William Kentridge | MEMETERIA

November 10, 2026 • 11:29 pm 0

A Vast Theatrical Reckoning: William Kentridge’s ‘The Head & the Load’

*William Kentridge’s THE HEAD & THE LOAD. Pictured: (from left to right): Nhlanhla Mahlangu, Mhlaba Buthelezi, Vincenzo Pasquariello, and Mario Gotoh. Photo by Stella Olivier.*

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.

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Filed under: Cal Performances, essay, theater, William Kentridge

March 13, 2025 • 12:02 pm Comments Off on The Spasms of History: Inside William Kentridge’s “The Great Yes, The Great No”

The Spasms of History: Inside William Kentridge’s “The Great Yes, The Great No”

Here’s my feature on the new project from William Kentridge, which will be presented this weekend in Berkeley by Cal Performances:

A new production by William Kentridge is always a major event. Few other artists at work today span so many media while at the same time reimagining them: drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, animated film, and musical-theater performance are all encompassed within his practice. But what makes Kentridge especially resonant for a global audience is how his innovations push beyond merely aesthetic considerations to pose big, open-ended questions about history and identity.
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Filed under: Cal Performances, William Kentridge, Cal Performances, William Kentridge

March 11, 2023 • 8:00 am Comments Off on William Kentridge at Berkeley

William Kentridge at Berkeley

A centerpiece of the current Cal Performances season has been a campus-wide residency with the artist William Kentridge, which culminates on 17 March the U.S. premiere of SIBYL. Here’s my essay on the making of this unclassifiable new work and its place in Kentridge’s oeuvre:

William Kentridge’s SIBYL: The Reassurance of Uncertainty

“There will be no epiphany.” “Wait again for better gods.” “You will be dreamt by a jackal.” “Heaven is talking in a foreign tongue.”

The oracular messages that course through SIBYL, the most recent performance work by the towering South African artist William Kentridge, tease with tantalizing ambiguity. They seem to wryly provoke an irresistible urge to twist whatever information is at hand into interpretations best suited to our desires….

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Filed under: Cal Performances, essay, William Kentridge