Robert Wilson
Born in Waco, Texas, Wilson was educated at the University of Texas and Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, where he took an interest in architecture and design. He studied painting with George McNeil in Paris and later worked with the architect Paolo Solari in Arizona. In 1969 two of Wilson's major productions appeared in New York City: The King of Spain at the Anderson Theater, and The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud, which premiered at the BAM.

In 1971 Wilson received international acclaim for Deafman Glance, a silent "opera".Wilson then went on to present numerous acclaimed productions throughout the world, including the seven-day play KA MOUNTain and GUARDenia Terrace in Shiraz, Iran in 1972; The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin, a twelve-hour silent opera performed in 1973 in New York, Europe, and South America; and A Letter for Queen Victoria in Europe and New York in 1974-1975. In 1976 Wilson joined with composer Philip Glass in writing the landmark work Einstein on the Beach, which was presented at the Festival d'Avignon and at New York's Metropolitan Opera House, and has since been revived in two world tours in 1984 and 1992.

After Einstein Wilson worked increasingly with European theaters and opera houses. His productions were frequently featured at the Festival d'Automne in Paris, the Schaubühne in Berlin, the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, and the Salzburg Festival, among many other venues. At the Schaubühne he created Death Destruction & Detroit (1979) and Death Destruction & Detroit II (1987); and at the Thalia he presented three groundbreaking musical works, The Black Rider (1991), Alice (1992), Time Rocker (1996), and POEtry (2000).

In the early 1980's Wilson developed what still stands as his most ambitious project: the multi-national epic the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down. Created in collaboration with an international group of artists, Wilson planned this opera as the centerpiece of the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles. Although the full epic was never seen in its entirety, individual parts have been produced in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Over the last two decades Wilson has brought his creativity to the standard dramatic and operatic repertoire. He has designed and directed operas at houses such as La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Opéra Bastille in Paris, the Zürich Opera, the Hamburg State Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the Houston Grand Opera. These include Wagner's Parsifal (Hamburg, 1991), Mozart's The Magic Flute (Paris, 1991-99), Wagner's Lohengrin (Zürich, 1991; New York, 1998), Puccini's Madame Butterfly (Paris, 1993-98), and Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande (Salzburg, 1997).  He has presented innovative adaptations of works by writers such as Virginia Woolf (Orlando, 1989, 1996), Henrik Ibsen (When We Dead Awaken, 1991), and Gertrude Stein (Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights, 1992; Four Saints in Three Acts, 1996; and Saints and Singing, 1997).

Wilson has collaborated with a number of internationally acclaimed artists, writers, and musicians. He worked closely with the late German playwright Heiner Müller on the Cologne section of the CIVIL warS (1984), Hamletmachine (1986), and Quartet (1987). With singer/song-writer Tom Waits, along with writer William S. Burroughs, Wilson created the highly successful production The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets (1991). With David Byrne, Wilson staged The Knee Plays from the CIVIL warS (1984), and later The Forest, in honor of the 750th anniversary of the city of Berlin (1988). He worked with poet Allen Ginsberg on Cosmopolitan Greetings (1988) and with performance artist Laurie Anderson on Wilson's adaptation of Euripides's Alcestis (1986). Writer Susan Sontag joined Wilson in creating Alice in Bed (1993), and together they developed a new work, Lady from the Sea (1998), performed by actress Dominique Sanda in an international tour. Wilson's long association with noted opera singer Jessye Norman began with Great Day in the Morning, presented in Paris in 1982, and will continue with a stage and video work based on the Schubert song cycle Winterreise. Recently Wilson collaborated with singer/song-writer Lou Reed on Time Rocker, which opened at Hamburg's Thalia Theater in June of 1996, and POEtry, 2000. His most recent collaboration with Tom Waits was an adaptation of Büchner's Woyzeck for Copenhagen's Betty Nansen Theater, which toured internationally.

A recipient of two Rockefeller and two Guggenheim fellowships, Wilson has been honored with numerous awards for excellence, including the Premio Abbiati from the Italian Music Critics Association, for Hanjo/Hagoromo in 1994 (awarded 1995); two Italian Premio Ubu awards (1994 and 1992) for Alice and Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights; the Golden Lion Award for Sculpture of the Venice Biennale (1993) for Memory/Loss; and the 1990 German Theater Critics Award for The Black Rider. He has been named a Lion of the Performing Arts by the New York Public Library; Texas Artist of the Year by the Art League of Houston; received an Institute Honor from The American Institute of Architects in New York City; honorary doctorates from the Pratt Institute and the California College of Arts and Crafts; an American Theatre Wing Design Award for Noteworthy Unusual Effects; a Bessie Award; an Obie Award for Direction; a Drama Desk Award for Direction; the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize for lifetime achievement in 1996; the Harvard Excellence in Design Award, 1998; the 2000 award for best foreign production, Union of French Theater Critics, for Dream Play; election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2000, and the National Design Award from the Smithsonian Institution in 2001. In 1986 Wilson was the sole nominee for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for the CIVIL warS.