Robert Wilson-Fred Newman Dialogue

Robert Wilson is world-renowned as America’s foremost theatrical avant-gardist. He is a fascinatingly multifaceted artist whose training and early experiences in painting, therapy and architecture have flowered in his work as a director, choreographer, playwright, and designer. His numerous awards have included the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for lifetime achievement and the Golden Lion for Sculpture of the Venice Biennale; and in 1986 he was the sole nominee for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama.

Fred Newman is a multitalented and complex creative force. A Stanford-trained philosopher as well as a playwright, director, lyricist, and composer, he has won acclaim in the past 15 years for his politically provocative, philosophically charged, structurally unconventional plays and musicals. The theatre he has built, the Castillo Theatre, is part of a broad social experiment in human development. Newman has developed a therapeutic approach which is now recognized and practiced around the world; the impact of his work as a strategist in the arena of independent politics has been felt as nearby as City Hall.

A common interest of these two very different risk-takers is the work of the late avant-garde German playwright Heiner Müller, with whom both have had a long collaborative history. Wilson worked with Müller on the text for the CIVIL warS (1984) and directed several of his premieres here and in Europe. Newman has directed five of Müller’s plays; most recently the American premiere of his last play, Germania 3 Ghosts at Dead Man (2001).

Don’t miss this dialogue between two of the most brilliant and controversial artists at work in the theatre today.