Seite 141 [141]
ON BEARING WITNESS TO A POETIC RITUAL
While Schechner, for instance, actively used rites as elements (in the an¬
thropological sense)" in his experimental theater, Wilson created a guasi-ritual
in the Overture to Deafman Glance — a child sacrifice taken out of its original
context and performed as theater. According to Schechner, the rite and the
theater vary only in their context, not in their basic structure. It is also possible
— and we can agree that the idea seems persuasive — that the rite originates
in the theater, if, and only if, these rites are connected to real social structures
outside the theater."
WILSON’S MURDER SCENE AS SEEN BY JÁNOS PILINSZKY
1he early Wilson Archives at Columbia contain only a non-professional re¬
cording of the Iowa production of Deafman Glance. Wilsons actor Stephan
Brecht (Bertolt Brecht’s son) wrote a book about the Brooklyn performance of
Deafman Glance.’* In this version, the ritual murder takes place as an overture
to the performance, while at the Paris performance seen by the Hungarian
poet Pilinszky, the murder was committed in the third act. This scene was
sometimes performed by Wilson himself, sometimes together with Sheryl Sut¬
ton — Sutton in black and white — with black and white boys and girls. In his
book Conversations with Sheryl Sutton, Pilinszky gives a poetic description of
the performance, including a description of this scene in chapter eight:
10 Inthe play Dionysus in 69, he borrows the birth rite from the West Iranian Asmat; The Living
Theatre’s Mysteries and Smaller Pieces and Paradise Now use elements of yoga and the Indian
theater as well, while Philip Glass’s music — the American composer has worked with Robert
Wilson on a few projects — is inspired by the gamelan and the Indian raga. To the present
day, these rites continue to travel around Europe, which generates a situation of theatrical
reception (e.g., Whirling Dervishes).
Schechner: Performance Theory, 138.
12 Stephan Brecht: L’Art de Robert Wilson (Le Regard du sourd), trans. Francoise Gaillard, Paris,
Christian Bourgois, Le Theätre, 1972/1; Brecht: The Theatre of Visions: Robert Wilson, Frank¬
furt a. M., Suhrkamp, 1978.
* 139 ¢