The Black Rider: A Theatrical Production by Tom Waits, William S. Burroughs & Robert Wilson (1990)

Yes, you read cor­rect­ly: there exists a piece of the­ater whose pro­duc­tion brought togeth­er three of the most ardent­ly-fol­lowed, icon­o­clas­tic cre­ators of recent decades. First staged in 1990 at Ham­burg’s Thalia The­ater, The Black Rid­er: The Cast­ing of the Mag­ic Bul­lets appeared as the fruit of mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary labor from renowned avant-garde direc­tor Robert Wil­son, best known for extra-long-form pro­duc­tions like Ein­stein on the Beach, cre­at­ed with Philip Glass; ragged­ly Amer­i­can singer-song­writer Tom Waits, a musi­cian with no small the­atri­cal bent him­self; and William S. Bur­roughs, writer of Naked Lunch, Junkie, and oth­er texts that have blown away gen­er­a­tions of coun­ter­cul­tur­al­ly inclined read­ing minds. They based their tale of a hap­less young file clerk in love and his fate­ful pact with the dev­il on the Ger­man folk­tale-cum-opera Der Freis­chütz. Hence the work’s pre­miere in Ger­many, and the Ger­man dia­logue in the tele­vi­sion ver­sion of the full pro­duc­tion above.

But wor­ry not, non-Ger­manophones; the Waits-com­posed songs remain in Eng­lish, and as with any­thing direct­ed by Wil­son, you buy the tick­et as much to a strik­ing pure visu­al expe­ri­ence as to any­thing else. You can hear and see more from Waits and Wil­son about what went into The Black Rid­er in the half-hour TV doc­u­men­tary just above. (The nar­ra­tor may speak Ger­man, but every­one else involved speaks Eng­lish.) For a pure musi­cal expe­ri­ence of The Black Rid­er, pull up Waits’ epony­mous album, released in 1993. (See also the boot­leg The Black Rid­er Out­takes.) And now, with twen­ty years’ dis­tance from The Black Rid­er’s Amer­i­can debut, maybe we can put the ques­tion to our­selves of whether it counts as a streak of poor taste or a stroke of artis­tic genius to have Bur­roughs, of all peo­ple, pen his own ver­sion of a sto­ry that — spoil­er alert — ends with the pro­tag­o­nist fat­ed to shoot his own bride.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John­ny Depp: A Voom Por­trait by Robert Wil­son

Watch Big Time, the Con­cert Film Cap­tur­ing Tom Waits on His Best Tour Ever (1988)

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.