Adelaide Festival 2017
Artistic Directors Neil Armfield AO and Rachel Healy. Adelaide Festival Centre and AC Arts. March 2-19. Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au. Bass 131 246
Preview Feature by Peter Wilkins
Co-Artistic Director, Rachel Healy
flicks through the pages of the 2017 Adelaide Festival Programme. Barrie Kosky’s
Glyndebourne Production of Handel’s Saul –
exclusive. Thomas Ostermeier’s thrilling Richard
lll – exclusive. Neil Armfield’s acclaimed production of Kate Grenville’s The Secret River, adapted by Andrew
Bovell and staged in a quarry- exclusive. Rufus Wainwright – exclusive. Concerto Italiano. Radical music from
Italy, La Gaia Scienza, Peter the Wolf with Miriam Margoyles.
Dance work from Israel, L-E-V and Gala from France. And so the list goes
on.
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| Handel's Saul. Directed by Barrie Kosky. Photo: Bill Cooper |
It is the first time that the Adelaide Festival Board has appointed two
leading figures of Australian theatre to co-direct this flagship annual event.
Adelaide born and educated, Rachel Healy brings a wealth of experience as an
administrator and producer to the job. Neil Armfield AO is recognized as Australia’s
leading director of theatre, opera and film. Both have worked together at
Belvoir Theatre and now they face the huge task of creating a festival
programme to appeal to all and maintain a tradition that has presented some of
the world’s finest artists across all art forms for the past fifty six years.
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| The Secret River by Kate Grenville. Adapted by Andrew Bovell Directed by Neil Armfield. Photo: Adelaide Festival Media |
“We’ve got a shared vision and
its role in society and its importance” Healy tells me. “This job is an
opportunity in many ways to take my knowledge from working at Belvoir, the
Sydney Opera House, and the City of Sydney, and my thinking into a single
pursuit and join Neil in doing that. I have learnt to understand what festivals
offer to the psyche of a city and the cultural life of a city.”
Healy acknowledges that both she and
Armfield have been guided by the influence that the Adelaide Festival has had
over their lives. Born and educated in Adelaide, Healy has grown up with the
Adelaide Festival. “It was witnessing in my adolescent and teenage years what the
Adelaide Festival was and why it was so
special. I felt very conscious of the kind of influence it had on me, and a
sense it had of not only bringing the greatest artists of the world to the city
but also the value of the arts.”
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| Peter and the Wolf with Miriam Margoyles and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. Photo: Shane Reid |
“There is a reason that it is
seen as one of the top three festivals in the world with Edinburgh and
Festival d'Avignon. It’s a small city. It’s a walkable city, and it really can embrace
having a festival in March that can dominate in a way that Sydney can’t. Along
with the Fringe, all the promises that festivals have to make about vibrancy
are delivered in spades.”
In creating their programme for
the 2017 Adelaide Festival, Healey and Armfield saw their first festival as
being upheld by four pillars: The
Riverbank Palais, a recreation of Adelaide’s floating Palais of the 1920s,
which will also serve as the Festival Club on the Torrens River; Neil Armfield’s
reimagined production of The Secret River
in a quarry in the Adelaide Hills; Barrie Kosky’s universally acclaimed
production of Handel’s opera Saul,
direct from the Glyndebourne Festival, and a spectacular opening event yet to be
announced in January. This conceptual framework has emerged from a sense that
the world is festivalising. A festival model allows one to rouse general
audience interest and a media buzz. “It’s a much more interesting way of
generating broader interest in the work that you are presenting.” Healy says.
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| Betroffenheit from Canada. Photo: Wendy D |
Healy and Armfield are determined
to present works of a really significant scale that are entirely unique to the
Adelaide Festival. They have drawn on the festivals of the past to select works
that are absolutely the best of their art form. Armfield and Healey have given
the nod to Peter Brook’s past production of The Mahabharata in a quarry during a previous
festival, but Armfield’s restaged production of The Secret River presents one of our own stories
with its own primal qualities. It is a story largely untold and disputed.
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| L-E-V from Israel. Killer Pig. Photo: Gil Shani |
“The Adelaide Festival has always
wanted to try something more risky, more challenging and more spectacular. The
Riverbank Palais is an example of a programme that is wildly ambitious. It is
such a great story and largely unknown. It celebrates our history but is still
very contemporary with a contemporary design and approach. The “Taj Mahal of
the Torrens” was once “the most distinctive and beautiful place of
entertainment in the Commonwealth” It sank after a series of mysterious
explosions and now the Festival will revive the spirit of the glittering
floating ballroom along Adelaide’s Elder Park. Food, drink, entertainment and
hearty conversation will recall a bygone era of ballroom dancing and elegant
nightlife as phoenix-like the floating Palais will become the hub of the
Adelaide Festival.
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| Gardens Speak from UK and Lebanon. by Tania El Khoury Photo by Jessi Hunniford |
In putting the programme together
with Armfield, Healy has been fascinated by the linkages between what different
artists on different continents are exploring. “I think that the question of
land, and of our connection to land is something that comes up all the time.
Obviously in The Secret River it’s a central
theme. Also in Gardens Speak by Tania
El Khoury, an installation from the United Kingdom and Lebanon, the theme
emerges with powerful effect. Ten audience members at a time, clothed in
raincoats, are invited to dig into the earth to discover the stories of those
murdered during the 2011 uprising by the Assad regime. The dead were not
allowed to have public funerals, so they were buried by relatives and friends
in back yards. “The macro issue is about what’s happened in Syria," Healy
explains, "as well as the personal stories and experiences of how personal
space for burial has been found. It’s a fantastic way in which artists can do
what artists can do which is not reportage or documentary. You learn something
but you are transported through the creative imagination of the artists
involved.”
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| Chamber Landscapes. Curated by Anna Goldsworthy. Photo by Randy Larcombe |
The chamber music series, Chamber Landscapes, curated by Anna
Goldsworthy, will focus on a weekend of Schubert in a natural environment. The
music of the original roving composer will traverse both inner and outer
landscapes, accompanied by an Australian composer, responding to the landscape
at the Ukaria Cultural Centre in Mount Barker.
As well as embracing the epic
themes of the landscape, the Festival also offers profound personal insights
into the human condition. William Yang and Annette Shun Wah explore the contemporary
Asian- Australian experience in The
Backstories. Wot No Fish from the
UK tells a deeply moving and uplifting story of an East End Jew who would draw
on people’s wage packets as a way of celebrating their relationship. MDLSX, adapted from Jeffrey Eugenides’ book
Middlesex, also uses personal testimony
as platinum-maned punk goddess Silvia Calderoni tells
her own story of questioning gender in an empowering hymn to androgyny. These
are shows that share the personal stories of the outsider. “They provide
powerful links with identity and our own sense of self.” says Healy.
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| MDLSX with Silvia Calderoni. Photo: Simone Stanislai |
“The thing that excites me most,”
Healy adds,” is presenting works that I can say hand on heart you will
absolutely not be able to see in any other context and that anyone who is
excited about the opportunity truly great works by the greatest artists of our
generation are going to be able to see it in Adelaide. For example, Saul is not just Barrie Kosky at the
top of his form. According to Neil Armfield, he feels that Kosky is completely
breaking open the art form for generations to come. It is so thrilling, so
exciting and the musicality is perfect.”
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| Wot No Fish at AC Arts. Photo by Danny Braverman |
Armfield and Healy have
programmed the Festival so that people can optimize their time while in Adelaide.
At the first weekend, it is possible to see the very best at night, while
catching Betroffenheit, the Canadian Dance work at a five o’clock session and
also enjoying Writer’s Week during the day. “It’s a fantastic weekend to be
there.” Healy says.
Adelaide Festival
March 3-19 2017
Book at adelaidefestival.com.au Bass 131 246
