NAU NUA: WILLIAN KENTRIDGE & HANDSPRING PUPPET COMPANY

28/06/2025

Portrait of unreason

William Kentridge, Handspring Puppet Company - Faustus in Africa! . Courtesy of Grec Festival Press Service

"Nature or reason? Nature is sin..." Reason? Unreason, without a doubt. Since the myth of the Tower of Babel, which was intended to challenge divine power, human beings have repeatedly fallen into the arrogance that is born and dies in their own navel. And if we focus on colonial Europeanism, the absurdity taken to the bleeding extreme of exploitation is aberrant. Europeans dressed as Europeans and living as Europeans—that is, as they should be, note the sarcasm—whether in the rainforest or at the North Pole. And the native is inferior, of course, including people, so the divine right, once again Babel in Wonderland, to exploit everything found, or stolen, goes without saying.

Here, Goethe's Faust is the inspiration for a work, Faustus in Africa!, where a pact with the devil allows the protagonist to obtain everything he finds on the African continent. Moral codes disappear, reason is confused with selfishness and arrogance, and everything that is not oneself or what one believes one represents is despised. A colonial journey that continues to this day and has been the origin, or directly the perpetrator, of many of the evils of our beautiful sister continent.

The talent of South African artist William Kentridge joins forces with the also wonderful South African Handspring Puppet Company to once again take us on a time-lapse into the present, with actors, puppets, and Kentridge's animated creations. This forces us to reflect, including on the supposed integration we always demand from those who arrive in Europe seeking a better life, fleeing situations in their lands whose causes Europe plays a significant role in, and which we Europeans themselves, exploiting their lands, never accept because our culture is supposedly superior. The play, presented as part of the Grec Festival, packed the Fabià Puigserver Hall of the Teatre Lliure, seducing it, and how.

I don't want to hide my fascination with Kentridge's artwork, its vivid, rebellious, chiaroscuro, and direct lines, as well as the sensitivity and humor of the Handspring Puppet. Their craftsmanship also gives added value to the vital, sensorial, aspect that in the age of chroma key and projection is losing ground, if not strength.

Bravo!