SYDNEY FESTIVAL 2012 THEATRE AND DANCE

The program for the 2012 Sydney Festival, running from January 7 - 29, has been announced.

Sydney Festival includes theatre, dance, music, exhibitions, film and talks that takes over the city, celebrating Australian work as well as welcoming international companies. The Festival features free large-scale outdoor events including concerts and performances.

Festival Director Lindy Hume said, “Our festival exists, in part, to hold a mirror up to our city each year. As Sydney looks to its future, so must we. The 2012 Sydney Festival looks toward the horizon with a truly global summertime celebration of our shared humanity, of Australian innovation and of two dynamic communities with the potential to shape our city's future cultural identity: Sydney's second CBD, Parramatta and Redfern – Australia's ‘black capital’.

“Sydney's summertime lustre makes our city the ideal showcase for the world's great artists. In 2012 we welcome back to our global gathering some important world names who we know are favourites in Sydney, as well as many wonderful global artists and companies performing for the first time in Australia at Sydney Festival.” Ms Hume said.

The 2012 Festival is Director Lindy Hume’s final of three Festivals, and looks both near and far, celebrating uniquely Australian work as well as welcoming companies from all over the world. 

For 2012, supplementary funding from the State Government, matched by an increased commitment by Parramatta City Council, has enabled Sydney Festival to significantly expand its program in Parramatta as the focus of its activities in Western Sydney.  Building on Sydney Festival’s commitment to presenting work in Western Sydney since 2003, this increased funding facilitated the Festival to present this comprehensive ten-day Festival of free and ticketed events.

This newest addition to the Festival’s program, Sydney Festival Parramatta, will be staged in the true heart of Sydney’s burgeoning population. A feast for everyone, with free opening and closing events, the program also includes a whole host of music, theatre and cabaret in Riverside Theatres and Sydney’s newest venue, the Idolize Spiegeltentin Prince Alfred Park.

Image: Ferrython - First Light Photography

Theatre and Dance Program.

A History of Everything – Ontroerend Goed (Belgium/Australia)

A History of Everything, commissioned by Sydney Theatre Company, has its world premiere as part of Sydney Festival in 2012. The production is the fruition of a collaborative venture between members of STC’s The Residents and Ontroerend Goed.

Under the direction of Ontroerend Goed Artistic Director, Alexander Devriendt, the ensemble try to reach the vastness of the ungraspable, astronomical history of our world and universe, from their own very personal points of view. The performance moves backwards in time, presenting the world map first as its current day Eurocentric representation, back to the original super continent Pangaea.

Based on the works of Richard Dawkins on evolution theory, Brian Greene on cosmology and E.H. Gombrich’s A Little History of the World, the aim is to present a history of everything, from the big bang up until today.

A European tour of A History of Everything follows the Sydney Festival world premiere.

Black Capital (Australia) - 181 Regent St Addressing Black Theatre, I Am Eora, Travelling Colony and Walk a Mile in My Shoes.

Sydney Festival 2012 celebrates Sydney’s unique history and potential with Black Capital, a series of performances, seminars and exhibitions reflecting Sydney's diverse contemporary Indigenous culture in Carriageworks in the heart of Redfern.

The centrepiece is a new work, I Am Eora, a theatre/music/film event that tells the stories of Sydney's Aboriginal cultural continuity, celebrating its heroes and embracing the sacred heart of our city.  Close to fifty Aboriginal musicians, performers and creative artists from across the country will come together for one of the most thrilling collaborations ever commissioned by Sydney Festival.

Black Capital is a celebration of the diversity and scope of contemporary Aboriginal practice in Sydney. Everything about this project, from the cheeky name to the program itself, has been developed through regular consultation with a specially-convened advisory panel of community representatives and Aboriginal organisations.

Redfern is a place of many stories, of inspirational leaders, of fiery rhetoric and political activism – an urban meeting place for Aboriginal Australians from all over the country.

Sometimes besieged, always resilient, at Redfern’s core is its thriving and dynamic community. Its home to many of Australia’s political and cultural trailblazers, artists, leaders and citizens who vigorously offer Sydney-siders an alternative history and, potentially, our alternative future.

Image: I Am Eora. Photogrpaher:  Lisa Tomasetti

Anatomy of an Afternoon – Martin del Amo & Paul White (Australia)

From choreographer Martin del Amo and Australian dancer Paul White, the world premiere of a new solo dance work, Anatomy of an Afternoon.

This dream-like meditation on the mysterious nature of the afternoon is a highly original re-imagining of Vaslav Nijinsky’s legendary ballet L’Après-midi d’un Faune (The Afternoon of a Faun). Tapping the radical spirit of this modernist masterpiece, del Amo translates its enigmatic power and allure into the 21st century.

On a stripped-back stage, multiple-award winning dancer Paul White navigates an imaginary landscape full of hidden dangers and secret pleasures. Veering between animalistic grace and menace, his body is in constant transformation - sometimes languid, sometimes explosive, always unpredictable.

This intimate new dance work is complemented by a haunting score from composer Mark Bradshaw played live by a small ensemble, combining field recordings and sound collage.

Assembly – Chunky Move and Victorian Opera (Australia)

The final work as artistic director of Chunky Moves by Gideon Obarzanek is a collaboration with the Victorian Opera’s Music Director Richard Gill, and featuring Sydney Philharmonia Choir.

Assembly draws together dance, theatre and voice to explore the motion of crowds. With more than 60 performers on stage, this epic and ambitious production combines the force and agility of eight of Chunky Move's most exceptional dancers with waves of medieval and contemporary choral music from six Principal Singers and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, shifting the action between perfect order and the unpredictable clamour of the mob.

As striking patterns evolve from chaotic rabbles, musical harmony emerges from dissonant voices, as Assembly’s action shifts between mesmeric visualisations of crystalline order, to the unpredictable clamour of the seething mass.

Beautiful Burnout – Frantic Assembly & National Theatre of Scotland (UK)

From the sweat-and-sawdust world of a boxing ring, Beautiful Burnoutis about those soul-sapping three- minute rounds that mark which young boxers become gods and which gods become mortal.

Inspired by the physicality of the sport and the ensuing moral debate on the merits of boxing, this unique piece of theatre combines voice, text, technology and movement to explore this punishing sport and its seductive influence on all those who enter the boxing ring.

Beautiful Burnout is highly physical theatre that immerses the audience in the world of boxing. Beautiful Burnoutis an assault on the senses, challenging any preconceptions about the most controversial contact sport of our time.

In Beautiful Burnout, Tony-nominated playwright Bryony Laverygives voice to working class youth seeking transcendent ways to escape, with an athletic cast sweating, skipping and punching at the dreams and terrors of gifted young boxers. Told from the ring on a revolving stage, against banks of screens, this is spectacular storytelling underpinned by the pulsing heartbeat of music by Underworld.

Buried City – Urban Theatre Projects/Belvoir (Australia)

Late one night in the gutted façade of a building slated for redevelopment, a group of security workers, labourers and a local teenager find themselves haunting the same territory.

Through their interactions an allegory of a city that is recreating itself in a post industrial and trasnational image emerges. Belvoir has joined forces with Urban Theatre Projects (UTP) and Sydney Festival to create this big-picture show about how people and cities redefine themselves.

Over the past decade, UTP’s Artistic Director Alicia Talbot has developed unique processes where individuals and industry professionals from outside of the arts are positioned as experts within the devising process, attending rehearsals on a regular basis to contribute dramaturgical advice. This critical feedback greatly impacts on the believability and authenticity of the work. For individuals and communities who have had the experience of being ignored, stereotyped or vilified, being involved in a process where their words and opinions are integral to the work is a very powerful experience.

Buried City has been created in dialogue with individuals associated with the CFMEU and in particular their Retired Members Association, the Workplace Tragedy Support Group, Gadigal Information Service Aboriginal Corporation, African Women Australia Inc and the Les Tobler Construction Training Centre.

Foley – Ilbijerri Theatre Company (Australia)

Political agitator Gary Foleypresents a swag of stories from a life lived in the spirit of resistance. From the frontlines of black activism to the halls of mainstream culture, Foley presents a colourful personal history and a dissident narrative of an Australian half-century.

For more than 40 years, Foley has been deeply involved in the continuing struggle against foreign invasion. As activist, academic and actor, he’s been one of the key figures in ensuring that the Aboriginal experience is not written out of this land’s history. Having spent decades spinning the yarns of black Australia, both past and present, he now uses his well-honed skills as troublemaker, teacher and teller of tales to bring his experiences to the stage, in an explosive event that weaves his extraordinary life around the major happenings that have shaped modern Australia.

Entertaining and challenging, Foleyis as much a personal narrative as it is an account of an untold Australian history. From land rights to native title, from treaty to reconciliation, from the referendum to the embassy, from black power to black pride, Foley, with characteristic dark humour, chronicles his life and times in what promises to be an engrossing tale of resistance and tenacity.

Foleyis directed by Rachael Maza and produced by Ilbijerri Theatre Company, the longest running Indigenous theatre company in Australia.

I’m Your Man – Roslyn Oades (Australia)

Belvoir’s Downstairs Theatre will be converted into a boxing gym: a place of dreams, of glory, of a better life. The walls are covered in inspirational quotes, bodies are in constant motion and minds are elsewhere. The stakes are high. Everyone wants to be special; we all have something to prove; and the only thing that’s certain – no matter how high you fly, you will eventually lose. A sweaty, energy-fuelled study of a contemporary masculine drama, I’m Your Man will situate the audience in the moment, at the centre of the action.

For 18 months theatre-maker Roslyn Oades (Stories of Love and Hate) and her trusty tape recorder followed a determined young boxer from Bankstown through his preparations for a world-title fight. I’m Your Man is the story of those she met along the way: past legends, up-and-comers and failed contenders whose lives have been irreversibly changed by the fight game.

I’m Your Man is no ordinary slice-of-life. The actors wear earpieces and take their words directly from the ringsides, gyms and dressing rooms of Oades’ recordings. Through the disciplined recreation of audio scripts in performance, I’m Your Man recontextualises rarely heard voices. The actors recite this audio script with absolute precision like a musician following a score, recreating the exact speech patterns of original interviewees. The result is an extraordinary, hyper-natural form of documentary theatre that evokes the essence of the audio source with fidelity – even if the performer is of a conflicting gender, age or racial background to the original speaker.

Babel – Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Damien Jalet & Antony Gormley (Belgium)

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet bring a company of 18 dancers and musicians to launch a swirling maelstrom of identity, ethnicity and culture in Babel, a Sydney Festival exclusive.

The Olivier Award winning Babel (Words) is the final installment in a triptych of works created by Cherkaoui. Collaborating with fellow Belgian Jalet and British sculptor Antony Gormley, this dance/theatre work explores the familiar terrain of human difference, the illusions that both divide and unite us, as well as the evolving boundaries and borders that shape the world.

Babel is accompanied by live music that draws on a range of eclectic influences, including medieval polyphonic chants, traditional Turkish music, Hindi beats and Japanese Kodo drumming.

Inspired by the biblical tale, Babel challenges the notion that we are divided through different languages, proposing instead that rhythm is a universal language.

Photographer: Koen BroosL

’Effet de Serge – Philippe Quesne/Vivarium Studio (France)

From Paris’ Vivarium Studioscomes the story of a man who loves to make a little bit of theatre every week. Every Sunday Serge invites his friends over for a parade of homespun spectacles, animating everything in his basement from small found objects to the toys on his ping pong table. With great care and gentleness, Serge puts a little magic back into their lives.

With a nod to Jacques Tati, Samuel Beckett and Mr Bean, L’Effet de Serge has been embraced by audiences across 20 countries. It is a haunting and humorous tribute to the pleasures and necessity of making art. In eccentric micro-performances lasting between one to three minutes, Serge creates surprise by means of the absurdities of the everyday. With remote-controlled toys, blue flares, lasers and flashing headlights, Serge animates a collection of odds and ends, creating an astounding fairy-tale world where these little bits and pieces temporarily spring to life.

I Am A Camera – William Yang (Australia)

Sydney photographer William Yangis renowned for his poignant work, exploring social diversity, belonging and travel. From behind the camera, Yang has connected with audiences around the world through his intimate photographs and observations of events and people around him.

Now Yang gets really personal. Intrigued by Facebook and the voyeurism it invites, I Am A Cameracombines spoken-word, projected images and music in this very engaging slideshow, opening the shutter on his own life with characteristic wry humour and emotional honesty.

In today’s world where image and technology are intrinsic to the way we view our ‘self’ and how others perceive ‘us’, Yang devises a unique work revealing how we capture and portray events central to our personal lives. Borrowing from celebrated gay author Christopher Isherwood, Yang says of his own life’s work “I am a camera, I witness marvelous events.”

I Am A Camerasees Yang collaborate for the first time with celebrated composer Elena Kats-Chernin, whose work for live cello and percussion drives Yang’s deeply-felt narrative and remarkable images.

Never Did Me Any Harm – Force Majeure (Australia)

Sydney Theatre Company opens its 2012 season with the premiere of Never Did Me Any Harm, a co-production with physical theatre company Force Majeure.

Drawing inspiration from Christos Tsiolkas’ best-selling novel The Slap, Force Majeure’s Artistic Director Kate Champion and dramaturg Andrew Upton, Sydney Theatre Company Co-Artistic Director, explore the diversity of attitudes to bringing up children in this unique dance theatre collaboration.

Set in a familiar, yet disconcertingly Lynchian, Australian backyard, the performers examine the complexities of parenting using a fusion of movement and text. Is the pressure to get it right overwhelming us? Are children today given too much choice? Are there too few boundaries? Are they protected from notions of failure? Are they sexualised too young?

Radio Muezzin – Stefan Kaegi/Rimini Protokoll (Germany/Egypt)

Radio Muezzinis a documentary theatre work that explores the changing role of muezzins – the men who call the city to prayer from the thousands of mosques across Egypt. Their livelihood of singing the daily call to prayer is threatened by a government decision to replace them – and Cairo’s cacophonous soundscape – with a centralised radio version.

In Radio Muezzin, four Egyptian muezzins from mosques in Cairo recount the rituals and practices that have given them such a distinct sense of purpose and spiritual identity. The muezzins share their stories, their fervour and their differences in this multimedia insight into the complexities of contemporary Egypt.

The setting of the mosque interior is augmented by multimedia screens projecting images of Cairo and its millions of people living alongside the muezzins’ distinctive adhan (religious incantations) that ring out across the city and the stage throughout the performance. Confronting the impact of technology on their lives, the muezzins reveal their fears for their future and their identity. In short, their whole sense of self is threatened as technological progress confronts the thousands of muezzins who call the city to prayer.

The four real muezzins who share their experiences are a blind Qur’an teacher who travels to the mosque in a minibus for two hours every day; a farmer’s son and former tank driver from Upper Egypt; an electrician who began to recite the Qur’an after a serious accident; and a bodybuilder and runner-up world champion in Qur’an recitation. In this production, they meet an engineer who learned to encode radio signals at the Aswan dam, and will be recording the streamlined adhan.

Performed in Arabic with English supertitles.

Image: Radio Muezzin. Stephan Kaegi at Rimini Protokoll

The Boys – Griffin Theatre Company (Australia)

Brett Sprague is just out of jail. Reunited with his mum Sandra and brothers Glenn and Stevie, he’s ready to reclaim his life. But things have changed while Brett’s been inside. Girlfriend Michelle may have moved on, Glenn’s moved out and Stevie’s about to be a dad. As Brett’s disruptive force takes hold, tensions flare and Brett embarks on a drink-fuelled rampage, sweeping his brothers along with him – with terrifying consequences.

In 1990 audiences were lining the streets to see the original Griffin production of The Boys, starring David Wenham in one of his first stage roles. Since then, it’s become a classic of the Australian stage and screen, winning along its way an AWGIE and four AFI Awards. Following the success of his sold out production of Speaking in Tongues, Artistic Director Sam Strong re-imagines another Griffin classic for a new generation and Sydney Festival.

The Boys is also a homecoming for some of its cast. Josh McConville burst onto the Griffin and Australian stage in 2009, winning the Best Newcomer Sydney Theatre Award for his performances in Strange Attractor and The Call for Griffin. Jeanette Cronin, who most recently starred in ABC’s Crownies, will be returning to the play after starring in the film of The Boys.

The List Operators Do Kids Do Compooters (Australia)

Switch off your “mother-bored” and get ready for endless belly-laughs as The Listies take on cyberspace, that interweb thingo, myface, spacebook and fart-ifical intelligence.

Raucous, slapstick, thoroughly entertaining and interactive, The Listiesmake adults giggle and kids shriek and squirm. No-one will be key-bored! Ages 5-12 terrabytes. Guaranteed not educational!

Following their smash hit debut at the 2010 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, The Lisites(aka Matt Kelly and Richard Higgins) have been in constant demand, performing and receiving rave reviews throughout Australia and Asia, including Sydney Children’s Festival, Adelaide Fringe, and Melbourne Comedy Festival.

Thyestes – Hayloft Project (Australia)

Ancient Greek legends have a reputation for getting more than a little bloody. Most ferocious of all is the tale of Thyestes, the deposed king whose sons were slaughtered and served as a feast to their unwitting father.

Dragging mythological atrocities into contemporary reality, fast-tracking director Simon Stone and The Hayloft Project transposes Seneca’s infamous epic into a series of domestic scenes around the banality and ordinariness of violence.

Terrifyingly observed, savagely comic and ultimately heartrending, Thyestesis a real and modern journey through the darkest of legends.

‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore – Cheek by Jowl (UK)

Following productions of The Changeling and The Duchess of Malfi, Cheek By Jowl returns to Jacobean tragedy with a new production of John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. In this violent and bloody drama, we watch a brother and sister's passionate descent into hell. Incest, morality, religion and corruption intertwine to make this play as shocking and controversial as it was almost 400 years ago.



Known for an intense yet informal rapport between actors and audience, Cheek by Jowl have toured to more than 40 countries with their thrilling versions of European classics.



Adam Buxton Presents BUG – (UK)

For the first time in Australia, comedian, music video fanatic and YouTube wrangler Adam Buxtonreveals his favourite, most weird and inspiring videos from the edge of the digital revolution.

Following sell-out runs at Edinburgh Festival Fringe and London’s British Film Institute, BUG mixes big screen clips with snappy quotes from YouTube critics and his own expert commentary and deadpan comedy.

BUG takes you by the mouse through the new democracy of video-making, celebrating well-known masters and newcomers on zero budgets, with hilarious insights into the online community.

This special show for Sydney Festival is a selection of Buxton's favourite videos from the swathe of work he has recently presented in London – prefaced by his own inimitable presentation and pick of online commentators.

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