A Letter to Bob Wilson

Dear Bob,

Innumerable times have I typed those seven letters on the keyboard, starting an email to you regarding an ongoing project, a debate, asking a question or letting you know how my family was doing. The first note though I wrote by hand, about 28 years ago, sitting in a small office in Zurich, my hometown where I am writing these lines as well. Just having finished my architecture studies, I wanted to widen my artistic and tactile horizons, weaving narratives into architectural space. I reached out to you to figure out if there was an opportunity to collaborate; all the text, including my CV, was meant to fit onto one piece of paper to be faxed, as I had heard the rumor that you would not read more than one page. Subsequently, the most mesmerizing, enlightening, and profound journey of my life began!

I barely knew your work at that time and after finally talking to you for a few minutes in Bobigny, in the suburbs of Paris, where I worked with an exhibition designer and you were developing Wings on Rock, you invited me to the Summer Program in the Watermill Center. I read the letter Louis Aragon wrote to his deceased friend André Breton in 1971 after having seen the performance of a Deafman Glance in Paris which had changed your career. I dug into your creations, explorations, and contexts, to slowly discover the power of abstraction which also means giving space to others, bodily intelligence and foremost the deep dedication to work and humbleness towards all human beings. There it all started – my professional life, my career, my identity within the arts, and my precariously yet steadily searching self. But this letter is not about me. Is this the last time I will write Dear Bob? You taught us that theatre does not start nor stop; it is a distinct moment, borrowed from an endless timeline. Our existences are the same. They do not stop when our heart stops beating. They continue, like an actor exiting the stage, either leaving her or his presence there, or taking it off-stage. Your presence still is very much here and will be so forever. So, there is no need for a farewell letter, everything you can think of is true, you are still with us.

So I experienced the Watermill Center for the first time in 1998, not knowing then that it would become like a second home to me, where I, until the pandemic, returned to every summer to tackle new projects with you and to help unfold the Center for which we sketched all furniture together, including the open stage in the woods, with the two tall trees being spared out, growing through it, and which is the most beautiful place on earth. The Watermill Center is a refuge, an incubator and place for being together – all at once, where one can strip all prejudice, social, cultural bias and all categories society commonly asks you to identify within. Just having finished my architecture education I did not know much about the back- and side-stages in theatre. In the community of Watermill, I began to acquire knowledge from your generous collaborators, and you gave me the chance to gain active insight into your world of wonders, for the first time, at the Thalia Theater. So, I moved to Hamburg for our first collaboration, where I also met my wife Nina on the first day of arrival. And from Hamburg the journey kept expanding and took me to theatres, museums, galleries, opera houses, and public spaces in Athens, Krakow, Berlin, Prague, Madrid, New York, Milan, London, Barcelona, Warsaw, Tokyo, Moscow, Shanghai, Helsinki, Geneva, Tallinn, Baden-Baden, Rome, Düsseldorf, and to Oslo und Bergen. There have been so many explorations, investigations, interventions, and activations.

With Peer Gynt at the Norske Teatret in 2005 I got to know Norway for the first time, and I remember well when we walked on Behrenstrasse towards the Staatsoper Berlin and I asked you what you thought of me moving to Norway to work at the Norwegian Theatre Academy (NTA) where you had given a lecture. A special silence followed and then you encouraged me to do so. Soon a whole new universe opened with the many students you involved in workshops and projects, your visits to NTA, the tight connection between the Academy and the Watermill Center. All began to make much more sense as the dialogue between architecture and theatre which lies at the root of your conception of things would stretch across generations and cultures. After the many years working with you, I found myself in a kind of a bubble I only became aware of within the open, critically investigative artistic context of NTA. But instantly I had to acknowledge that of the many highly diverse guest artists we have invited to NTA, there was not a single one who did not relate to your contribution to the arts. All my 19 years at the Academy, which now has been decided gradually to disintegrate – hopefully not into oblivion but into a legacy – I felt that every single activity I had undertaken there bore your spirit. But what is true does not end, it merely changes its state.

Parallel to my intense work with you, Nina’s and my three wonderful kids were born and gradually could follow our productions, often being invited to join development periods and seeing the final creation. Our first son saw Prometheus in Athens when he was less than one year old. You had organized a special seat in the audience where I could easily leave in case he would be crying. Your immediate curiosity after an opening night was whether our kids liked the show, as if they did not, then something must be wrong with it. And I believe there lies the core of all your work. It is all about being a kid, its curiosity and how not to lose it when growing up. You worked with homeless kids in NY before finding yourself as an artist. Was your striving a constant search for childhood? The Bugs Bunny from Texas as you often laughingly called yourself after a long day of rehearsal or other preparation, being it at the Berliner Ensemble, the Guggenheim Museum New York or the Teatro alla Scala! In finding that child in you lies the key to everything. It appears like a huge life arch, from working with brain-damaged children, supporting and adopting Raymond Andrews in New York in 1968 to your latest email you sent me the day after this year’s Watermill Summer Benefit, about your exhibition of children’s art Upside Down Zebra, less than a week ago. I can witness profound honesty and integrity in all your endeavors, beyond working with the most acclaimed artists and professionals from all over the world, which I felt at times evoked skepticism in younger generations. The real interest and true goal resided in maintaining the simplest, most human nature, being borne in our bodies when unbiased by our intellect, remembering what you consistently refer to as the origin of your artistic efforts, Daniel Stern’s study at Columbia University and that the body reacts faster than the brain. You invoke a pure form of humanism through the arts.

Of everything you shared with me, two things constantly kept echoing, which I also keep repeating for others and my own work: the importance of learning how to listen and to collaborate. The twosome moments when time seemed to have vanished, or rather sculpted, as in your words 'time has no concept', those moments of intense silence, making charcoal-, or pastel-, pencil- or even watercolor-drawings reverberate as the most special sensations of our friendship. Beyond the busy rehearsal operations in vast teams in theatres or museums with all the organizational noise, those calm joint activities in silence momentarily fused work, creation and art kinship in a space of mental unity.

Bob, I am sorry for this long email which you do not like, I know. I will be briefer again in the future. Thank you for all the traces you left with us, and I will keep navigating the bark with all our joint memories to new grounds and territories, to meet them with openness. I will send you updates, please let me know what you think. As usual. And please forgive me for being so talkative in the park in Baden-Baden, some years ago, instead of fully focusing on my senses witnessing nature!

Love always, Serge