Robert Wilson, born in Waco, Texas, Wilson is among the world’s foremost theater and visual artists. His works for the stage unconventionally integrate a wide variety of artistic media, including dance, movement, lighting, sculpture, music and text. His images are aesthetically striking and emotionally charged, and his productions have earned the acclaim of audiences and critics worldwide. After being educated 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-1960s, and developed his first signature works. With Philip Glass he wrote the seminal opera Einstein on the Beach (1976). He has also left his imprint on masterworks such as Krapp’s Last Tape, Threepenny Opera, Pelléas et Melisande, Faust, Homer’s Odyssey, Madama Butterfly, La Traviata and Sophocles’s Oedipus. Wilson's drawings, paintings and sculptures have been presented around the world in hundreds of solo and group showings, and his works are held in private collections and museums throughout the world. Wilson has been honored with numerous awards for excellence, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination, two Premio Ubu awards, the Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale, and an Olivier Award. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the German Academy of the Arts, and holds 8 Honorary Doctorate degrees. France pronounced him Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters (2003) and Officer of the Legion of Honor (2014); Germany awarded him the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit (2014). Wilson is the founder and Artistic Director of The Watermill Center, a laboratory for the Arts in Water Mill, New York.
Darryl Pinckney was educated at Columbia University and is a former Hodder Fellow at Princeton University. He previously wrote texts for Robert Wilson's productions of The Forest, Orlando, Time Rocker, The Old Woman, Garrincha: A Musical from the Streets, and Letter to a Man. His first novel High Cotton was published in 1992 and was awarded the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. He has since published another work of fiction Black Deutschland and two works of non-fiction Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature (as Alain Locke Lecture Series), and Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy. He is a long-time contributor to the New York Review of books and his work has appeared in anthologies and a number of periodicals including Granta, Index on Censorship, The New Yorker, TLS, Vanity Fair, The Village Voice and Vogue. Pinckney has taught in the Afro American Studies and English at Harvard, Yale, The New School, and in the School of the Arts at Columbia. He is currently Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University. He is a recipient of grants from the Whiting and Guggenheim foundations. In 1994 he received the Harold D. Vursell Award for Distinguished Prose from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 2013 an Award in Literature, also from the Academy of Arts and Letters. Busted in New York and Other Essays will be published in the fall.
Isabelle Huppert gained early recognition for her cinematic roles as in Bertrand Blier’s Les valseuses (Going Places) and Bertrand Tavernier’s Le juge et l’assassin (The Judge and the Assassin). Her collaboration with Claude Chabrol gave her the opportunity to act in many different genres: comedy (Rien ne va plus, Eng. The Swindle), drama (Une affaire de femmes, Eng. Story of Women), film noir (Merci pour le chocolat), literary adaptations (Madame Bovary), and even political fiction (L’ivresse du pouvoir, Eng. Comedy of Power). She was awarded a number of times as Best Actress at Cannes and Venice as well as for the César. In addition to having twice earned Best Actress at Cannes (also for Michael Haneke’s The Piano Teacher), Huppert has served as host, jury member, and, in 2009, Jury President of the prestigious festival. Parallel to her screen career, Isabelle Huppert performs on stages in France and internationally. She has acted under the direction of Bob Wilson (Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, Heiner Muller’s Quartett), Peter Zadek (Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure), and Claude Régy (Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis, Paul Claudel’s Joan of Arc at the Stake) and in many other international productions. She recently received an Honorary Molière Award for lifetime achievement and the 16th Europe Theatre Prize. For her performance in Paul Verhoeven’s Elle she won the César for Best Actress as well as the Best Actress award for the US Gotham Awards, Golden Globes, and Spirit Awards, including an Oscar nomination in the same category. Most recently, she has starred in Michael Haneke’s Happy End, Benoit Jacquot’s Eva, Hong Sang Soo’s Claire’s Camera, and Serge Bozon’s Madame Hyde, for which she received the Best Actress Award at the Locarno Film Festival. In France, Isabelle Huppert is an Officer of the National Order of the Legion of Honor, an Officer of the National Order of Merit, and a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.
© Lucie Jansch
© Lucie Jansch
© Lucie Jansch
© Lucie Jansch
© Robert Wilson