The Head & The Load

The Head & The Load The official Page for the staging of William Kentridge's 'The Head & The Load' in South Africa

07/05/2023
07/05/2023

I had been waiting for what seemed forever for ‘The Head and the Load’, by William Kentridge, Philip Miller, Thuthuka Sibisi and Gregory Maqoma to come to Johannesburg. It first showed abroad in 2018.

07/05/2023
07/05/2023
On the occasion of the end of The Head & The Load's long-awaited Johannesburg run, we're pleased to share James Sey's gr...
06/05/2023

On the occasion of the end of The Head & The Load's long-awaited Johannesburg run, we're pleased to share James Sey's great review of the production published in Wanted Online.

As Sey astutely notes, "The production is staged as a huge palimpsest — in three layers of stage direction we have actors who perform as narrators of the ostensible script, but who also act out the frequent breakdown of linguistic meaning. Behind them is a constant procession — often illuminated by shadow play projections which ask questions of the depth-perception of the audience — comprising the porters themselves and as projections, carrying everything from rolls of barbed wire to the head of Sol Plaatje."

We thank Johannesburg art lovers, theatre-goers, journalists and critics for the incredibly warm reception given to this vital piece of theatre.

The production is an emotionally charged feast for the senses, worth seeing more than once, if you can

Asked in this interview about the perennial influence of the Dada movement on his work, and particularly on The Head & T...
04/05/2023

Asked in this interview about the perennial influence of the Dada movement on his work, and particularly on The Head & The Load, William Kentridge says,

"Dada is almost a response to understanding a western rationality, a European rationality that had been completely calamitous, that had brought about the destruction of Europe during the First World War and so its premise was that if good logic is so calamitous, our only hope is bad logic. If good sense has led to this death of 20 million people, let’s try to have some bad sense and that’s the deep political heft of Dadaism, which we continue in the Centre for the Less Good Idea, which says: the grand ideas have been so calamitous, let us look for smaller ideas at the edges..."

Read the full interview with CreativeFeel here:

https://creativefeel.co.za/2020/03/the-head-the-load-an-interview-with-william-kentridge/?fbclid=IwAR3KebX-xxG2h3z6smK2OgQp2Ue0tHo4-aioshlg4GfCMtZdwJ-Yt8rUPcc

Creative Feel spoke to Kentridge on the origins of this acclaimed production about Africa and Africans in the First World War – about the contradictions and paradoxes of colonialism.

The Head & The Load in the media! There will be a feature on William Kentridge and The Head & The Load on The Insider SA...
30/04/2023

The Head & The Load in the media! There will be a feature on William Kentridge and The Head & The Load on The Insider SA on SABC3 on Monday 1 May (tomorrow) at 6pm. The show can be watched on live stream at https://www.sabcplus.com/en

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