Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson (1941–2025), born in Waco (Texas, USA), is one of the world’s most significant theatre makers and visual artists. In his interdisciplinary stage works, he combined dance, movement, lighting, sculpture, music and text to create visually striking and emotionally intense productions.

Wilson initially studied business administration in Texas and later architecture at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. In the mid-1960s, he founded the performance collective The Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds, based in a New York warehouse. There he developed his first signature works, such as Deafman Glance (1970), a seven-hour Silent Opera. The dancer Byrd Hoffman had helped Wilson overcome his stammer. In 1992, Wilson founded the visionary Watermill Center, an interdisciplinary arts laboratory.

Throughout his career, Wilson has collaborated with artists such as Heiner Müller, Tom Waits, Susan Sontag, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Jessye Norman and Anna Calvi, and has directed masterpieces including Goethe’s Faust, Homer’s Odyssey, Verdi’s La Traviata, and several plays by Shakespeare. In collaboration with the composer Philip Glass, he created the avant-garde opera Einstein on the Beach (1976). Wilson’s awards include a Pulitzer Prize nomination, the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, an Olivier Award and the Japanese cultural prize Praemium Imperiale.

The Vienna Festival (Wiener Festwochen) has featured, among others, Wilson’s productions of The Black Rider (1990) and Mary Said What She Said (2019). The Tempest is now one of his final works to be seen at Festwochen. Robert Wilson passed away on 31 July 2025.