Arena — Season 1, Episode 250: The Theatre of Robert Wilson
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Robert Wilson is one of the most revered and controversial talents in contemporary theatre. He first came to prominence in the New York avant garde of the 60s and 70s with a series of huge stage works which astonished and often infuriated audiences, but never failed to impress with their invention and sheer visual power. After seeing Wilson's first major work, Deafman Glance, the leading New York drama critic Clive Barnes declared that he had created 'a new non-verbal, post Wagnerian epic theatre.' Tonight, in the first of two Arena programmes, Wilson talks candidly about his formal upbringing in the American mid-west; his job as a teacher of brain-damaged children in Brooklyn - an experience that changed his life - and about the inspiration behind his extraordinary theatre pieces. Including rare footage from Robert Wilson 's personal archive and contributions from collaborators Philip Glass.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.