Adelaide Festival 60 Years 1960–2020 | Sneak peek by Adelaide Festival

60 YEARS 1960â&#x20AC;&#x201C;2020

CONTENTS Wakefield Press 16 Rose Street Mile End, South Australia 5031 wakefieldpress.com.au in association with Adelaide Festival Corporation 33 King William Street Adelaide, South Australia 5000 adelaidefestival.com.au First published 2020 Copyright © Adelaide Festival Corporation 2020 All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher. Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of material reporoduced in this book. If any individual or organisation has been inadvertently overlooked, please contact the publisher. WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that this book may contain the images and words of deceased persons. Book design by Alphabet Studio assisted by Michael Rowland Edited by Catherine McKinnon assisted by Rod Morrison Cover illustration by Douglas Annand from the 1960 Festival poster Back cover design by Robert Cousins Printed and bound by Wakefield Press ISBN: 978 1 74305 688 2

EDITORS NOTE

Catherine McKinnon 4

1. IT CHANGED MY LIFE. MORE OF WHICH LATER.

Annabel Crabb 22 Jared Thomas 26 Ariette Taylor 28 Alan John 31 Jon Hawkes 34 Tim Coldwell and Sue Broadway: a conversation 38 Benedict Andrews 40 Peter Goldsworthy 44 Lucy Guerin 47

2. WHAT’S PAST IS PROLOGUE David Marr 52 Vincent Plush 56 Jill Sykes 60 Alan Brissenden 63 Meryl Tankard 68 Philippe Genty 75 Lucia Mastrantone 76 Wesley Enoch 79 Julianne Pierce 80 Brett Sheehy 84 Callum Morton 90 David Hare 92 Jim Sharman 94

3. NOTES FROM INSIDE THE CLOCK Geoff Cobham 104 Amer Hlehel 106 Alice Pung 108 Dylan Phillips 110 Paul Kelly 113 Helen Morse 114 Len Amadio 118 Colin Koch 122

4. … NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS TO THE TOO TOO SOLID EARTH … THE STRENGTH OF THE EPHEMERAL WILL REMAIN STRONGER Mary Moore 128 Robyn Archer 130 Akram Khan 139 Peter Brook 141 Andrew Bovell 144 Hannah Kent 148 Stephen Page in conversation with Jo Dyer 150

5. WILLIAM YANG ― PHOTO ESSAY 157

6. THIS IS NOT SOMETHING HAPPENING ‘ONCE’ UPON A TIME Nazanin Sahamizadeh 168 Sisonke Msimang 171 Stephen Sewell 172 Rachel Healy 174 Rob Brookman 180 Patrick McDonald 188

7. THE ARTIFICIAL RUINS (OR, ARTS FESTIVALS — ARE THEY NECESSARY?) Romeo Castellucci 196 Christopher Hunt 200 Rose Wight 204 Robert Lepage 211 Don Dunstan 215 Anthony Steel 218 Anthony Nocera 224 Murray Bramwell 226 Erica Green 232 Yaritji Young 238

8. A LIGHTNING ROD FOR THE ENERGY BOUNCING Annette Shun Wah 244 Paul Grabowsky 248 Gale Edwards 252 David Sefton 256

9. MAKE US FLY! Sheree Tirrell 265 Jascha Boyce 266 Genevieve Lacey 268 Barrie Kosky 272 Neil Armfield 276

APPENDICES Sixty years of posters, Artistic Directors and poster designers 290 Contributors 292 References 295

Acknowledgements 296

EDITOR’S NOTE CATHERINE MCKINNON The Adelaide Festival is as much shaped by people and place as it in turn shapes people and place; its identity is a weird and wild shifting thing. It is not owned by one individual, but belongs to everyone. Because of this it has the capacity to challenge the status quo or to uphold it, or to do both at the same time. In its name new imaginings have come into being and ancient myths have been brought to life; it has united divided worlds, dealt with the erotic, the irrational, the frightening and the fearless. It has taken place in theatres, quarries, old buildings, car parks, churches, cafes, river banks, mountain sides, town squares— held on sites where the Kaurna people have lived and gathered for thousands of years—and so it is ritual, haunted by much older ritual. A reverence of spirit, but also an anti-reverence. A festival lives in the slipstream of time. As of March 2020, there have been thirty-five Adelaide Festivals since the first held in 1960. (What started as a biennial event moved in 2013 to an annual one.) There is much to tell about that time and this book can only tell part of the story. The collection here is instead a cacophony of images and tales that revel in the life of the Festival—remembering what it was, anticipating what it might be. The tales are told by the many—choreographers, actors, singers, artistic directors, audience members, writers, lighting designers, arts administrators, curators and more. Some stories rollick along in childhood memories, others praise Festival offerings or events that animated and provoked different ways of understanding the world. More than one writer serenades the mentorship received from an artistic elder, while others laud a treasured person, group or production that in a very real and tangible way changed their very being. Still others extol nights spent dancing with abandonment—the sheer pleasure of being alive. There are many intricate and wonderful tales in these pages, yet there are also many absent ones. This book is not intended to be a complete history, nor a chronological or traditional one, but is instead strands of a longer narrative that will be made up of stories yet to come. (In the 1990s I worked for a fabulous local company, The Red Shed, and our productions were in several Festivals—yet the tales of those performances, like so many others, are not recounted

here.) Many of the images in this book have been chosen to add to what can’t be told, paying homage to artistic feats of genius or splendour or emotion or simplicity. Contributions have been selected and grouped together under a title that reflects a central experience or thought shared by several writers; the title for that collection taken from one of the pieces within it. (The pleasure of finding out which piece is something for the reader to discover.) Although it’s true that many of the stories here could have fitted under two or more different headings, think of the book more like a gallery exhibition, where works are chosen and hung together to explore an idea or an artistic or rhythmic approach. The first grouping, ‘It changed my life. More of which later.’, needs no explanation, as here writers relate the lifechanging impact the Festival or someone connected with it had on them. In ‘What’s past is prologue’ the continuing influence of what has gone before (what occurred and what might occur) is examined. ‘Notes from inside the clock’ reveals experiences authors had performing onstage or organising a specific Festival work. In ‘No matter what happens to the too too solid earth … the strength of the ephemeral will remain stronger’ artists narrate how sometimes fleeting or chance meetings infused their work, while others reveal the strategies used to create a Festival or Festival event that affected audience members in ways not easily explained. ‘William Yang—a photo essay’ is a pause in the book, a pictorial and text response to the Festival. ‘This is not something happening “once” upon a time’ provides political or unique Festival histories that are in their own way markers for cultural shifts. ‘The artificial ruins (or, arts festivals—are they necessary?)’ investigates the work of a festival and its connection to place and people. ‘A lightning rod for the energy bouncing’ recounts funny, sometimes bizarre ‘disasters’ or episodes that are part of a contributor’s Festival memories; while ‘Make us fly!’ is a final hurrah to the book, where writers tell of those joyful moments that came about when attending or devising a work or creating a particular Festival. Some of the writers who have related stories here started out by saying, ‘I’m going to tell it all, the dark as well as the bright.’ Yet in the end, many found their own warm hearts

won over fraught memory, for often what tumbled onto the page was love and a deep connection to the art that changed them. What is true is that every person who has told of their relationship to the Festival has felt it to be a kinship that is strong and binding. Art, like our personal dream worlds, can help us contemplate the ineffable and think about the incomprehensible. It can help us understand who we are and why we are, what is the deeper meaning of our lives. This book is a celebration of art and creativity in the widest possible sense; it is a rejoicing of the ephemeral and cherished Adelaide Festival

Decorations at the intersection of North Terrace and King William Street, Adelaide, 1960. Photo: ÂŠ The Advertiser Left: Conjunto di Nero, created by Emio Greco and Pieter C Scholten, 2004 . Photo: Shane Reid

Clockwise from top left:

Torchlight procession on Rundle Street with ballroom dancers in the foreground, 1962. Photo: © The Advertiser Patrons study their programs before the world premiere of Voss, 1986. Photo: © The Advertiser Following page:

Lars Eidinger in Richard III, Schaubühne Berlin, directed by Thomas Ostermeier, 2017. Photo: Tony Lewis

ANNABEL CRABB The Festival Theatre is exactly the same age as I am, I discover courtesy of a search engine which is younger than both of us. I feel a small pulse of satisfaction in this piece of trivia, because that building—and the Festival which in the early 1970s necessitated its construction—have given my life a shape and texture I would not have had growing up anywhere else. When you’re a kid in the country, trips to the theatre take on a special significance. It’s not just the performance itself; it’s the visit to the city, the crawling along Victoria Drive looking for a park, the running-slightly-late hustle along the Torrens, the drive home in the dark, falling asleep as the streetlights blink past at broadening intervals then disappear altogether. I was five when Mum and Dad took us to see Compagnie Philippe Genty in Anthony Steel’s 1978 Festival; the drive home was full of trailing waif-puppets and the darkness replete with possibility. In the 1984 Festival, Two Wells Primary School—my school—was selected to take part in Singing The Sun Down, the Festival’s dementedly ambitious idea for sunset on the closing night to be marked by a kaleidoscope of colourfully dressed poppets in their thousands, singing in flawless harmony. We rehearsed our parts for weeks and our music teacher (Hello, Mrs Wilson!) was a beacon of persistence as she coaxed us through our parts. The piece had no lyrics, which made it a tall order; I recall a series of tonal ooohs and aaahs regulated by the vigorous chopping motions of Mrs Wilson’s right arm. We caught a bus around to Gawler East Primary (also participating) and rehearsed with them. Were our T-shirts yellow? I think so. We were intended to be a visual marvel as well as an aural one; shapes were marked out around the Rotunda and the T-shirted children, seated by colour and harmonic part, would form a swirling collage as the sun dipped below the horizon. Radio 5UV broadcast a click track which synced several hundred conductors ranged around Elder Park, some armed with glowing batons. A quintet of adult soloists held things together on the Rotunda, monitored by composer Alan John. I know what you’re thinking. And you’re right. Crackers! But wonderful. Many years later, I was studying arts and law at the University of Adelaide, financed by the customary random assortment of casual jobs (farmhand, petrol pump attendant, 22

Wilderness Society koala, lightly-remunerated participant in the odd medical experiment, some of which were very odd indeed) when a particularly excellent one fell into my lap. The Festival was looking for a driver to whisk the Director between events. I was predisposed to like the Director— Christopher Hunt—because in his first Festival (1980) he had conceived the brilliant idea of placing a giant inflatable tube on the River Torrens, through which the children of Two Wells Primary were permitted to rampage on another fondly remembered trip to the city. All of us seven year olds were impressed at the time by the scope of Hunt’s conceptual vision. Driving Mr Hunt was a brilliant job, fourteen years later. He was a real-life moody genius and had recently, irascibly, given up smoking, but I adored him and we kept in touch for years afterwards. Everything about his Festival was controversial, from his fallings-out with various key colleagues, to the poster (‘Looks like someone’s left an iron on and had a schooner without a beer coaster!’) to the program, which contained a lot of Asian theatre and had the RSC-loving luvvies in a bit of a flap. My job was to waft Christopher between events (‘Right! Get me to the Vietnamese Water Puppets in the Botanic Gardens!’) and execute the occasional diplomatic uplift if he’d just had a blue with someone. But God, that Festival was superb. In the Middle, Somewhat Elevated, by William Forsythe’s Frankfurt Ballet, remains the most galvanising dance performance I’ve ever seen and it lit inside me a love for contemporary dance that’s never abated. It was the first time I’d ever seen Bangarra. Mark Morris’s dancers were like nothing I’d witnessed and the man himself was unbelievably charming. ‘Oh, you’re a driver? How erotic!’ he drawled when I met him, in a voice I now remember as Truman Capote’s but only because I’ve told the story a million times that way. Penny Arcade was there, co-opting a troupe of Adelaide pole dancers in Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! Penny—Susana Ventura—was incredibly friendly and kind. I ran into her in the street twenty-five years later when she returned for the Fringe and I had to stop myself going in for a hug. One day, I had to drive a vanload of Frankfurt Ballet dancers to the beach. They’d heard about Maslins and were super-keen to get their kit off and frolic about. As

you would, if you looked like a genetically enhanced greyhound, which of course they all did. I took the sensible option of remaining clothed (‘Someone’s got to look after das Auto, ja?’) but I never will forget the sight of those bodies in the water. It was my friend and housemate Rachel Healy who suggested I apply for that job, and—a quarter of a century later—to see her and Neil Armfield take the Festival to new and exhilarating heights gives me a gloopily sentimental swell of pride. Not just in her, but in the capacity of my home state to create and sustain such a nutrient-rich tradition of the arts. Curiosity, and delight in the creativity of others, are two of the most important generative forces in the career I’ve enjoyed as an adult. It’s notoriously tricky to teach a child to be curious, or delighted; all you can do is show them things, really. Wonderful things, mysterious things, scary things, glimpses of things that invite further attention or lead elsewhere. The Adelaide Festival has been showing me things all my life. And it’s only now, as I sit down to write about it, that I realise how significant my architectural twin, the Festival Theatre, has been in giving my life shape and joy and depth. To all who have powered the Adelaide Festival over its sixty years of life: thank you. Changing lives is a longtail business, but I know mine would never have been the same without you.

Clockwise from above:

Forsythe Repertory Program, Frankfurt Ballet, 1994. L’Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato, Mark Morris Dance Group, 1994.