William Kentridge’s
The Great Yes, The Great No
A Cal Performances Co-commission
Bay Area Premiere
Nhlanhla Mahlangu, associate director and choral composer
Phala O. Phala, associate director
Greta Goiris, costume designer
Sabine Theunissen, set designer
Tlale Makhene, music director
Mwenya Kabwe, dramaturg
Urs Schönebaum and Elena Gui, lighting designers
Žana Marović, Janus Fouché, and Joshua Trappler, projection editing and compositing
Duško Marović, cinematographer
Kim Gunning, video control
Gavan Eckhart, sound designer
Performers
Xolisile Bongwana, Hamilton Dhlamini, William Harding, Neil McCarthy, Tony Miyambo, Nancy Nkusi
Chorus
Anathi Conjwa, Asanda Hanabe, Zandile Hlatshwayo, Khokho Madlala, Nokuthula Magubane, Mapule Moloi, Nomathamsanqa Ngoma
Dancers
Thulani Chauke, Teresa Phuti Mojela
Musicians
Marika Hughes, cello; Nathan Koci, accordion/banjo; Tlale Makhene, percussion; Thandi Ntuli, piano
Internationally acclaimed for his visual art and theater productions, South African artist William Kentridge returns to campus with his latest creation for the stage, a chamber opera set on a 1941 sea voyage from Marseille to Martinique. Conceived in collaboration with theater maker Phala Ookeditse Phala and choral conductor and dancer Nhlanhla Mahlangu, The Great Yes, The Great No fictionalizes the historic wartime escape from Vichy France by, among others, the surrealist André Breton, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the Cuban artist Wifredo Lam—and adds a distinguished and colorful cast of characters to the passenger list, like Aimé Césaire, Josephine Baker, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin.
“A dazzling meditation on a world out of kilter…
The Great Yes, the Great No is a great title. And William Kentridge’s latest chamber opera … lives up to that title as one of the celebrated South African artist’s most astonishing works. Concept, direction, set and costume design, projections, video, text, music, choreography and performances by a vast company of singers, dancers, actors and equally vast creative team — all simply great.… [For] 90 nonstop minutes, Kentridge’s characters dazzle.”
—Los Angeles Times
In Kentridge’s hands, the ship becomes a fantastical menagerie of thinkers, makers, and revolutionaries in a production that merges surrealist imagery with real-life events, lush South African choral music, dance, poetry, and anti-rational approaches to language and image. Kentridge’s breathtaking visual inventiveness combines animated drawings, video projection, masks, shadow play, and bold sculptural costumes with spoken and projected text that explores the relationship between surrealism and the anticolonial Négritude movement.
The San Francisco Chronicle raved about SIBYL, Kentridge’s 2023 presentation at Cal Performances, so get your tickets now!
English translations will be projected on a backdrop screen.
Support for this performance is provided by The Great Yes, The Great No Council for Kentridge.
Lead Sponsors: The Jonathan Logan Family Foundation; Nadine Tang
Major Sponsors: Bob Ellis (March 15); Janice and Nicholas E. Brathwaite (March 15)
Sponsors: The Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation; Divesh & Diksha Makan
Additional support is provided by Helen Berggruen for Five Arts Foundation, John Berggruen, and Diana Nelson and John Atwater.
Commissioning support is provided by William and Sakurako Fisher.
Funding provided by the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation – empowering world-changing work.
This project is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Co-Commissioners: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami-Dade County, FL, with lead sponsor support from Adrienne Arsht; Cal Performances, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA; Centre D’art Battat, Montreal, Canada
Foundational commissioning support for the development and creation of The Great Yes, The Great No is provided by Brown Arts Institute at Brown University, Providence, RI
The Great Yes, The Great No acknowledges the kind assistance of Goodman Gallery, Lia Rumma Gallery, and Hauser & Wirth in this project.
Co-Producers: Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Luxembourg; Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, Germany; Spoleto Festival Dei Due Mondi, Italy
This event is part of Cal Performances’ Illuminations: “Fractured History” programming for the 2024–25 season.
Mar 14–15, 8pm
Mar 16, 3pm
There is a $15 per order service charge on single ticket purchases that partially underwrites the cost of our ticketing platform, credit card processing, Ticket Office staffing, and ticket delivery. To avoid this fee, tickets can be purchased in person at our Ticket Office during our regular office hours. Note: there is a $20 service charge for all subscription orders.
For Blind and Visually Impaired Patrons
A pre-show haptic access tour and live audio description headsets are available for the Sun, Mar 16 performance. These services can be reserved when purchasing tickets online or by contacting the Ticket Office at 510.642.9988. Learn more on our Accessibility page
Illuminations Related Event
William Kentridge’s The Great Yes, The Great No
Pre-performance Panel: “Surreal Histories”
Fri, Mar 14
6–7pm
Zellerbach Playhouse
Free and open to the public
In this pre-performance conversation with William Kentridge, we will consider the historical setting of the boat crossing depicted in The Great Yes, The Great No, as well as its creative reimagining. How does this work invite us to experience the sea journey as a crossing of different yet intertwined histories (of colonial domination, of fascist occupation, of refugee flight)? In what ways does it transform our sense of history as well as our present moment and possible futures?
The panel is co-presented by UC Berkeley’s Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry and will be moderated by Debarati Sanyal, the center’s director. Panelists include artist William Kentridge; Karl Britto, Associate Dean of Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley; and Shannon Jackson, Cyrus & Michelle Hadidi Professor of the Arts & Humanities at UC Berkeley.
Video
Beyond the Stage Related Posts
Mar 14–15, 8pm
Mar 16, 3pm
William Kentridge’s
The Great Yes, The Great No
Bay Area Premiere
* There is a service fee per order (not per ticket) for purchasing tickets online: $20 per order for subscription orders and $15 per order for all other ticket purchases. This fee helps to underwrite the cost of providing services online and by phone, as well as programs needed for digital order delivery. To avoid this fee, tickets can be purchased in person at our Ticket Office during our regular office hours.