Adapted from Media Release. 13 Mar 2018
WOMADelaide 2018 wrapped up on Monday 12th March after four days of spectacular performances and an attendance of 96,000 people. The audience was held spellbound by an especially grand-scale, dazzling program that took them on a unique and memorable adventure through the world of music, arts and dance.
The 2018 program featured standout performances from more than 70 groups from 25 countries, including truly mesmerising shows on the Foundation Stage by Anoushka Shankar on opening night, the brilliance of American jazz maestro Kamasi Washington on Sunday and a powerhouse finale from Thievery Corporation.
With such a vast and diverse array of performers, organisers say it is not easy to list only a few highlights, however Tank and the Bangas’ Tarriona ‘Tank’ Ball had the audience in the palm of her hand within moments of their opening night set, the ‘bad boys of jazz’, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, conquered all who saw them, as did the elegance and vocal mastery of Cuba’s young Daymé Arocena and Cape Verde’s Lura.
Australia’s Baker Boy, Remi x Sampa and The Avalanches attracted great audiences, while Dustyesky’s delightfully tongue-in-cheek 28-strong all-male choir beautifully complemented Mama Kin Spender’s rich, warm songs accompanied by a 24-piece local choir. Thousands also flocked to Frome Park to experience the thrilling and visually spectacular Manganiyar Seduction from India.
A resounding highlight of the festival, Gratte Ciel’s Place des Anges, delighted young and old with a magical aerial spectacular as the visiting ‘Angels’ danced lighting up the skies above the treetops each night, filling everyone with joy and wonder.
WOMADelaide Director Ian Scobie said he had been “thrilled to witness the joyous reaction of audiences – and to see so many people experience WOMADelaide.”
He added that “we were blessed by ‘Angels’ both on, off and above the stages and the memories will linger for many years and [continue to] inspire audiences…”.
On reflection of the wonderful performances, Scobie said it “has been a joy… to see that some of the biggest crowds were for artists perhaps lesser-known in Australia, such as Pat Thomas & Kwashibu Area Band from Ghana, Violons Barbares from France/Bulgaria/Mongolia and the youthful Elephant Sessions from Scotland.”
WOMADelaide fans now have to wait another year before the next WOMADelaide will be celebrated from 8-11 March 2019 in Botanic Park, Adelaide, South Australia.
Photography by Paul Rodda
Now established as a vital, vigorous and ground-breaking Fringe Festival entity, Holden Street Theatres is spreading its entrepreneurial wings with programs for Adelaide’s other important festivals: the Festival of Ideas, the Cabaret Festival, and the Feast Festival.
First up, in July, it is throwing a truly thrilling and deeply provocative show into the wonderful Festival of Ideas. Locker Room Talk springs from Donald Trump’s now famous justification for demeaning women in the name of the locker room. Holden Street’s Martha Lott, defines it as “a searing social commentary”.
And it is just the beginning of a wealth of new programming.
The secret to Holden Street’s success as a beyond-the-CBD Fringe venue has been its curated programs.
Director Martha Lott has made a point of importing the crème de la crème of Edinburgh Festival theatre and presenting Fringe seasons of new-wave or simply high calibre theatre. With a bar, food trucks and easy parking, Holden Street has been the upmarket Fringe of the Fringe, serving a demographic of serious art lovers and a wealth of drama and media students. It has become the “home of theatre” and some people spend their whole Fringes down there.
Thus with her venue well and truly front-of-mind among Adelaide audiences, Lott is using her entrepreneurial skills and her canny instinct for what will thrill an audience to spread her programs throughout the year. She discovered Locker Room Talk in Edinburgh in 2017. When she approached the Festival of Ideas chair Greg Mackie and Executive Producer, Sandy Verschoor, about bringing it here to the Festival of Ideas, she says the reception was very positive.
The established reputations of Holden Street and the famous Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh were clear credentials for this Rapid Response Theatre production, not to mention its sell-outs in Dublin and London.
Misogyny is a hot issue which is not threatening to go off the boil any time soon. This show looks at it in a very alternative and arresting manner.
It is not conventional theatre as understood by many. It involves recordings relayed via headphones and performed verbatim by a cast of women. It is all about the inequality of women. The women convey the words of men about women. These quotes have been gleaned through hundreds of conversations with men and boys. The idea explores the rights and wrongs, the thens and nows, honesty and ignorance and whether our world is as progressive as we like to think it is.
The concept was developed by Traverse Theatre’s Associate artist Gary McNair who with Traverse Theatre's Artistic Director Orla O’Loughlin, is a leader of Rapid Response Theatre. They’re considered to be two of the most important theatre makers of our time and will be interacting with Adelaide actors and theatre workers when bringing the work to town. Local actors will be involved.
Lott is jubilant that she has secured this controversial show not just for Holden Street but with a place in the Festival of Ideas.
“It is vital that we represent current issues in the arts and this is a brilliant example of how this can occur successfully,” she says.
Hereafter, her plans will fill the year not only with the usual in-house productions and relationships with exciting new Adelaide theatre companies such as Red Phoenix, which are a product of Holden Street’s creative umbrella, but with new shows tailored to the city’s busy arts calendar.
Hence, there will also be Cabaret Fringe Festival fare in June and Feast Festival fare in November.
Samela Harris
More info: holdenstreettheatres.com
The German Club. Adelaide Fringe 2018. 16 Feb 2018
The guided media tour around The German Club’s performance spaces - still being set up with seats, tech and rigging -by GC Co-Director Colin Koch AM, serves a significant purpose.
With sparse, focused intent Koch offers a succinct rundown of each room’s role, capacity and theme as part of The German Club for its iteration as a Fringe performance venue.
A strong sense of the German community this club represents is established alongside the genres of each room. By the time the media tour party arrive back in the club Bistro, it is also apparent how incredibly easy the building is to navigate, with bars and restaurant perfectly placed to sustain a vibrant, flowing social energy within.
Koch, a Member of the Order of Australia and seasoned contributor to the arts industry nationally and internationally, muses on the The GC’s role in terms of programming since its inception in 2016.
Koch tells us it is about reconnecting an older audience; those not feeling in sync with the ‘pop up venue culture’; those not up for the long and winding venue queues.
The answer is its music program, abetted by cabaret. Most particularly the In Concert series The GC inaugurated in 2016.
Koch and Co-Director Alan Rosewarne partnered with Rob Pippan’s RRP event company in 2016 to curate In Concert 1 series. In Concert 3 series will follow on from the clear success of the first two years.
Pippan and Koch are old school rock and roll/blues musos with a deep love of what is best in Australian and South Australian music. Pippan is proudly evangelistic as he outlines the third concert series, which is to be expected from a 40 year music industry veteran who’s worked with the who’s who of the game, including the band he founded, Zep Boys, the late Doc Neeson of The Angels, Joe Camelleri of The Black Sorrows, Russell Morris and most especially pertinent to today’s event, Glenn Shorrock of Little River Band, who is the In Concert Series 3 headline act.
It’s a program very much about respect for the history of these bands’ role in Australian music culture, especially given Shorrock is about to write his memoir.
Local bands get a go too, with The Flaming Sambucas offering The ABBA Gold Show and Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - A Tribute to the Songs of Elton John, Rumours offer The Fleetwood Mac Show while Andy Seymour’s Buddy Diamond 1960 – A Night at The Stardust is his new show.
David O’Brien
Where: 223 Flinders Street Adelaide
Program details: thegcadelaide.com.au
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
The river Palais is coming back to glorious life. Hooray.
For almost a year, people have grumbled that its hibernation shape was blot on the riverscape.
Now, as the Festival opens up its 2018 program, it glows with promise of beautiful sounds, sights, concepts and tastes.
By night, it will throb with music, laughter and celebration.
But first thing in the morning, it has a very special magic.
It is the clever thinkspace of the Adelaide Festival.
As the fragrance of fresh coffee wafts across the water, people gather for Breakfast with the Papers.
This is when ideas are spun, when satirical quips fly and when caustic commentaries whip across the crisp pages of the morning papers.
This is when journalists come out to play with literary identities, when Writers’ Week and local scribes cross paths and when bright and curious Adelaideans can have the best free entertainment.
Breakfast with the Papers was introduced last year, its lively interactions instantly demonstrating its staying power as a Festival event.
This year, with CIBO Espresso coffee on hand alongside the papers courtesy of The Advertiser, Tom Wright again will host the morning current affairs show bringing together panels of interesting media brains - from visiting Festival identities to familiar local journalists, from renown writers to specialist academics - a new crop each morning.
The Palais opens its doors at 7am when the Torrens waters shimmer in the morning calm and the odd swans glide by. It pays to arrive early to beat the coffee queue. But this gives some reflective time to browse the free copies of the paper before their contents are dissected.
I had the pleasure last Festival of being one of Tom Wright’s panellists in a session with American political analyst Thomas Frank from Writers’ Week and fellow Aussie journalist Peter Cave. It was good grist on the American political front whence I had just returned from a 6-month road trip around the USA observing the rise and rise and then election of Donald Trump. The world was still numb with shock.
It was exciting to see the Palais filling up with interesting Festival and community personalities. Even the Festival’s artistic directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healey, can’t resist joining these audiences. This year, with the Trump regime’s Tweet-driven madness reverberating through the world, the political discussions promise to be wild with Australian politics also sitting right up there in the controversial hot seat.
Breakfast with the Papers, along with David Marr’s Festival Forums on the Palais, are free events.
They are part of a diverse 47-event program which will keep the Palais bubbling along from morning until deepest dark for 17 festive days.
By night it becomes a floating music mecca with bright lights laughter and cocktails. Top acts will perform, from sweet melodic lilting folk sounds like Julia Jacklin and divine Lior, to Archie Roach AM and the Perfumed Genius and Grizzly Bear and Regurgitator. Heels will kick up and the water below will shimmy to the tempos.
At lunchtime on the Palais, it is another story altogether.
Foodies will unite in this glorious foodie city.
The Palais will assume a gourmet mantle hosting luscious Long Lunch events catered by top chefs. Obviously, these gourmet happenings aren’t freebies like Breakfast with the Papers or the David Marr forums. They’re $169 a head and are exquisite gustatory adventures delivered by the foodie stars of the moment from here and afar. Needless to say, they’re pretty hot ticket events. Book now.
All the details can be found on the links below.
Samela Harris
The Palais
Where: Adelaide Riverbank and Elder Park
When: 2 to 18 March
Visit: adelaidefestival.com.au for exact times
Festival hospitality options are available.
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au or BASS 131 246
Long Lunches Program
Sun 4 Mar - O Tama Carey
Sat 10 Mar - Jared Ingersoll
Sun 11 Mar - Alex Herbert
Mon 12 Mar - Jordan Theodoros
Sun 18 Mar - Janet Jeffs
Time: 11.45am – 3pm
Cost: $169 per person. Transaction fees apply
Breakfast with the Papers
Palais open from 7am daily
Hosted panel session 8 to 9am
No sessions Friday 2 Mar & Mon 5 Mar
Free Entry – No bookings required
Festival Forums
Fri 2 Mar 12.30pm
Mon 5 Mar to Fri 9 Mar 12.30pm
Tue 13 Mar to Fri 16 Mar 12.30pm
Duration 1hour
Free Entry – no bookings required
Wow! A kick butt statement! How else to ponder allowing a very young emerging arts company to launch its 2018 season in the Balcony Room of South Australia’s Parliament House?
The evening proved revelatory.
With a short rush of play from three characters of Stephen Sewell’s Welcome The Bright World, which House of Sand and State Theatre Company of South Australia are presenting next year, a story unfolded, overlooking the big renovation of the Adelaide Festival Centre.
Artistic Director Charles Sanders and I chatted. We narrowed down on something important which is a problem that dates back to the 90’s… in Adelaide especially. How do you get to be a developing second tier artist or company in South Australia, let alone anywhere else? When funding decisions have essentially destroyed the sector connecting arts and community?
The answer? Cross collaboration, within the state and around the nation.
Sanders expressed it well in his speech, observing, “South Australia has been wonderful at investing in the hardware that makes theatre possible — theatres and festivals and institutions. And we’ve got some amazing ‘software’ too, wonderful major companies and independent artists doing wonderful work. But I’d hazard to suggest there’s a ‘gap’ in the software — through no lack of trying by many, many skilled and talented individuals and collectives, there’s not enough high quality, independent theatre by early and mid-career artists, supported by decent company structures… We need the work to fill all these shiny new buildings.”
Sanders has been dividing his time between Adelaide and Sydney and joins another Adelaide force of this cross-state-creative-nature existent on stage, isthisyours. They just completed a season at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Adelaide of Angelique, but individually divide their time on income making projects interstate or overseas. However, they remain dedicated to making work in Adelaide.
The cross-state collaboration is becoming markedly a new model for those small companies we know and love. Even more, you can take it overseas as Sanders has done in New Zealand. Two works of House of Sand 2018 programme, dance theatre works, have played to award winning success in New Zealand last year, Pedals and Castles.
Rolling through the House of Sand 2018 program, all of the above becomes wonderfully evident in the potential offered and hope given for ‘home’ made excellence.
Sanders’ programme is a ‘hella yeah’ blend of dance, politics and theatre stretching from the aforementioned production of Sewell’s Welcome The Bright World to hard-hitting, hard to get performing rights of Alice Birch’s Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.
I’d go. I’ve spent a quarter century supporting this kind of gutsiness.
David O’Brien
What: Pedals. Castle
When: 8 Feb to 7 March
Where: Holden Street Theatres
What: Welcome The Bright World
When: 20 Sept to 6 Oct 2018
Where: Queens Theatre
What: Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.
When: 20 Nov to 1 Dec
Where: Holden Street Theatres