy best. On this evening in Hamburg, big statements are made next to irrelevant half-truths. In one breath there is mysterious talk of “the square as the passion of the circle” and in the next quite banal of “a time when children are only born for wars”.