Adelaide Festival Centre 2016 Season. 4 Nov 2015
OzAsia Festival, Guitar Festival, Adelaide Cabaret Festival, Adelaide Festival of Arts, inSPACE and Jerry Hall in The Graduate. This set of marquee events is well known. Jerry Hall you ask incredulously? (Good. You're paying attention.) Yes, Adelaide Festival Centre is presenting her as Mrs Robinson in 2016. The fact that the Adelaide Festival Centre is involved directly in these events, or via partnerships, is also well known. There's this sense the AFC is not only a building where exciting stuff happens, but once again a place where exciting stuff is created.
Back in the day, 1995 to be precise, the Adelaide Festival Centre (AFC) launched its World Theatre 1996 programme: A programme containing within it the best theatre Australia and overseas could offer. It was the culmination of an era in which the identity of the Adelaide Festival Centre as a producer/co-producer was clear and strong alongside its many partners and competitors nationally and locally. The AFC held its own as a recognised creative cultural identity rather than just a mere building in which work was shown.
How? Branding, brand development and identity: They're marketing terms and promotional practices central to getting the general public to remember a logo, associate it with a company name, what that company does and what product it produces. Consistently good product ensures not just good sales, but reinforces reputation and strong cultural identity and capital. The AFC mix then, was spot on.
Twenty years later, a slew of political, financial, infrastructure, cultural changes and difficult challenges have significantly impacted on the Adelaide Festival Centre, particularly from the late 90s to the mid 2000s. When Douglas Gautier, AFC CEO and Artistic Director took on running the organisation, he confessed to me in an interview published by dB Magazine in 2008 he was initially "not confident" about the company of which he was about to take the reins.
Since 2008, Gautier has led AFC out of debt, and rebuilt the organisation and its brand from something ‘old’, moribund and debt-ridden into something once again vibrant, alive and ‘new’. Straight after the Welcome to Country address, the AFC 2016 Season launch kicked off with a video address from Gautier. Reflective and wide ranging, Gautier’s address detailed the building’s rich history, the artists and big names it has hosted, and recent developments that have seen record numbers drawn to not just the building, but the newly landscaped surrounds as well.
Gautier's theme was clear: the AFC is again a cultural hub, a people's place, a collaborator, an innovator willing to lend its expertise, through creative and commercial partnerships, to both South Australian artistic companies and those further afield. Video interview spots at the AFC launch with staff including Programmers, Box Office, Head Chef and House Supervisor showed guests the sense of genuine humanity and passion at the core of the grand AFC edifice within which they work.
All this served to frame Director of Programming Liz Hawkins' peppy presentation of the 2016 season in a context putting more focus on 'AFC creates'. The AFC did create the marquee festivals mentioned above. It did put finance and resources towards commercial and in-development works. It is still innovating across markets and genres, as the new Onstage school holiday programme demonstrates. So flicking through the AFC 2016 Programme, you not only get tasty teasers for Festivals yet to announce full programmes; you also get an overview of what the ‘AFC makes, made and supported'.
Adelaide Cabaret Festival lovers can look forward to Tom Burlinson performs Sinatra in The Sands, or go for Starman: A Show with the music of David Bowie by Sven Ratzke.
Guitar Festival fans have the Wolfgang MuthSpiel Trio to look forward to if their passion is jazz, as well as guitarist Karin Schaupp and actor director Tama Matheson's production of Don Juan, in which solo guitar compositions by Turina, Pujol, and more intertwine with Lord Byron's tale. Keen followers of the inSPACE programme have Larissa McGowan's Mortal Condition waiting to ask them the intriguing question: What would their avatar look like, if they could choose to construct it from every part of themselves? Australian Ballet devotees will be well excited that productions of Swan Lake and Nijinsky are coming to the AFC next year. And there's so much more. Is your wee tacker a fan of Judith Kerr's book, The Tiger who Came to Tea? Well get excited now: A musical play adaptation of the classic tale will be here in January 2016.
David O'Brien
More information available online: adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au
