Robert Wilson: The Outtakes

I mentioned in a previous post that my favorite material from the round table discussion I participated in last week with avant garde theatre director Robert Wilson couldn’t be threaded into my review of Absolute Wilson. Today I showcase a clip from that dialogue. Says Wilson,

It's still a challenge to direct”¦right now I'm directing Bach's Passion of St. John”¦and it's a work that was not meant to be staged. The music is incredibly beautiful, and probably it should not be staged. Because almost anything you do disturbs the music, this great music”¦If you try to act it, run around the stage a lot, it's better to close your eyes and just listen to the music. It's very difficult to direct for me because it requires the singer, the performer to have a great power in stillness…there's no training for it”¦

Now, I’m not going to lie about this; I’m not any more interested in watching Bach’s Passion of St. John now that I know it’s going to be a bunch of standing around, (which is not exactly unheard of in Wilson’s productions) but it’s nice to know he’s trying to figure out how to make that work. The fact that he finds it hard is, well, not surprising.