THE GREAT YES, THE GREAT NO

Marseille, 1941: A liner sails for Martinique with artists and intellectuals on board fleeing from Vichy France, including surrealist André Breton, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, Cuban painter Wifredo Lam, Communist novelist Victor Serge and exiled German author Anna Seghers. 

Conceived in collaboration with award-winning theater maker Phala Ookeditse Phala, and choral conductor and dancer Nhlanhla Mahlangu, The Great Yes, The Great No 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 of all the forced expeditions of the past and present.

RUNNING TIME: 84 minutes, no intermission.