Sabine Theunissen has created some of the most original and bold stagings in the opera and theater world. Her longtime collaboration with William Kentridge as his primary designer has included everything from Lulu at the Metropolitan Opera in New York to his productions of Dmitri Shostakovich’s The Nose and Alban Berg’s Wozzeck to his large-scale work for non-traditional theater spaces The Head & the Load, which premiered at the Tate Modern in London.

Now, in her first project as a director, she turns her eye to an epic adventure that, in her telling, becomes a metaphoric comedy about memory and destiny; legacy and hubris in the face of nature. Teaming up with Gregory Maqoma, WHITE BOX sits at the intersection of performance, film and visual art; it unfolds like the landscape it depicts. The story—told through projection, dance, and music—hinges on a rediscovered camera and rolls of film that had been buried in the ice for 33 years, whose unearthing revealed the fate of the Polarex expedition.

WHITE BOX is a poetic and impressionistic distortion of the true story, unraveling the dramatic journey of the three scientists and blending it with a bizarre parallel tale of the life of the lost photographs since their emergence. It is also a loving tribute to photography and its capacity to reveal the power, beauty, and fragility of the environment. The piece illuminates, interrogates, and honors scientific exploration, one man’s quest for fame, and the perils of underestimating nature; the combination adds up to an inspiringly confounding evening of music, dance and film. In 2020, working with a remote team and filming performers in South Africa, Director Sabine Theunissen created a 30-minute stop-motion animation on a scale model of the elaborate set that will be at once a compressed version of the story, a dynamic illustration of its novel design and staging, and an innovative short film worthy of presentation in its own right—a playful shadow of this theatrically immersive experience of beauty, hope, and infinity.

“[Graindorge's] compositions take us into her world, both mysterious and bewitching. Its melodies have the lightness of the weight of the soul. Dense and organic, melancholic and soothing...” — LE SOIR