The mercurial Johannesburg-born artist William Kentridge is widely regarded as one of the most outstanding visual artists and directors of our era, with works in several museums and art collections all over the world. Unique and masterful in how he pairs the magic of handcraft—printmaking, lithography, and photogravure—with the performing arts, animation, literature, and political reflection, Kentridge’s work is informed by the history of South Africa and the protest movement against the brutality of Apartheid as well as any other form of injustice, hence his artistic kinship with a handful of sharp-edged and incisive painters, sculptors, and printmakers, such as Honoré Daumier and Käthe Kollwitz. Having spent his formative years at the École Internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq during the 1970s, Kentridge’s particular inclination to the notion of the ”poetic body” has profoundly shaped his directorial vocabulary in opera and music theatre—works that occupy a liminal space between performance and visual art.
From the 1990s onwards, his fiery expressiveness has found a perfect vehicle in his collaboration with the pioneering Handspring Puppet Company. Together, they staged Woyzeck on the Highveld, based on the play by Georg Büchner, in 1992, as well as Ubu & the Truth Commission, based on Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi—a production we were fortunate to witness in Greece in a historic revival in 2014. In the same spirit, the 1995 production Faustus in Africa! will be revived, marking another collaboration with the groundbreaking group.
Faustus in Africa! stands as an allegorical tale on the iniquities of colonialism and Western imperialism. Reimagined through the ironic lens of South African poet Lesego Rampolokeng, it manifests into a dramaturgical composition-cum-compendium of the most iconic incarnations of the devil in literature. This fascinating and meticulously orchestrated universe tells the story of the protagonist who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for unlimited joy and everlasting youth. However, the story is here transposed to Africa, the pristine land that the ruthless hero plunders and ravages just as Faust seduces and leads innocent young Gretchen to her demise. His journey, beginning as a safari, spirals into a full-fledged frenzy of greed, delusion, and wreckage. Aligning superb stage aesthetics, political insight, and social critique, this timeless tale, performed by puppets (the only human being the Devil), has now become a classic, all the while exposing the disastrous repercussions of brute and single-minded profiting at the expense of the common good. At a time when the climate crisis looms ever larger over the Western world, the revival—further scheduled for an extensive tour—has been heralded as one of the most momentous events in the international realm of performing arts. Always highly sensitive to the urgencies of our times, the Athens Epidaurus Festival is proud to host this landmark production following its world premiere in Cape Town in the spring of 2025.
Kentridge shares a special relationship with the Greek audience, as numerous of his exhibitions and installations have been presented here. As a stage auteur, he made his first appearance at the Onassis Stegi with the performance Refuse the Hour in 2012, followed by Ubu and the Truth Commission in 2014. He has previously participated in the Athens Epidaurus Festival with the video installation I am not me, the horse is not mine in 2010 (in collaboration with the Bernier / Eliades Gallery) and the video screening More Sweetly Play the Dance in 2017 at the pedestrian street of Dionysiou Areopagitou, while Faustus in Africa! will signal his first stage production for the Festival. The opera SIBYL was presented in 2021 at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), which also sponsored the performance of The Head & the Load in Johannesburg.
Credits:
Director: William Kentridge
Associate director: Lara Foot
Puppetry directors
