---
title: Robert Wilson
description: Robert Wilson, the director of experimental theater, 1941 to 2025, whose Berliner Ensemble Lulu (2011) carried the score Sarth Calhoun wrote with Lou Reed.
url: https://www.sarth.net/conspirators/robert-wilson/
credit: Sarth Calhoun co-wrote, with Lou Reed, the score of Robert Wilson’s Lulu at the Berliner Ensemble (2011) and directed its music rehearsals in Berlin.
author: Sarth Calhoun
---
[Conspirators](/conspirators/) / Robert Wilson

Conspirator

# Robert Wilson

Theater director, 1941 to 2025. Lou Reed and I wrote the score for his *Lulu* at the Berliner Ensemble.

[Robert Wilson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wilson_(director)) (1941, Waco, Texas, to 2025, Water Mill, New York) was an American director and playwright of experimental theater, also a designer, choreographer and visual artist, best known for *Einstein on the Beach* (1976, with Philip Glass) and *The Black Rider* (1990, with Tom Waits and William S. Burroughs). He founded The Watermill Center in 1991. With Lou Reed he made *Time Rocker* (1996) and *POEtry* (2000), and he directed Frank Wedekind’s [*Lulu*](https://robertwilson.com/lulu) at the Berliner Ensemble, premiered April 12, 2011, with music by Lou Reed; it toured to Paris, Spoleto and São Paulo.

![Robert Wilson, portrait, 2014.](/images/conspirator-robert-wilson.jpg)

Robert Wilson, Lübeck, January 2014. Photo: Cornel Wachter, [CC BY-SA 3.0 de](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en), via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2014-01-19_Luebeck_Wachter_Wilson_(cropped_-_Robert_Wilson).jpg) (cropped).

> I got a call from Lou one day to go over to his house and make some "interstitial" music for a theater production. Robert Wilson was staging "Lulu" with the Berliner Ensemble. This turned into co-writing 8 more songs with Lou Reed.
> 
> Sarth Calhoun, [sarth.net, 2011](https://web.archive.org/web/20140905191203/http://www.sarth.net/category/conspiracies/lou-reed-metallica-project/)

## Lulu

Lou Reed and I wrote the music for his [*Lulu*](/conspiracies/lulu/). Lou did not travel to Berlin; I went, and directed the rehearsals of the music at the Berliner Ensemble in the spring of 2011. The touring program credits me among the music collaborators with Hal Willner and Ulrich Maiss. The songs became the album Lou made with [Metallica](/conspirators/metallica/) that autumn. Wilson and I were both among the people interviewed for Lou’s book on tai chi, *The Art of the Straight Line*.

The credit: Sarth Calhoun co-wrote, with Lou Reed, the score of Robert Wilson’s Lulu at the Berliner Ensemble (2011) and directed its music rehearsals in Berlin.

The profile is from public sources, linked where they appear. What we made is the record on this site and the sources cited above.