ADELAIDE FESTIVAL OF ARTS 2015 PROGRAM

Lesley Reed reports on the launch of the 2015 Adelaide Festival program.

Twenty-two Australian premieres and twenty-six events that are exclusive to Adelaide will feature in the 2015 Adelaide Festival program in which forty-two music, theatre, dance and visual arts events will be staged side by side with Adelaide Writers’ Week, from February 27 through to March 15.

One Festival-commissioned exclusive world premiere will take place, as well as seven other commissioned shows. Mix that with one hundred and fifty performances, seven hundred and seventy five performers and writers, plus innumerable countries of origin and the Adelaide Festival of Arts 2015 is looking like not only a superb artistic event but also a finely tuned mathematical equation.

This will be the thirtieth Adelaide Festival and its Artistic Director David Sefton is living something of a milestone, too, in that the extension of his tenure to include the 2016 Adelaide Festival makes him the first person to direct four consecutive Adelaide Festivals.

As if shining a spotlight on the spectacle to come, the 2015 Adelaide Festival will start with Blinc, a free event transforming the complete Torrens Riverbank and Festival Theatre precinct with the world’s best digital art. Blinc will be on show every night of the Festival. 

The Adelaide Festival program is too extensive to describe in full here but if the theatre and dance line-ups reflect the quality on offer across all genres there is much to anticipate indeed.

Ancient 16^th century Moroccan acrobatic skills will mesmerise audiences on the opening weekend. Azimut is a production by Compagnie 111’s Aurelien Bory and Le Groupe acrobatique de Tanger (France).

The impressionistic prose of James Joyce’s Finnigan’s Wake is treated to a unique and startling adaptation by Ireland’s Olwen Fouere in riverrun.

Puppets and an award-winning novel seem an unlikely mix, but turntablist, graphic novelist and music producer Kid Koala (Eric San, Canada) turns his novel Nufonia Must Fall into a living entity through a multi-disciplinary puppet show in which film, music and theatre come together. More puppets, these decidedly evangelical, will steal the limelight and spread redemption in The Cardinals, from the UK’s Stan’s Café.

The playful retelling of Beauty and the Beast by Mat Fraser, one of the UK’s most recognised disabled performers, is an adult treat in which disability and sexuality are confronted. Fraser is joined by American burlesque star Julie Atlas and UK director Phelim McDermott.

Multi-award-winning Italian actress Silvia Gallerano is expected to produce a stunning solo performance in La Merda, with the provocative text written by Christian Crestoli (Italy).

2014 Adelaide Festival audiences haven’t forgotten Belgium’s Valentijn Dhaenens in his critically acclaimed production of BigMouth and he’s back in 2015 with the work’s companion piece, SmallWaR, a reflection on the physical and emotional impacts of war.

In an Australia/Italy collaboration, Chiara Guidi of Societas Rafaello Sanzio teams up with Australian artists, including Jeff Stein to produce Jack and the Beanstalk. Sure to be a hit with families, this is a dark twist on the classic story and combines physical theatre, live music and puppetry together with storytelling.

In Dylan Thomas-Return Journey the UK’s Bob Kingdom embodies the Welsh poet as he tells stories about him and his last ill-fated lecture tour.

Stories of indigenous Anzacs, most never told before, form the substance of a powerful new Queensland Theatre Company work, Black Diggers, while the State Theatre Company of South Australia presents three Samuel Beckett works in Beckett Triptych, starring Paul Blackwell, Peter Carroll and Pamela Rabe.

The Dance program includes the USA’s Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet with four works by acclaimed international choreographers. The company’s Festival program is a mixed repertoire that will take dance lovers on a wonderful journey of movement and multimedia.

The Festival’s music program is huge, with a highlight being the exclusive world premiere of Tommy (USA).The show is a radical reimagining of The Who’s unforgettable double-album and is created by composer and lead performer Eric Mingus and producer Hal Willner. It features eighteen musicians including Ireland’s post-punk singer Gavin Friday and chanteuse Camille O’Sullivan, together with Harper Simon, son of the legendary Paul Simon.

Mix in a feast of visual arts together with Adelaide Writers’ Week and the Adelaide Festival of Arts 2015 is something of a smorgasbord, requiring the consumer to first sit down and eye the overall menu before making the almost impossible choice of what to taste first. That menu, or rather the Adelaide Festival 2015 program, can be found at adelaidefestival.com.au

Enjoy!

When: February 27- March 15, 2015

Where: Adelaide, South Australia

Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au or BASS 131 246

Further information: adelaidefestival.com.au

Printed programs available from BASS outlets and SA branches of Bendigo Bank from October 17, 2014 

Images (from top): Beauty and the Beast (photographer: Al Korkidakis), Beckett Triptych, SmallWaR (photograph: Daily Dolores), Olwen Fouéré in riverrun (Photographer: Colm Hogan) and La Merda (CPhotographer: ValeriaTomasulo).