Robert Wilson (born 1941, Waco, Texas) attended the University of Texas where he showed a strong interest in architecture, design and painting. In 1963, he transferred to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he came into direct contact with the pioneering dance choreographers Merce Cunningham and Martha Graham, as well as the work of John Cage.
The loft where Robert Wilson lived – formerly the Open Theater – soon became a meeting point for artists, craftsmen, housewives, retirees, businessmen, intellectuals and an assortment of impoverished youth before transmuting into a factory-laboratory, the first nucleus of the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds that he founded. Robert Wilson never had a formal education in theater arts, which, according to some, is why his work is so original.