Every year, the Melbourne Festival (October 6-23) aims to transform the city into a hub for world-class contemporary and classical music, theatre, dance, performance art, visual art and design. For just a few short weeks, the city buzzes with the energy generated by artists from all over the world – and everyone is invited to be a part of it.
This year, Melbourne will be treated to an explosive line-up that will burst out of our theatres, break borders between artists and audiences and encourage us to think differently about ourselves and the world around us. It’s artistic director Jonathan Holloway’s first Melbourne Festival, and it’s safe to say that when it’s on, you’ll know about it.
1. Fire-wielding drummers will take to the streets
Photograph: Raphael Helle
Want big? Melbourne Festival has big. At the beginning of the festival, unassuming Melburnians will be treated to a free major outdoor performance by acclaimed Basque street theatre company Deabru Beltzak. Les Tambours de Feu is inspired by the Basque tradition of the ‘fire-run’: a sensory, paganistic flood of pyrotechnics and ritualistic percussion.
2. Performers will break out of the theatre
Photograph: David Baltzer
Berlin provocateurs Gob Squad will join Malthouse Theatre in a show that is part theatre performance and part video piece, transcending the stage and breaking out into the city streets via CCTV cameras to explore modern surveillance culture in the context of Tolstoy’s epic novel.
3. Diversity will be celebrated and explored
Backstage in Biscuit Land. Photograph: Jonathan Birch
In keeping with previous Melbourne Festivals, Tanderrum, facilitated by the Ilbijerri Theatre Company, will open the program with a powerful ceremony in which the five clans of the Kulin nation will meet. Bookending the festival will be a celebration of the newest arrivals to our land: Our Place, Our Home, in which cultures from across the world will share their rituals around coffee and tea.
The program also features a brand new work by one of Australia’s most pivotal theatre companies: Back to Back Theatre, who create theatre from the minds and experiences of actors living with disabilities. Lady Eats Apple will delve into the creation story of Adam and Eve.
Another highly anticipated work is Backstage in Biscuit Land, by British writer, activist and artist Jess Thom, who lives with Tourettes. Given that it can be difficult for her to see theatre (she says words like ‘biscuit’ 16,000 times a day), she has created a funny, poignant work that celebrates inclusion on and off the stage.
4. ACMI will turn into a sensory labyrinth
Photograph: Francisco Javier Garcia
Those lucky enough to have seen anything by Barcelona immersive theatre company Teatro de los Sentidos will be falling over themselves trying to get to The Echo of the Shadow: a labyrinth where one audience member at a time is invited to dive deep into their inner selves through full sensory immersion.
5. The audience chooses what happens
There’s a pile of cash on the table. Your mission: decide how you’re going to spend it. UK company Kaleider have astounded audiences across the world with their simple-in-theory, explosive-in-practice performance piece where a group of decision-makers (which could be you) have to come to a unanimous decision on how you’ll spend the audience’s money. If a decision is not reached, the pot rolls over to the next performance. As time runs out, it’s just as much about seeing personalities emerge as it is about grappling with real-world issues.
6. Bowie madness will take over (again)
David Bowie: Nothing Has Changed. Photograph: Robert Catto
In 2015, ACMI’s David Bowie Is exhibition drew hordes of glitter-streaked Bowie fans out to celebrate the life of one of the most influential artists who ever lived. This time, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, along with musicians including Tim Rogers, Steve Kilby and Adalita, will perform a selection of more than 30 hits from the chameleonic performer’s incredible career.
7. A giant network of string will appear in a new place every day
Home Within. Photograph: Yurttas Tumer
Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota is known for her large-scale installations – often with thread – that evoke memory while they transform the space around the viewer. Her piece, The Home Within, will involve a huge threaded space which will move to a new, secret location every night, before making its way to the Melbourne Town Hall on October 23.
8. Space and time will warp on stage
Canadian theatre director and playwright Robert Lepage is a giant in the theatre world. His two-hour performance piece, 887, has been lauded as a masterpiece in the UK and will make its Australian premiere at Arts Centre’s Playhouse. In 887, Lepage himself goes back into his own memories, beginning in his childhood home in Quebec City. As he weaves through time, the stage warps, growing, shrinking and changing as he questions the nature of our relationship to the past.
9. Children will give adults haircuts
Photograph: John Lauener
At first it seems like madness: what adult would hand over control over their hair (not to mention a pair of scissors) to a child? In this piece by Canadian performance company Mammalian Diving Reflex, kids between 8-12 years old are empowered to cut a stranger’s’ hair.
… and that’s far from it
We’ve really only scratched the surface here. For the full list of free events, performances, gigs and parties, head to the Melbourne Festival website.