Baby Blood [An Evening with Baby Byrd Johnson and Baby Blood]

Solo performed by Robert Wilson

Premiered in November 1967 at 147 Spring Street [Wilson's loft], New York City, NY

Audience members climbed a staircase strewn with the bodies of dismembered dolls to the second-floor landing where a hooded figure (Andrew de Groat) collected the admission. They were then led one at a time into the candlelit performing space. In the first section, [Robert] Wilson traversed an elevated plank wearing only a t-shirt; in the second, he lay curled up like an infant under a miniature train track while a toy train passed overhead; in the final section, he appeared in black light, covered with strips of Day-Glo plastic which seemed to grow longer and longer. In between each episode, the hooded figure changed the position of the candles and the large metal rings which hung on a wire over the audience. (from: Laurence Shyer, Robert Wilson and his collaborators. U of Michigan, 1989.)