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3 unusual facts about Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars


Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars

Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars is a 1987 documentary by Howard Brookner about Robert Wilson’s ambitious attempt to stage an epic, twelve-hour, multinational opera for the 1984 Summer Olympics.

Like Howard Brookner’s earlier film Burroughs: The Movie, Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars features unique access to its subject, as well as an impressive host of interviewees, including Wilson’s long-term composer Phillip Glass, Heiner Müller, Lucinda Childs, Sheryl Sutton, Ingrid Andree, Bénédicte Pesle, Gavin Bryars, Michel Guy, Isabel Eberstadt and Christopher Knowles.

The film examines Wilson’s unique theatrical style during The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down, which involves the continual creation of evocative stage sets, owing to a unique juxtaposition of movement, sound, text and image.



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