Robert Wilson Lucinda Childs

I was sitting on my patio… marks a turning point. Robert Wilson staged it in 1977, barely a year after the haunting energy of Einstein on the Beach. It is a monologue, void of any apparent drama or tragedy of its own, consisting of a random flow of association of ideas that spills out onto the confines of a bare black and white set, accompanied by angular movements which become increasingly feverish. This verbal zapping, first articulated by Robert Wilson himself in a distraught, frantic outpouring was then handed over to Lucinda Childs, who replayed it in identical fashion, imbibing it with an expression deep-seated, inner breakdown. What strikes us about the piece is its clinical minimalism, and the formal austerity at work via the prism of its contradictions. Nothing actually happens – and there is certainly nothing to be seen of this “this guy” made reference to in the title, and in the opening words of the text. Everything happens and then happens again, in the body of a different person. And, rather like a merry-go-round, will go on happening