Visionary of Theater (1994-7) is a multimedia exploration of theater artist Robert Wilson’s early work, which exhumes vanished performances of the late 60s and early 70s through an active interrogation of the archive and of participants’ memories.

My exploration focused on two main strands of this ground-breaking theater: staging and movement. For staging, for example, I had Wilson draw the unfolding stage picture of several key plays, including Deafman Glance (as seen in the clip above).

The most challenging act of recovery from oblivion was of the seven day play KA MOUNTAIN . Here I had Wilson draw the structure of the work, and I then tied this drawn performance to the surviving bits of video, photographs, notes, letters, and drawings I tracked down in the archive. It’s great to be able to show the full 7-minute quicktime clip here online.

For movement, I asked Wilson to illustrate his key principles by performing them in a series of demonstrations that concisely conveys the essence of his directorial approach. These can be seen in the full series of clips here. In other section, I show the movement principles in context in Wilson’s early solos and in his collaborations with such figures as Cindy Lubar, Christopher Knowles, Andy deGroat, Lucinda Childs, and others.

Visionary is now available as a CD-ROM at the New York Library for the Performing Arts.

Theatre of drawings

Theatre of drawings was an exhibit of early Wilson drawings and sculptures that I co-curated with Brooke Hodge at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. It included video and audio excerpts from Visionary of Theater , and its catalog included my short essay on visual motifs in Wilson’s work.