UBU: A Radio Play Version

Last fall, the Es Baluard Museum in Palma de Mallorca presented Robert Wilson’s work UBU, which was inspired by Alfred Jarry’s drama Ubu Roi, a 1896 grotesque about tyranny, greed and abuse of power. In preparation of the presentation of the work at the co-producing Kunstfest Weimar this coming August, Wilson developed a radio play on UBU for the German radio station Deutschlandfunk Kultur, starring actress and long-time Wilson collaborator Angela Winkler. The first public broadcast will be on May 21, 2023, and the work will also be available online and in Deutschlandfunk’s podcast collection. More information here.

Angela Winkler and Robert Wilson at the Deutschlandfunk’s recording studio.(Photographs © Deutschlandradio / Gerald Michel)

It's Official: Three Tall Women in Piraeus

A few days ago, the Municipal Theater of Piraeus, the port city for Greater Athens, announced that Bob Wilson will direct Edward Albee’s play Three Tall Women there. Wilson himself has described the project as “a real challenge. It is completely different from anything that I have done in my career, a play that is written naturalistically with a lot of chit-chat.” He has started rehearsing with a stellar cast that includes the acclaimed Greek actresses Reni Pittaki, Karofillia Karabeti and Loukia Michalopoulou. The production will open this coming November in Piraeus.

Loukia Michalopoulou, Charles Chemin, Robert Wilson, Karofillia Karabeti, Reni Pittaki

Sound art in Sainte-Chapelle: "Gloria" by Robert Wilson

For their series “Carte Blanche à…,” the Centre des monuments nationaux, the French federal agency that manages almost 100 national monuments across the country, commissioned Robert Wilson to create an artwork in celebration of Sainte-Chapelle. The iconic cathedral in the heart of Paris inspired an immersive 360° sound installation with music by Richard “Dickie” Landry. The work consists of fifteen speakers, positioned at various locations within the church. Wilson’s "secular mass," in which a child, a woman and a man respond to each other with short excerpts from "De Rerum Natura" by the Latin philosopher Lucretius, will occupy and structure the space in a new way, with the voices and Dickie Landry’s beautiful music resonating in the space of the upper chapel. Gloria echoes the stained glass windows of Sainte Chapelle: the birth of the world, the course of the sun, the soul, the body, the void, and the relationship of humans to the universe, to nature.

Gloria runs Saturdays and Sundays from October 8 through December 31, 2022. Since the number of people inside the church is limited, visitors must pre-book a time slot (9:30 AM, 10:30 AM, 12:30 PM, 1:30 PM, 2:30 PM, or 4 PM) for an approximately 30-minute session.

For more information and tickets, please click here.