Isabelle Huppert: "Bob Wilson's shows are like waking dreams"

“I’m lucky enough to be able to maintain a bond of trust with many people, but with Bob Wilson, it’s different. He expresses something with his body, his gaze; there is something about him, for those who are sensitive to it, an incredible power of attraction. He gives the impression of looking right through you, of reading you. We’ve known each other for… so long, and we maintain a mutual loyalty. He’s in his own world and I feel good with him.”

Last fall, in the middle of setting up his season in France, and as I was getting ready to rehearse Les Fausses Confidences , I received an email from him. He suggested I come three weeks later to Karlsruhe, Germany, for a radio play, Monster of Grace II . I accepted without knowing what it was about. There were six of us, including Angela Winkler, Bob himself, and Christopher Knowles. It was perilous for us because we had to remember the locations, the movements, and the words. Mine were those of Marie Curie, at the time of Pierre Curie's death. And some fragments of other things, I don't remember what, to say by heart, repetitively, as is often the case with Bob.

We arrived in the morning, not too early because he was late as usual! (he had missed his train), we worked until 1 a.m. There were tables and chairs. He told us to sit wherever we wanted, so I sat in profile. Angela was facing forward, a little to the side. Everyone spoke in different languages, Angela in German, I in French, Angela and I sometimes spoke together, there was also the voice of Isabella Rossellini, that of Cécile Brune, the magnificent voice of a great actress of German theater. Things happened so quickly, it was fascinating. Everything seemed like chance at first. Everything was organized later with mathematical precision, as his vision gradually took shape.

An hour and a half of the show, with lights, rear-projected cut-out trees, falling in slow motion, constantly. We rehearsed until 2 a.m. for two days. The following evening, "the show" took place at the ZKM theater in Karlsruhe, in front of an audience and broadcast live on the radio throughout Germany. The next day, we repeated it in the Staatstheater, for a final performance. But this wasn't for radio. In one day, he transformed what was supposed to be a simple radio recording into a real, completely improvised show. It all happened like a dream. Normal, really, because Bob Wilson's shows are like waking dreams.

I met Bob Wilson in Paris quite by chance, at a dinner organized by a mutual friend after a concert. I never forgot that dinner. Looking at me, he was drawing all the time. He probably knew I was an actress, but I don't know if he had seen my films. That evening, I felt that it was the person who interested him, more than the actress. At the end of the dinner, he told me that he had staged Virginia Woolf's Orlando in Berlin, and that he would like to reprise it in Paris, why not with me. And that's how it all began. The idea came like that, like an intuition.

I had already met Bob Wilson. It was at the Shiraz Festival in Iran. In 1971, the avant-garde of the avant-garde of theatrical and musical production was there. Bob Wilson, then, but also Stockhausen, a little further away in the ruins of Persepolis. I played the Champion of Hunger , based on a Kafka short story directed by Daniel Benoin, in the off-stage. I was a panther in a cage. My partners included François Berléand and Brigitte Catillon. Bob's show was called Ka Mountain and Guardenia Terrace , and it lasted seven days and seven nights. As soon as our play was over, we would rush off at midnight to see Bob's. At the bottom of the mountain, there was a whole menagerie, lions, elephants. We would climb this mountain, sit down, watch, and fall asleep in blankets; it was cold. Then we woke up. The show continued. And we went back to sleep. From a distance, we ran into Bob Wilson; maybe I even said hello to him. I don't remember. Ka Mountain was the first thing I saw of his.

“Before Karlsruhe, I worked twice with Bob Wilson. First Orlando , which had been created by Jutta Lampe in Berlin. Then Heiner Müller’s Quartett . Both at the Odéon Theatre, Orlando having first been created at the Vidy Theatre in Lausanne because the show was produced by René Gonzalez. We rehearsed Orlando very quickly, in three weeks. Sometimes he would be away for a day or two to go to the Venice Biennale, or elsewhere. For Orlando , he gave me three videos. At the beginning I am a young man, in the middle, an in-between, and finally a woman. The first video was Nureyev – Bob goes straight to the best –, the second being the great Japanese Kabuki actor Tamasaburō, and the third Marlene Dietrich. He adores Marlene Dietrich. The precision of his gestures, the construction of his image... The show being only one long uninterrupted movement, Bob wanted me to immerse myself in the gestures of these three artists.

He uses all the possible artifices of the show, light, sound. With this sound system, he works, not on the literal meaning of the word, but he releases something else, a feeling, or rather a sensation. These sound variations reveal a mental landscape, happy, sad, whispered, projected, slow, fast, it is a sound sculpture. This sound fragmentation reveals a meaning that is not the primary meaning of language. Like music, which Claude Régy likes to say is not "sensory."

To enter his world, you must not resist, but on the contrary you must accept to overcome obstacles. In Quartett , for example, certain passages were physically very difficult, but I would never have said to him: "This is too complicated!" For example, in the second part, I had to go up onto a catwalk, I had very high heels, and I had to speak very, very loudly, to thunderous music that made my heart race, it was quite violent. I felt like I was going to the top of the Himalayas. I had to win that moment, until the last performance, I dreaded it.

For Bob, the actor is totally manipulable, and therefore manipulated, like a toy at the end of his arm. His immense arm extended. I am totally consenting to this proposition, no reluctance. In return for this submission, my freedom is total, I can frolic in an infinite field – no limit. I can sink into my dream, as if I were falling asleep in a very comfortable bed, in a marvelous landscape…

Bob Wilson belongs to a very particular register. To understand him, you just have to think abstractly: "To think abstractly," as he says. With mischief. Because he has the wisdom of a child. A child who is having fun."