Since the end of the 1960’s, Wilson has staged startling and uncompromising performance works, in which he combines dance, performance art, music, architecture, film, painting and drama, often in collaboration with other influential artists, such as Lou Reed, Philip Glass, Lady Gaga and Arvo Pärt. Robert Wilson’s works are characterized by expressive light design, sparse scenography and a directorial concept that focuses on the performers’ bodies and structural aspects of each individual production. Concerning the characters’ inner lives, he places his trust in the actors.

Dorian is the fruition of a concept that Wilson has been nurturing for several years. Everyone knows that one plus one equals two. But it’s also true that two can be one. Heaven and hell equal one world, not two. Wilson wants to investigate the duality of the singular. One of the questions that he explores in Dorian is how to perform two people as a singularity.

This performance’s story is built in turn on the stories of the writer Oscar Wilde, his fictional character Dorian Gray and the painter Francis Bacon – all three egocentric perfectionists who acclaimed beauty, youth and pleasure. Oscar Wilde was an eccentric, greatly loved and cherished by London’s high society until the day he was imprisoned for gross indecency. British painter Francis Bacon surprised a burglar in his studio, but instead of calling the police he had the man model for him and then became his lover. Dorian Gray is the widely known, extremely beautiful man who has his wish fulfilled: that his portrait should grow old instead of himself.

Each of these three stories has the characteristics of a saga; it’s hard to know what is true and what is myth. In Dorian they are woven together into an intricate monologue about the relationship between the artist and the artwork. The dramatist Daryll Pinkney, using the three passionate characters as points of departure, has created an associative flow in which memories, thoughts and feelings are gathered into a suggestive weave. In Robert Wilson’s production the story is transformed into an expressive mechanism of light, music, movement and extreme precision as it recounts the complex connection between the creator and the created. It is about love, humanity’s perpetual need of confirmation, the miracle of art and the destructive powers of narrow-minded society.

This multifaceted story is brought to life by the incomparable actor and singer Christian Friedel in an outstanding performance that in 2023 earned him the German-speaking world’s most prestigious theatre award, Der Faust.

Dorian: Christian Friedel
Text: Darryl Pinckney
Concept, director, set design and light: Robert Wilson
Costume: Jacques Reynaud
Composition: Woods of Birnam
Co-director: Ann-Christin Rommen
Co-set designer: Stephanie Engeln
Co-lighting: Marcello Lumaca
Video: Tomasz Jeziorski
Mask: Manu Halligan
Co-costume designer: Louise B. Vivier
Sound: Torben Kärst
Dramaturgy, musical arrangement: Konrad Kuhn
Dorian’s shadow: Jeremia Franken
Radio voice: Darryl Pinckney
Regiassistent: Zeigermann
Assistant Director: Susanne Hoffmann and Paulina Barreiro
Stage manager: Paul Adler / Arne Sabelberg
Prompter: Pia Raboldt
Intern Director: Dominique Durda, Joalia Ellwanger and Greta Weber
Intern stage and director: Jalini Mysorekar
Stage intern: Fee Kristein and Carla Waldmann
Costume intern: Carina Meurer

This piece is performed in German with Swedish subtitles.