22                                  Maita di Niscemi

sented. Because he trusts the value of his vision, Wilson enjoys
catching the onlooker off balance. His often repeated remark that a
candelabra becomes somehow different when seen placed on a rock
rather than a console can stand as a key to much of his work. Selec¬
tion is a key element. I know because many of the ideas which I
have submitted for various projects have been changed or discarded;
several poems of mine were inserted into the production script of
Edison only to be replaced by more suitable ones in production. An
aria written in 1985 for Death Destruction and Detroit II about the
"mouse tower" that stands on an island in the Rhine River was dis¬
tilled into a ten-second vision of a huge white rat. At any time a
collaborator may be asked, as with the Garibaldi aria, to expand or
contract his contribution. The choice, the control, is always
Wilson's. The world of his theatre is his world and all his scripts,
sketches, drawings, and collaborations are but clues to the construc¬
tion of that world, to the clarification of that vision. Working with
Robert Wilson entails a great deal of trust, a fascination with both
mystery and clarity and a willingness to step through illusion into
the working theatre world. The documents which map the evolu¬
tion of Wilson's creations are doubly precious because they will
allow future students to follow the amalgamative process by which
this great artist takes and transforms the means at hand into a world
of his own and a portrait of our times. To study the works of Robert
Wilson is to begin to understand the answer to Alonso's question in
Act V, Scene 1, of The Tempest. "But how should Prospero be living
and be here?"

At the end of the Rome section of the CIVIL warS, a tree is best
measured when it is down, Hercules stands alone on the stage. He is
wearing the skin of the lion which was lying beneath a tree at the
whole opera's very beginning. He looks out at the audience and
then kneels in silence to touch the earth while a chorus of animal
voices greet his gesture.