Confessions of Zeno

Confessions of Zeno is a puppet play by William Kentridge, Jane Taylor, Kevin Volans and the Handspring Puppet Company.

Original text

The piece is based on La coscienza di Zeno ("The conscience of Zeno")[1], a novel by Italo Svevo (1861-1928)[2], published in 1923, about the memoirs kept of the fictional character "Zeno Cosini", kept as a therapeutic action at the behest of his psychoanalyst. In it he writes about his father, his business, his wife, and his tobacco habit.

The original English translation of the novel was published under the title Confessions of Zeno, but is also known as Zeno's Confessions.

Aspects of the novel have been dramatised in two forms by William Kentridge, the Handspring Puppet Company and colleagues - initally as a shadow oratorio named Zeno as 4am (2001), then as a full-scale stage production called Confessions of Zeno (2002).

The play: Confessions of Zeno

Confessions of Zeno was created in 2002 as a collaborative project between artist/director William Kentridge, the Handspring Puppet Company, composer Kevin Volans(1949-)[3] and writer Jane Taylor. It combines puppets and humans to explore 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 (Zeno) 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 his mistress.