ROBERT WILSON : THE THEATER OF TIMELESSNESS

At first glance, Robert Wilson would not appear to be the one of the leading avant-garde figures on the American cultural scene.

On the cutting edge or not, Wilson’s primary influences are in the classics.

“You know, the avant-garde is rediscovering the classics. I’ve always been attracted to classic patterns in architecture, music and drama. So we’ll have this Baroque, noble music, with the singers acting in stylized classic way. I wanted the presentation to be formal. That’s why I asked Suzushi Hanayagi to choreograph the opera.”

In fact, Wilson, now 42, said he has been strongly drawn to the Japanese style, in theater, dance, food and fashion. And he prefers actors and singers to accept his formalized directing instructions.

Tall, close-cropped and Texan, Wilson was giving low-key but assured directions on a recent morning in the rehearsal loft of the Stuttgart Opera Company.

Clad in casual sweater and slacks, he was relaxed and forthright speaking about his complex works, which have been praised as masterpieces and damned as unbearably boring, running as they do to many hours on the stage.

Wilson, who came to the theater via the University of Texas and the Pratt Institute of Architecture in Brooklyn, is today an artist, designer, director, actor and writer--whose work is perhaps more accepted in Europe than America.

Having shown the soprano and the tenor how he wants them to move upstage in Christoph Gluck’s 18th-Century opera “Alceste,” Wilson took a break, and explained over a piece of fish and glass of wine, “I’m designing, directing and lighting this production--after thinking about it for a couple of years.”

The production, which received rapturous acclaim from the first-night audience, was done in Wilson’s austere interpretation of the classic tradition. “ ‘Alceste’ is a story about a queen who gives up her life for a king. I want to illustrate the text with abstract gestures. The performer says, ‘I can’t do this, it’s not natural.’ I say, ‘No, it is natural. It’s classic.’ That’s why I can work more easily with older European actors who haven’t been trained in the Method School, where they keep asking, ‘What’s my motivation?’

“That’s why I like vaudevillians, like Jack Benny and George Burns: They repeated their same gestures and movements but their timing was superb, it was everything.

“That’s why I think David Byrne is so great: By repeating your gestures, you actually set yourself free. He’s a kind of Renaissance man today.”

As a kind of Renaissance man himself, Wilson is a very busy artist. He glanced at his calendar and rattled off his schedule:

“I’ve got projects through 1992. Next is Berlin to stage a new work by a great East Germany playwright, Heiner Mueller, based on the life of Franz Kafka; I’ll write, stage direct and design.

“Then I’m in Rome for a section of ‘CIVIL WarS’ at the Academy of Music. After that, ‘Salome’ at La Scala in Milan.” He then begins a round of projects in Germany, including a film and an opera with David Byrne in Berlin, and a jazz opera in Hamburg. Following those, he’ll be involved with the staging of a ballet for New York City Ballet and then direct a production of “The Wasteland” in Boston.

“In 1988, I’m hoping to do ‘King Lear’ in Hamburg, a film on my ‘Einstein on the Beach,’ and a new opera with Philip Glass on the ‘Palace of the Arabian Nights.’ ”

If his schedule seems overwhelming, Wilson said almost apologetically, “I work all the time. But I read that Balanchine did 400 ballets in his life. How did he do it?”

When asked how he describes himself professionally, he said, “I’m an artist.”

Indeed, he carries a small sketchbook and is quick to produce designs with a soft drawing pencil for a production that he has in mind, or how he will light a stage.

“Light is very important,” he said. “It can determine the way you hear or see a performance.”

Wilson is best known for his long theatrical works--the five-hour “Einstein on the Beach,” and the 12-hour “CIVIL WarS” and “The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin.” Of their length, Wilson said, “I think that in my plays you can come in for 20 minutes and get something out of it. I’d like to do a play that would run for days. I don’t think time is that important. Nature doesn’t hurry the sky, the changing clouds and sunsets. My theater is visual.”

As for those who have influenced him, Wilson said in no particular order: “Samuel Beckett, (dance critic) Edwin Denby, Kafka, Eliott Paul, George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, John Cage, Jerome Robbins, Heiner Mueller, Goethe and, of course, Shakespeare.

“That’s why I’m looking forward to doing Lear. What is so marvelous about it, is its richness and mystery. So many different ways to read it. Shakespeare never tells you what it is. He asks a question: What is it?”

Wilson is against the trend toward naturalism in theater and cinema.

“Naturalism is not interesting because it kills the mystery,” he said.

That explains perhaps why he prefers Chaplin and Keaton silent movies to current fare, radio to television, and has not been impressed by any contemporary movies or television offerings.

“I like to use my imagination,” he said.

Similarly, Wilson is more interested in the visual aspects of the stage than the intellectual side. “When works get too intellectual, they lose their intensity,” he explained.

Wilson says he is not directly interested in politics, but rather in people, whether in Brazil or New York. “In my theater,” he said, “I’m not trying to change the world. I’m trying to reflect the world and ask questions of the audience.”

Despite his worldwide schedule, he has not become a professional expatriate. One of his most enduring influences is his American roots. “I carry the state of Texas in my head,” he said, sipping a brandy with coffee before returning to rehearsal. “That space is in all my work.”