On 13 September 2023, co-founders of The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Bronwyn Lace and William Kentridge, travelled to Rhode Island, USA, to deliver a lecture by Kentridge at Brown University’s Martinos, Granoff Center for the Creative Arts.

In the hour-long lecture, titled ‘Finding the Less Good Idea’, Kentridge begins by reflecting on his journey as an artist – a journey that gave rise to the pursuit of the less good idea – and speaks about the founding of The Centre for the Less Good Idea in 2016.

It is the making of The Great YES, the Great NO, Kentridge’s latest theatre project, that becomes the main focus of the lecture. Here, Kentridge gives insight into the background and development of the work, and how key ideas and associations in the work have been drawn from experiments and discoveries made at The Centre – the women’s chorus from the Season 7 work, Umthandazo and the loudhailer duet from Season 4’s Surplus Circus being two such examples.

Also outlined in the lecture is the Pepper’s Ghost mechanism, which both Kentridge and The Centre have been using as a device for the generation of new work since late 2019.

In February 2024, The Centre for the Less Good Idea will travel to Brown University’s Martinos, Granoff Center for the Creative Arts to incubate new works using the artistic strategies and ways of working that have been developed using the Pepper’s Ghost.