From left: Willem Dafoe, Marina Abramovic, Antony, Robert Wilson, photographed during rehearsals for “The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic” at Teatro Real, Madrid in 2010. Photo © Antony Crook
Sleek: I love stories of artists when they were young, trying to fashion their image… though I don’t know whether you thought of yourself as an artist when you were twelve years old.
MA: I had my first show.
Sleek: You had your first show when you were twelve?
MA: I was always incredibly jealous of Mozart, because Mozart’s first concert was at seven. I was too late.
Sleek: Explain why you hated theatre so much.
MA: Because theatre is a black box where people rehearse, where you have to pretend to be somebody else, where you have to play emotions… Performance was always about the real in real space and real time. I always use the example, the knife is the knife and the blood is the blood. It’s simple. In theatre, the knife is not the knife and the blood is not the blood. That’s the difference. Then the theatre became different because it started taking from performance. I was studying Pina Bausch and Jan Fabre. Fabre has actually been influenced by my work a lot, we’ve collaborated, and Pina Bausch was one of my favorite choreographers.
Sleek: How would you describe Bob Wilson’s style?
MA: Working with Bob Wilson is wonderful. He invented a new language for theatre. What is really incredible is Bob’s attention to time and light. He literally paints with light. When we first arrived in the theatre he spent hours asking light technicians to adjust various pieces of equipment to precise levels.
Sleek: When did you meet Bob Wilson for the first time?
MA: I met him in Belgrade in 1971. He was doing monologues at a theatre festival. It was wonderful. He was totally himself on stage. I remember the Slavic press said that ‘a genius from Iowa is in our town.’ Bob later told me that he had never even been to Iowa. The show was supposed to finish at eleven o’clock, but he went on and on. It was midnight and the night porter wanted to close the space. Nobody was leaving because we were all mesmerized. So the night porter finally came and shot off his gun, yelling ‘everyone out.’ So we all ran out and that was the end.
Marina Abramovic performing “The Artist is Present”, MoMA, New York 2010. Photo © Marco Anelli