Robert Wilson and the CIVIL warS
4 Sept 2026, 7 pm

Howard Brookner’s documentary footage has been meticulously restored. Following screenings at European festivals, the restored version can now be seen in Berlin for the first time. The film offers a unique insight into the creation of one of the most ambitious and unusual stage productions of the 20th century. In the early 1980s, the pioneering theatre director Robert Wilson set out to create the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down – an international opera which, following the premieres of various chapters in Rotterdam, Cologne, Rome, Tokyo and Marseille, was due to have its complete world premiere in 1984 as part of the Olympic Arts Festival in Los Angeles – a plan that ultimately could not be realised due to logistical and financial difficulties.

The film follows Wilson’s visionary project and the extraordinary community of international artists involved in it. Those featured include Philip Glass, David Byrne, Gavin Bryars, Lucinda Childs and Etel Adnan, as well as patrons such as the French Minister for Culture, Jake Lang. Heiner Müller, whose close collaboration with Robert Wilson began with the CIVIL warS at the Schauspiel Köln, and Wilson’s long-standing artistic partner, the Japanese choreographer Suzushi Hanayagi, are also part of this multi-voiced portrait. At the same time, we see Wilson – then in his early forties – during rehearsals with performers, actors, opera singers and musical ensembles from Japan, Germany, Italy, France and the USA, as well as in rare footage from his family and social circle in the United States.

Whilst the opera is being created in separate parts around the globe, Brookner equally captures the euphoria, the tensions and, ultimately, the failure of an artistic dream. With great intimacy and a powerful visual language—which also draws on rarely seen excerpts from very early stage works—the documentary paints a portrait of an extraordinary artist at a decisive point in his career.

The event opens with a conversation between Rüdiger Schaper – who, as a theatre critic and friend, has followed Robert Wilson’s work for many years – and Christof Belka, Robert Wilson’s former manager and agent and now co-administrator of the Robert Wilson Trust & Estate, Nele Hertling, director of the Performing Arts Section and former artistic director of the Hebbel Theatre, which was one of the early producers of Wilson’s work in Germany, Ann-Christin Rommen, who has been Robert Wilson’s close artistic collaborator throughout his life since the CIVIL warS in Cologne, and the actor Christopher Nell, who appeared in many of his later works.

The director and visual artist Robert Wilson (1941–2025) is one of the most significant theatre artists of our time. Born in Waco (Texas), he died on 31 July 2025 in Water Mill on Long Island. As a member of the Akademie der Künste since 1996, he had been closely associated with the institution for decades.