Through sheer physical effort, one moves beyond the passive contemplation of an image, beyond the estheticizing charm of his friezes. Time is presented to the spectator as a key for entering Wilson’s theater. Yes, there is an image, but it must be lighted by time in order for it to be perceived. Wilson divides space into moments, not segments, and the length of the stage can be measured in hours rather than feet. This infinitesimal fragmentation of space offered a clear demonstration of the paradox of Zeno of Elea, whereby the distance between two points seems unending. Meanwhile, in front, along the first scrim, an endless procession of old people took an entire hour to cross the stage, seemingly congealed within a static frame due to their imperceptible movements.
Then there was the skeletal outline of a dinosaur through which one could glimpse the fiery crater of a volcano rising up along with the backdrop on which it was painted, and, in mid air, the outline of a deer which very slowly advanced. One was gripped by the gradual closing off of the stage achieved by the manipulation of transparent scrims at an almost unimaginably slow pace. These were impressed in one’s memory by the emotions aroused by the revelations of the stage, with its arrangement of horizontal strips, a lake at the center, and, to the left, a gilded and autumnal forest of birches skillfully illuminated and suspended in the air. With the 1972 Paris production of Overture (premiered earlier that year in New York), which lasted 24 hours and was devoid of truly theatrical action, it was the first and last hours that stayed in one’s mind. But Wilson’s push was to stretch the visual it was a recuperation of the grand deliriums of the Surrealist painters, basing dramatic narrative on a simple sequence of backdrops and the unfolding of a tableau vivant, immobile yet in continuous and unstoppable evolution. This was because he came into the public eye at the beginning of the ’70s, when the figurative gesture ruled supreme on the stage, and the body, in its expressive entirety, was at the center of a tendency to involve the spectator. Wilson was understood as a proponent of two-dimensional theater, of theater to be looked at only. WHEN ROBERT WILSON’S WORK first appeared internationally it was generally seen from a single and limited viewpoint-as a return to the image.
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