William Kentridge returns to Cal Performances—and kicks off a five-year initiative devoted to his interdisciplinary performance works—with the West Coast premiere of The Head & The Load this weekend at the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts in Oakland.
Here’s my essay for Cal Performances:
Visionary South African artist William Kentridge returns to Cal Performances following two extraordinarily well-received previous visits (which featured Sibyl in 2023 and The Great Yes, The Great No in 2025) with a seminal work that chronicles—through dance, projection, speech, song, shadow play, costume, and music—the untold history of the more than two million Africans who labored, fought, and died during the First World War. The Head & the Load takes its name from a Ghanaian proverb, “The head and the load are the troubles of the neck,” and continues Kentridge’s exploration of history, language, and artistic and political movements through richly layered and inventive performance works.
Filed under: Cal Performances, essay, theater, William Kentridge
