The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets

A unique collaboration between three of the most lauded artists of the 20th century–beat-poet legend William Burroughs, Grammy winning composer Tom Waits, and groundbreaking theatre director Robert Wilson–The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets is a bold and deeply funny re-imagining of a 19th century folk tale about a clerk who makes a Faustian pact with the devil, accepting magic bullets in order to win the hand of his beloved in a shooting contest. But in the madcap and Expressionist-influenced world of The Black Rider, nothing is what it seems: the devil sings, animals talk, the walls become woods, and bullet have minds of their own.

15 years after their original production for Hamburg’s Thalia Theater, Wilson and Waits remount this visually stunning and grandly comic tale in its first English language version. A world-renowned artist celebrated for his unconventional, multidisciplinary theater works, the multiple-award winning Wilson’s best-known works include Einstein on the Beach, a collaboration with composer Philip Glass remembered for challenging the typical perceptions of opera as an art form. A.C.T.’s presentation of The Black Rider a coproduction with Cultural Industry (the creators of Shockheaded Peter) and London’s Barbican Theatre, featuring a cast headed by chanteuse/muse Marianne Faithfull, The Black Rider was heralded by Time Magazine as “marvelously unclassifiable–a triumph!”