Robert Wilson's: Einstein on the Beach

Extract

The world premiere of Robert Wilson's latest work, Einstein On the Beach, took place July 25 under the auspices of the Festival d'Avignon before beginning a tour that included performances at the Festival d'Automne, Paris. According to Wilson, what distinguishes this piece from his others is, in the first place, his strong collaboration with other artists, specifically with musician Phil Glass and with choreographer Andrew de Groat. In the second place, there is his fusion of rich visual imagery, characteristic of The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin [T62], with formal and rigid structure, characteristic of A Letter for Queen Victoria. What triggered that fusion was the subject itself, Albert Einstein, a mathematician but at the same time a dreamer; for Wilson, he was one of the three most influential figures of our time (the other two: Adolf Hitler and Charlie Chaplin).