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| Neil Armfield's production of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. - Streaming at the 2021 Adelaide Festival |
Artistic Directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy. General
Manager Elaine Chia. February 26 – March 14 2021. Bookings:
adelaidefestival.com.au, Bass 131246.
Previewed by
Peter Wilkins
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| Co-Artistic Directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy |
Adelaide’s
illustrious arts festival narrowly escaped the unexpected impact of the Corona
virus in 2020. Co-Artistic Directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy’s highly
successful fourth annual festival was granted a dispensation so that it could
continue to offer its final days of the festival that came to an auspicious end
on the Ides of March. On March 22nd Australia closed its borders and
the nation went into virtual lockdown in a desperate attempt to protect the
people from the pandemic. This had a devastating effect on the arts industry
nationally and South Australia’s various festivals in particular. This year the
Adelaide Festival will go ahead from February 26th to March 14th,
with observance of the Covid restrictions. International companies will not be
bringing their live productions to Adelaide. Covid restrictions such as social
distancing will have a considerable effect on ticket sales and income. The uncertainty of border closures and
possible lockdowns adversely threatened the arrival of visitors from other
states and Armfield and Healy and their team at the Adelaide Festival office
faced a swathe of probable upsets. These are challenges that also confront the director
of Writer’s Week Jo Dyer and Ian Scobie who directs Womad, both of which come under
the umbrella of the Adelaide Festival.
“We didn’t want
to begin with how hard it’s been.” Armfield and Healy write in their
introduction to this year’s brochure.”It’s been hard for everyone.” At the
start of our conversation I mention to Healy that in Chinese the characters
that make up the word for crisis contain the meaning of opportunity. A glance
through the programme reveals the determination of all artists and companies to
seize the opportunity to make the 17 days and nights a festival “of beauty and ideas, of pleasures
and joys. And revelation.”
From the free
opening event, featuring the amazing Jessica Mauboy to the closing indigenous
Hip Hop Finale, featuring the phenomenal talents of Ziggy Ramo, JK-47, Jimblah
and J-Milla, the 2021 Adelaide Festival has turned the crisis that has gripped
the world into an opportunity to bring to audiences the very best that the arts
have to offer.
More than that,
Armfield and Healey have grabbed the chance to view the festival that is
designed to bring people together in a new light. Inspired by a visit to the
Darwin Festival in August last year Healy really began to distill the essence
of what makes the Adelaide Festival the Adelaide Festival. “Darwin’s Festival
was such a reminder that after so many months of fear and isolation being without
people was a source of great anxiety. In some ways the opportunity to come
together in a Covid safe way, share a drink and a meal at a stage with music
performance of some kind is such a primal need for everyone and it was a back
to basics experience and so joyous. It was a reminder that people need to be
with each other with performance at its centre. Being with each other is what
it comes down to.”
This epiphany
was the inspiration for the inclusion in the programme of Ngarku’adlu, an exclusive four course dinner with South Australian
gin and wines on the final weekend of the festival. Surrounded by the unique
collection at the South Australian Museum and in collaboration with the
University of Adelaide, the meal will be prepared by the finest First Nation
chefs and suppliers interwoven with stories and knowledge shared by the
cultural leaders of the Kaurna, Adnyamathanha, Ngarrindjeri and Narrunga
nations. Healy explains. “We felt that the one thing that was really obvious
apart from the fact that we want to be together and need to be together as a
species was that we have been ransacking supermarkets and stockpiling toilet
paper and pasta, but we have not learnt from the opportunity to learn from the
original custodians of the land. And learn how we feed ourselves from the land
we live and work on.”
Circumstance
drives innovation. The fact that one project involving performers from fourteen
African nations could not come to the festival prompted a search for greater
Australian ventures. Some shows that had been programmed for ’22 and ’23 were
brought forward. One on One concerts were adopted from a German lockdown
innovation whereby an audience member would be taken to an unannounced place to
meet a musician. They would sit and gaze at each other for a while in a mutual
connection that would culminate in the musician then playing a piece of music
for that individual audience member. “ Live performance is that exchange
between the performer and the artist, the gift that an artist needs to give and
that nourishes the audience” Healy says.
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| BLKDOG Photo by Camilla Greenwell |
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| Robin Frohardt - THE PLASTIC BAG STORE |
Other surprises wait in store for Adelaide audiences accustomed to innovation and experimentation. New York installation artist and puppeteer will confront and amaze people with her free installation in the city’s Rundle Mall. Robin Frohardt will bring The Plastic Bag Store to Adelaide for the first time outside New York. Audiences enter a constructed supermarket in which everything in the store is made out of plastic bags gathered on the streets of New York. People who reserve tickets will also be given a free tour by Frohart, guaranteed to make you never see a supermarket in the same light again. Healy urges me to watch the trailer to whet the appetite for this thought-provoking experience.
It is time to
turn attention back to Australian highlights in the programme. “Neil and I
really love bringing back those absolutely seminal moments of Australian
Theatre.” It was quite by chance that
Back to Back Theatre was remounting its work, Small Metal Objects, which I had seen performed at the Flinders
Street Station during a Melbourne Festival many years before. This will be the
first time that Back to Back Theatre has given a public performance for
Adelaide audiences. Disabled performers explore the notion of how a person’s
worth may be determined by their productivity. Sitting with earphones to catch
the snatches of dialogue, this is street theatre with a difference, a
revelation that remains vivid in my memory all these years later.
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| Small Metal Objects |
Neil Armfield
was not present at our discussion. He is far too busy, having to supervise the
streaming of his production of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Festival’s new Hub The Summerhouse as well as direct the
Australian premiere of A German Life
by Christopher Hampton with Australia’s legendary actress, Robin Nevin in the
role of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbel’s secretary during the Second World War. Healy
saw Dame Maggie Smith play the role at The Bridge Theatre in London and has no
doubts that Nevin’s performance will be electric.
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| Robyn Nevin in A German Life. Photo James Green |
In a festival
not to be missed, Healy and Armfield have stood by that age old theatre saying
“The show must go on” And what a show it has turned out to be!
Adelaide
Festival
February 26 –
March 14
Bookings:
Adelaidefestival.com.au
Book at BASS on
131246
