CONFESSSIONS OF ZENO

Confessions of Zeno is a multi-media theatre piece that combines puppetry, live singing, acting, a string quartet and video projection. Based on the 1923 cult novel Confessions of Zeno by the Italian modernist writer, Italo Svevo.    Svevo's La Conscienza di Zeno was the first novel where Freudian psychoanalysis was central to the plot.   Confessions explores the worlds of work and of erotic pleasure that sustain the life of the modern European bourgeoisie in the years before the outbreak of World War I.  The central character (the Zeno of the title), recalls the great moments of indecision and irresolution that have marked his life, and that have set in place his unresolved relationships with his father, and his wife and mistress. Through the gently mocking voice of self-irony, the work is an elegy to a generation coming to terms with the limits of self-knowledge. The play is a collaboration between artist/director William Kentridge, Handspring Puppet Company, composer Kevin Volans and writer Jane Taylor, and it explores visual and aural fields in ways that are radically contemporary while remaining richly evocative of early modernism's impact upon Victorian consciousness.   Confessions is an expanded version of Zeno at 4am which toured Brussels, France and the United States in 2001. The expanded version has two new characters, both sopranos who play the roles of Zeno's wife and mistress.   The production was conceived and directed by William Kentridge, renowned artist and film maker who is based in Johannesburg.

PAST PERFORMANCES:   Confessions of Zeno premiered in Belgium at the Kaaiteater in Brussels on 14 May 2002 and then went on to be seen at the following places:   June 2002 Kassel in Germany at Dokumenta 11 (2 performances) Frankfurt in Germany at the Schauspiel (6 performances) Zagreb in Croatia at the Festival Eurokaz (2 performances)   July 2002 Standard Bank National Arts Festival in Grahamstown    South Africa (3 performances)   September 2002 Berlin in Germany at the Freie VolkBühne, Berliner    Festspieler (3 performances) Hamburg in Germany at the Kampnagel Fest    (4 performances)   October 2002 Rome in Italy at the Festival RomaEuropa (3performances) Salamanca in Spain (3 performances) Paris in France at the Festival d’Automne (5 performances) Caen in France (2 performances) Angoulême in France (2 performances)   February 2003 Spier Summer Festival in Stellenbosch South Africa    (3 performances)   July 2003 Singapore Arts Festival in Singapore (2 performances)   October 2003 Las Palmas in the Canary Islands (2 performances),    Lisbon in Portugal (3 performances) and Vitoria in Spain    (1performance)

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WILLIAM KENTRIDGE When I first read Italo Svevo's Confessions of Zeno some twenty years ago, one of the things that drew me to it was the sense of Trieste as a rather desperate provincial city at the edge of an empire - away from the centre, the real world. This felt very similar to Johannesburg in the 1970s. In the years following this has persisted, but other elements of the book have come to engage me as well. Zeno's self-knowledge, but the absolute inability of this self-knowledge to force him to act, or at other times to stop him from acting, feels familiar. This dichotomy between what we know and what we do also mirrors the artist's ongoing job of mediating between what we see and what we know - of finding ways of making visible insight, intuition, or half-grasped connections.    Confessions of Zeno is a theatre production for actors,  musicians and double projection. Ostensibly an Edwardian cast for an Edwardian play, but pulling through this, both the convention of farce (the terror of different lives lived together), and the world of the unconscious released by psychoanalysis (the form of the novel is the protagonist writing for his analyst).   The stage is an acting area for the characters. At the back of the stage, two screens (two projectors, two source tapes). The projected images at times are identical, at times out of sync, at times radically different.   Some of the sources for the screen images include stereoscopic images from the First World War. The screen also becomes the double page of Zeno's double-entry book-keeping in his father-in-law's business. But this book-keeping is not restricted to the sale of sultanas; it enables the screen to be the site for a whole moral economy:  - a quiet domestic life against a more hectic social world (the shadow of the approaching World War I hovers over the whole play) - Zeno's pitting himself against perceived rivals - his father-in-law, his brother-in-law - "If I could play the violin as well as he does, I would play so much better than him." - the conflicting claims of wife and mistress - a naturalist image of Edwardian society - its parks and promenades - and a corresponding anti-naturalist world of objects, shadow-projections, counter-texts - the negative of the formal posed photograph.   The project is the teasing out of these images - seeing how they both elucidate and are brought to the surface by Svevo's text; and trying through these means to discover what it is in Zeno's character, and Svevo's evocation of Trieste, that make them seem so familiar, and our contemporaries.

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KEVIN VOLANS Whereas the music of Part I is entirely self-contained, the music of Part II is eclectic. It makes reference to other scores I have written as well as some exotic sources. In the 'Four sisters' quartet I have written a small set of variations on the piece Muthambe, which was first played by a famous 19th century mbira player and medium, Pasipamire, of the Shona people of Zimbabwe, and combined it with music based on Nyungwe music from Mozambique. It was originally played by Makina Chirenje and his Nyanga panpipe group at Nsava, Tete valley, which was recorded and transcribed by Andrew Tracy (to be found in an article entitled "The Nyanga panpipe dance" in African Music, Vol, 5, no. 1 (1971).   Carla's aria later in the piece is rhythmically based on dance steps in the Indian Baratha Natyam style composed by the well-known British choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh, making it an extremely virtuosic vocal piece.

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Direction, conception and animation: William Kentridge Composer: Kevin Volans Writer: Jane Taylor Production: Handspring Puppet Company (South Africa), Art Bureau (Munich Germany) and Schauspiel Frankfurt (Germany). Co-production: Berliner Festspiele, Documenta 11 (Kassel, Germany), Festival d’Automne à Paris, Thèåtre d’Angoulême Scène Nationale, Kampnagel Hamburg, Ministero per i beni e le attivitá culturali/Direzione generale per l’architettura e le arti contemporanee/Centro nazionale per le arti conteporanee/Romaeuropa Festival, Salamanca 2002-Ciudad Europea de la Cultura, KunstenFESTIVAL des Arts (Belgium).  Zeno: Dawid Minnaar Zeno's father: Otto Maidi (bass) Zeno's wife Augusta: Lwazi Ncube (soprano) Zeno's mistress Carla: Pumeza Matshikiza (soprano) Puppeteers: Adrian Kohler, Basil Jones, Fourie Nyamande, Tau Qwelane and Busi Zokufa String quartet: The Sontonga Quartet comprising Waldo Alexander, Brian Choveaux, Xandi van Dijk and Marc Uys Puppet design: William Kentridge Puppet-making: Adrian Kohler Costumes: Mathilda Engelbrecht Sound: Simon Mahoney Stage manager: Leigh Colombick Tour manager: Wesley France

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