Destination Adelaide

Published on February 26, 2008

With three major international festivals at the same time over the next few weeks, Adelaide, capital of South Australia, is a paradise for performing arts aficionados.

The most high-profile of the three is the Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts, where local acts will be performing alongside world-renowned artists like Osvaldo Golijov, David Henry Hwang, Graeme Murphy, Leonard Cohen, Philip Glass, Ornette Coleman, Thomas Ostermeier, the DV8 Physical Theatre, Akram Khan, Sylvie Guillem, and Emanuel Gat.

One of the strong characteristics of this biannual festival - whose logo this year is an ambiguous, biomorphic sculpture captioned with the motto "What are you seeing?" - is its commitment to a multi-arts and inter-disciplinary programme.

"To truly reflect the artistic discourse in the world, international arts festivals must acknowledge that all arts forms are speaking to other arts forms and that none should be marginalised," says artistic director Brett Sheehy, during a recent phone interview.

"I'm very keen to make sure that certain art forms - in particular, opera, contemporary classical music, literature, visual arts, and cinema - are acknowledged in some way," adds this veteran director of four Sydney Festivals since 2002 and two Adelaide outings since 2006.

"In the 21st century especially, each discipline contributes to the artistic zeitgeist. Increasingly, artists are borrowing from different disciplines. As a result we're seeing more multi-media and hybrid arts works emerging in the world."

Sheehy elaborates on this statement with a few examples. "One thing I want to do is to celebrate contemporary classical music with a number of composers. We're co-commissioning with Toronto's Luminato Festival of Arts and Creativity and New York's Lincoln Centre Festival, a new work by Philip Glass called 'Book of Longing'. He's taking a literary work, a book of Leonard Cohen's poems, and turning it into a musical theatre work. And at the same time, we'll have the Australian premiere of the film 'Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts' [directed by Scott Hicks, who made 'Shine']. So, already we have literature, music, and cinema all speaking to one another around one artist, Philip Glass."

"In any festival, I like to bring major international artists to Australia for the first time. This year, we have the opera 'Ainadamar' [based on the life and death of Federico Garcia Lorca, and winner of the 2007 Grammy for Best Classical Composition], 'Book of Longing', and DV8's 'To Be Straight with You'. We're sharing these with no one else [in Australia]."

Having worked on international arts festivals for 16 years, Sheehy has a good idea of what makes them tick. "A festival can only be successful if the director marries the taste, personality and style of the city with his own and something unique comes out of it. Any major city festival should engage both emotionally and physically with the city itself.

"I first look at the artistic landscape of the city. Which artists are working here? What kind of works are they doing? Is that work unique and distinctive to that city? Then, I look at the topography... In a small city like Adelaide, I've been able to focus the festival within a 500-metre radius."

Being held concurrently with the Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts is the Adelaide Fringe 2008. This annual city-wide multi-arts festival is featuring smaller-scale works of comedy, visual arts, music, theatre, cabaret, dance and films by about 3,000 artists from 16 countries - 5,470 performances of 543 shows in 281 venues. In addition, Womadelaide: Sounds of the Planet 2008 - a three-day celebration of world music, arts and dance - will be held at the city's Botanic Park.

Sheehy comments that they're not rivals, but actually the opposite. "We're [the three festivals' organisers] working with each other, and we benefit enormously from each other - many of my audiences also go to the Fringe and Womadelaide, and vice-versa. Another positive thing is that the types of genres that the Fringe and Womadelaide take care of leaves me free to concentrate on significant, large-scale works."

Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts kicks off this Friday and runs through March 16. The official site is Adelaidefestival.com.au. Adelaide Fringe opened last Friday and wraps on March 16. For more, visit Adelaidefringe.com.au. Womadelaide runs from March 7 to 9. Further details at Womadelaide.com.au.

The writer can be contacted at Pawit.M@chula.ac.th.

Pawit Mahasarinand

The Nation