Robert Wilson and his Postmodernist Theater
Robert Wilson, born in Wacker, Texas, USA, is an internationally renowned American theater director and stage designer.
First of all, I am a student of the Department of Drama, because my main research direction is traditional Chinese opera, so Robert Wilson’s new western theater creation mode that is contrary to the structure of traditional Chinese drama has no effect on the knowledge structure I originally accepted. The impact was huge, and it wasn’t even just a difference between Eastern and Western cultures, but a break in the drama creation model, which is why I got to know it deeply.
His most famous play is “Einstein on the Beach”, which is regarded as a representative play of postmodernism.
The whole play is divided into four acts and five connecting singing and dancing performances. There are three main scenes: a train (Einstein was born in the era of steam locomotives); a court and a prison; a spaceship ( Einstein’s inventions ushered in the space age). The whole play lasts four and a half hours without intermission.
Wilson’s signature stage vocabulary and performance techniques: slow stage rhythm, strong audio-visual elements, depreciating emotional factors, repetitive mechanical movements, and spectacular scenes filled with various fragmentary images. During the performance, a row of old-fashioned steam locomotives made of two-dimensional planes appeared many times, which was a product of the mechanical revolution era; at the end, a wonderful image of flashing lights inside the spaceship was displayed, implying the arrival of an era of space travel. Trains, spaceships, “Einstein suits” composed of off-white shirts and loose suspenders, and the image of old Einstein… The director abandoned the traditional narrative mode, and used the combination of many scattered visual images to trigger the audience’s imagination Einstein’s life and the times in which he lived.
In “Einstein on the Beach”, there is no beach, no Einstein, no storyline, no distinctive characters, no dramatic conflicts… there are only lines or clichés that do not make sense, and what the chorus sings repeatedly is Numbers (one, two, three, four…) and musical notes (do, re, mi…) without lyrics, slow or dizzying lighting changes, space division and scene juxtaposition… so-called Einstein, There is only a violinist wearing suspenders and makeup as an old Einstein sitting on the elevated part of the orchestra pit; the so-called beach is just a conch shell placed on the right side of the empty table. Robert. Wilson called Einstein on the Beach an opera. He said: “My opera is simpler than “Madama Butterfly”. You don’t have to think about the story, because there is no story. You don’t have to listen to the language, because the language doesn’t mean anything. You just enjoy the scene, the architecture of time and space. The structure, the music, and the feelings they evoke. Just look at the picture.”
Commentators like to call “Einstein on the Beach” a minimalist theater (Minimalist theater), that is, the dialogue, action, and drama are reduced to the minimum and minimum during the stage performance. In fact, “Einstein on the Beach” has lines but no dialogue, its lines are just incoherent words, like music or noise, which have no narrative function at all; Gestures, movements, displacements, as if directed by mysterious forces, without motive, without purpose, without relation; drama is not minimized, but there is no drama at all, the performers do not play roles, their actions on stage Activities are just a juxtaposition of non-meaningful spaces, and there is no conflict, conflict or connection between them. “Einstein on the Beach” subverts the narrative and performance principles of traditional dramas and most modern dramas in almost all aspects.