Performance: The player may be wooden, but not the emotions, in William Kentridge's 'Woyzeck'

He's a visual artist with a big international reputation. A filmmaker. A puppetmaker. An opera director.

William Kentridge wears more hats than a Cirque du Soleil clown. And he racks up air miles like a Hillary Clinton, jetting from his native South Africa to cultural capitals across the globe. When we caught up with him recently, he was in the airport in St. Louis, where he received a major award and an exhibit of his prints had just opened. He was on his way to Jerusalem for a retrospective of his work exploring migration, colonialism and authoritarianism, which the New York Times found "enthralling" when it visited the Museum of Modern Art.

"All of my work is about trying to make sense of how we live in the world," Kentridge said. "It springs from my experience, yes, but I'm seeking to understand" the human condition.

Born in Johannesburg in 1955, Kentridge came of age in the crucible of apartheid. His enduring themes were signaled in "Woyzeck on the Highveld," a 1992 work featuring puppetry and film that opens Thursday at Walker Art Center.

A onetime actor and editorial cartoonist, he joined up with Capetown-based Handspring Puppet Company to adapt this show from the century-old play by 19th-century German dramatist Georg Buchner.

In the original, Woyzeck was a German soldier. But he is a migrant worker in this telling, set in 1956 Johannesburg. A South African everyman, Woyzeck is cuckolded by a miner and used as a guinea pig by a doctor, then wantonly discarded by society.

Kentridge attributes the show's longevity -- it remains a favorite at performance-arts festivals around the world -- to the fact that "it stopped being an allegory about the desperation wrought by apartheid, and more about a figure who's even more stuck in his condition. Even if things change for some people, the desperation continues for many. ...

Kentridge deploys filmmaking techniques in "Woyzeck." He directs viewer attention through the manipulation of hands, mouths and eyes of his puppets, who are sometimes seen thinking and emoting.

"The thing about puppets is that they're lifelike because of a combination of the skill of the manipulators and our willingness as viewers to invest them with life," he said. "Even though you can see them as wooden objects being manipulated by humans, we can't stop ourselves."