Presented by the Arsht Center for three days only during Miami Art Week 2022, William Kentridge’s THE HEAD & THE LOAD invites audiences directly onto the Lynn Wolfson stage of the Ziff Ballet Opera House to be immersed in a powerful story about Africans in World War I. With the wings and backstage of the Opera House reconfigured to become a unique, site-specific performance space large enough to accommodate this monumental work, the audience will take its place directly on stage for a once in a lifetime theatrical experience.
Taking its title from a Ghanaian proverb, ‘the head and the load are the troubles of the neck’, this epic theatrical-music piece tells the neglected story of the millions of African porters and carriers who served British, French and German forces during the First World War. This has been called Kentridge’s most ambitious project to date, and draws on every aspect of his practice to combine music, dance, film projections, mechanized sculptures and shadow play in a visionary theatrical alchemy.
