John Cage's Lecture On Nothing Tickets

Great show - profound experience, Wilson is a visionary

John Cage's "Lecture on Nothing" (1949) is a rigorously structured 40-minute piece on nothing as something in its own right, not just the absence of any and every something. That's to say it's content is a Zen spirituality of letting go--of the self, the world, consciousness, control, etc. Cage's aim is to get his hearers to recognize the amazing fact of mere existence--of anything whatever at any time whatever; to open themselves to respond to the world without preconceptions, purposes, or control. Rigorous structure is in service of letting go control. Wilson's staging is highly effective. In white-face and dressed in white, seated at a table reading page after page from a stack of sheets, he leads his hearers through the long middle section of repeated sentences, framed by more anecdotal passages at beginning and end. The stage is filled with sheets of paper hanging from wires with words from the text written on them in fragmentary bits. One repeated sentence is, "If anyone is sleepy, let him go to sleep," and at one point Wilson moves to a bed stage right and takes a brief "nap" while the reading of the text continues from a recording by John Cage. I read the text before attending the performance, and I recommend doing so. This is a powerful recreation and evocation of a key moment in avant-garde art of the 20th century and a sort of monument to it as well. It's impressive and will stir lots of thoughts in anybody open to it. It's a great opportunity to see Robert Wilson himself performing one of his pieces.