2014 Adelaide Festival: Theatre and Dance Program

The 2014 Adelaide Festival program features music, theatre, dance, a literary festival and visual arts exhibitions. The 29th Festival line-up features 50 events with 29 Australian premieres and 29 festival exclusives over 17 days, from Friday 28 February to Sunday 16 March.

Now in his second year as Adelaide Festival’s Artistic Director David Sefton said, “I couldn’t have been happier with my first Adelaide Festival in 2013. The overwhelming response from the festival-goers was that I had the licence to continue pushing the program in ways that would genuinely excite an audience already accustomed to taking risks: 2014 is the result.”

Theatre program highlights include screen icon Isabella Rossellini (ITA/USA) in her one woman show Green Porno, Tony Award winnerDenis O’Hare (USA) (True Blood, The Good Wife) in An Iliad, Canadian theatre maker Robert Lepage’s Needles and Opium, and from The Netherlands the epic six-hour Roman Tragedies. Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company headlines the dance program, returning to Adelaide for the first time since its Australian debut in 1996.

THEATRE

Epic theatre dominates the opening weekend of the festival (Friday, 28 February – Sunday, 2 March). Staged for the first time in Australia and exclusive to Adelaide, director Ivo van Hove (NED) combines three of Shakespeare’s plays Coriolanus, Julius Caesar and Antony & Cleopatra into one continuous six-hour political drama. Roman Tragedies is an immersive multimedia spectacular that frames political ambition and national interest through our obsession with the 24-hour news cycle.

Isabella Rossellini (USA/ITA) stars in Green Porno, a new, playful and wonderfully odd comedy about mating in the natural world. Rossellini takes us on an unusual and fascinating journey into the sex life and mating habits of a number of land and marine animals.

The revisited masterpiece Needles and Opium from legendary Canadian theatre maker Robert Lepage has its Australian premiere and exclusive season at the 2014 festival. This production has been thoroughly reworked since its last Australian presentation in 1994, and combines new scenography with original images, starring Quebec’s Marc Labrèche.

An Iliad, an intimate solo show starring Tony Award winner Denis O’Hare (USA) (True Blood, The Good Wife, American Horror Story), illuminates the heroism and horror of warfare. Written by O’Hare and director Lisa Peterson (USA), the production was inspired by Robert Fagles’ award-winning contemporary translation of Homer’s Iliad.

Adelaide's multi-award winning The Border Project and Belgian theatre makers Ontroerend Goed, have teamed up to create Fight Night, a show where elections become a theatrical game. Five performers, five actors, five rounds, your vote, one survivor. This production explores the intricacies and traps of voting systems and media-driven democracy.

In its exclusive Australian premiere BigMouth (NED) weaves together fragments of some of the most memorable speeches in history. BigMouth shows how picking the right words can turn the weakest argument into the strongest, achieve world power, or simply win the hand of a beloved.

The Shadow King, a major festivals co-commission is an Indigenous reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy King Lear, the brutal tale of a family divided by greed, pride and ambition. Directed by Michael Kantor with co-creator Tom E. Lewis as Lear, this timeless tragedy speaks to the historic and current circumstances of Indigenous Australia.

Windmill Theatre present a unique rites-of-passage trilogy including the world premiere of their new show Girl Asleep, together with Fugitive and School Dance (Adelaide Festival 2012) in rep across the festival.

StateTheatre Company of South Australia’s 2014 season opens with a new adaptation of The Seagull starring Xavier Samuel (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, Anonymous, Drift) who returns to his home town to play the tortured Konstantin.

Filmmaker John Waters (USA) is back with his new rapid fire comic monologue show This Filthy World Vol.2. Scotland’s Shona Reppe presents The Curious Scrapbook of Josephine Bean, an award-winning theatre presentation for children aged six and up.

The theatre program also includes the world premiere of Blackout, the new work from theatre and dance creative team Jo Stone and Paulo Castro. Written and directed by Portuguese-born Adelaide-based Castro, from a concept by Adelaide’s Jo Stone, Blackout is a story about survival, as wedding guests on a boat struggle to come to terms with the impending end of the world.

DANCE

Batsheva DanceCompany (ISR) presents Sadeh21 – an epic-dance expedition and voyage of the body by choreographer Ohad Naharin. Sadeh21 comprises a series of movement studies, each new sadeh (Hebrew for ‘field of study’) juxtaposes explosive, frenetic bursts of energy with graceful, tender, lyrical passages in configurations of solo performances, duets and ensemble formations.

AM I, the latest production from Shaun Parker & Companyis a major festival co-commission. Director/Choreographer Shaun Parker and Composer Nick Wales have created a visual and sonic world for AM I. World music and cult-like singing collide to create the soundscape.

adelaidefestival.com.au

Images (from top).

Green Porno - Isabella Rossellini

Needles & Opium - Robert Lepage production

An Iliad - Denis O'Hare