One more sea to cross

ONE MORE SEA TO CROSS

William Kentridge, artist

Tuesday 28 January  7.30 pm  COURSE FEES Ticket prices range from R150 to R500, and are determined by the location of the seats selected

VENUE Baxter Theatre Concert Hall

Snacks and drinks will be served before the lecture from 6.30 pm.

Acclaimed visual artist and theatre director William Kentridge will discuss his chamber opera, The Great Yes, The Great No and related film To Cross One More Sea, both made in 2024. The chamber opera reimagines the historical journey of the ship, the Capitaine Paul-Lemerle. This ship sails for Martinique from Marseilles in 1941 with artists and intellectuals on board fleeing Vichy France, including surrealist André Breton, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, Cuban painter Wifredo Lam, communist novelist Victor Serge and exiled German author Anna Seghers. The production is part play, part Greek choir, part chamber opera – all interwoven with William Kentridge’s breathtaking surrealist visuals. The journey mixes history with fiction, augments reality and invites other celebrated figures to join this new kind of ark, an allegory for all the forced journeys of the past and present. More broadly, the work is about colonialism and surrealism.

We invite you to this unique opportunity to listen to William Kentridge discuss his latest work.

Recommended reading

Césaire, A. 1970. Return to My Native Land. Penguin Books.

Césaire, S. 2012. The Great Camouflage: Writings of Dissent (1941–1945). Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.

Damas, L. 1962. Pigments. Paris: Présence Africaine.

Breton, A. and Rivera, D. c1938. Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art. Mexico City.

TO BOOK: https://www.webtickets.co.za/v2/Seating.aspx?itemid=1554987567