Detail of Watermill Center interior, courtesy of Marcus Pingel

Watermill Center Open House &
open rehearsal of Robert Wilson's Prometheus

Sunday, August 6
3 to 6 pm

Please join us this Sunday for a day of family activities and performance at the Watermill Center's Open House.

Watermill Center International Summer Program Participants will conduct extensive tours of the Center's new building and art collection. Summer Program participant Milan Labouiss will conduct a breakdancing workshop for children and Watermill Center Mentor Meg Harper will provide Tai Chi Ch'uan lesson for seniors.

An open rehearsal of Prometheus staged by Artistic Director Robert Wilson and Summer Program participants is the centerpiece of the day's events. Originally scored by composer Iannis Xenakis and premiered in 2001, Robert Wilson's Prometheus is recreated at the Watermill as part of an environmental art and performance project with Gunpowder Park near London, England.

Schedule of events

3:00
Watermill Center opens to the public
Tours of the Watermill Center

3:30
Breakdancing workshop for children by Milan Lanbouiss

4:30
Open rehearsal of Prometheus

5:30
T'ai Chi Ch'uan for seniors by Meg Harper

Robert Wilson on his vision for Gunpowder Park

What I have done is to create a megastructure. This project is open for people from different fields to participate, whether they are artists, a political scientist such as Benjamin Barber or an anthropologist such as Ida Nicolaisen. I would hope that we can establish more connections between the UK and the US in this project, on many different levels.

We are trying to create a kind of ribbon around the world, so as visitors move through the landscape, they get a sense not only of their backyard but of the wider world beyond. We would like to connect Gunpowder Park with the Watermill Center and other sites all over the world.

About Prometheus

Around 700 B.C. Hesiod wrote of Prometheus, son of Iapetos, and the dreadful vengeance he brought upon himself. Having fooled Zeus into choosing the bones instead of the meat of man's sacrifices and stealing the immortal fire for the benefit of mankind, Promtheus was thrust into "painful bonds" with "a staunchion driven through his middle" and "the wing-spread eagle feeding upon his imperishable live, which by night would grow back to size from what the spread-winged bird had eaten in daytime." (lines 520-526).

Some 350 years later, Aeschylus re-made Prometheus a Titan, son of Earth (Gaia) and Heaven (Ouranos), an old god of the generation of Time (Kronos) that was nearly equal to Zeus. In Aeschylus' re-telling of Promethean bondage, he is dragged by Force and Violence to a rocky peak in the Caucasus where Hephaistos, the Olympian blacksmith, chains him to a rock to await punishment. There Prometheus is visited by the old god Ocean and consoled by Ocean's daughters. He comforts Io, a maiden transformed into a heifer, and trades insults with Hermes, the Olympian messenger. Prometheus does not cede an inch or beg for mercy, but remains indignant and defiant.

Aeschylus' Prometheus is the benevolent protector of mankind against the indifferent Zeus. He taught man to build shelters and sailboats, medicine and animal husbandry. He bestowed upon man the forbidden immortal fire. Nothing can break this Prometheus.

				© 2008 The Byrd Hoffman Watermill Foundation