In 1984, Robert Wilson is at work on an opera project about the American Civil War, to premiere at the opening of the Los Angeles Olympic Games. This monstrously ambitious project, co-produced between the USA, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Japan, is threatened by financing difficulties. Howard Brookner follows Wilson from one city to the next and gives us a portrait of the artist at work by weaving together multiple approaches: a tale of origins, interviews with friends, collaborators, and Wilson himself, scenes of rehearsals or financial negotiations, recordings of previous shows retracing his work. Theatrical cultures are telescoped, discourses about Wilson are confronted with his own. Rather than the secret to a method or the story of a career, the exploration of an ambition, of tools and constraints.
Nathan Letoré