Bulldozers and wrecking balls are about to start ripping into the Adelaide Festival Centre environs to regenerate the public space and buildings, as long foretold. There’ll be rubbish everywhere and there’s going to be venue issues and all that to boot.
What difference has it made to Adelaide Festival Centre’s 2017 plans?
A crafty lot of good!
The biggest hint being the inclusion of a number of Adelaide Fringe 2017 shows, particularly UK production Trainspotting (Andrew Kray and Associates/AFC/King’s Head/In Your Face.) It’s based on Irvine Welsh’s novel and references the film.
The venue? A secret CBD location. Then there’s Adelaide Fringe punk cabaret An Evening with Amanda Palmer, at Her Majesty’s.
This kind of thing is not ‘the usual’ for the Adelaide Festival Centre. What there is of ‘the usual’ for 2017 - wonderfully rich in content as it is - such as Dusty, The Look, The Legend, The Musical does not diminish the fact the 2017 program is distinctly focused on a sense of regeneration right across the board.
Most telling, is the fact the inSPACE program now offers three full new works, along with eight works in development. All 11 works involve cutting edge artists and small companies who’ve made a mark either in the Adelaide Festival of Arts - during the grand era of David Sefton’s Artistic Directorship - Adelaide Fringe, or Melbourne Fringe, as well as major European Festivals.
Venues vary for work in development. The three full works will show at Her Majesty’s, Plant 1 Bowden and The Space; again, not really ‘the usual’ biz for Adelaide Festival Centre.
They created inSPACE back in 1998. Collaboration happens with State Theatre Company now, but this is a quite a shift.
There should be such a shift; to meet pressures of ‘renovating’ as much as reinventing possibilities for a completely new physical environment.
Things change, thinking changes.
Having successfully brought Adelaide to embrace OzAsia Festival’s presence not just in theatres, but the Centre's grounds bedecked with food and song, as much as Adelaide Guitar Festival’s Guitars in Bars ‘mini festival’ pushed the joy of the instrument as a culture to the furthest pub possible, 2017 will be the year we see AFC consolidating a capacity to reach beyond its grounds, even as they are being shaped most especially to invite Adelaide’s people in.
David O’Brien
The AFC 2017 season will feature:
Dusty The Musical
Matilda The Musical
The On Stage Summer School
Operation Ouch! live on stage
Deadly 60 Live! Pole to Pole Tour
SAUL
David Bowie: Nothing Has Changed
Scotland The Brave
Long Tan
1984
Rabbits
Big Bad Wolf
Beep
Butterfly Ladies Band
Nouvelle Vague
Ludovico Einaudi
Tubular Bells For Two
An Evening with Amanda Palmer
Sun Rising
Trainspotting
The Whitlams 25th Anniversary Tour
The Something on Saturday program
Herman and Rosie with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
The GreenRoom program
DreamBIG Children’s Festival
The Adelaide Cabaret Festival
The OzAsia Festival
Frame of Mind
inSPACE: Developmentprogram
Morgan’s International Piano Series
World of Cultures
Our Mob
Christmas Proms
The CentrEd schools program
Morning Melodies
The Overture program
and much, much more, 2017 at Adelaide Festival Centre will be brimming with events and activities for all South Australians.
For full program details including co-presenters visit adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au
