Hello Brisbane Festival, what have we here?

Brisbane Festival is upon us, in all its heady glory.  We’ve partnered with the festival for a third year, so we can do some professional development with our team, keeping up with our goal of getting diverse critics in front of diverse shows, and we will send our writers out to no less than twenty-five shows, so check back soon to see what our team make of all the juicy offerings.

Brisfest images supplied. Riverfire in all its glory.

This is festival director Louise Bezzina’s third pass at the program, and so far the chatter we’ve been picking up in the wider arts world has been quietly reserved, with half an eye waiting to find out what are the hidden gems, and the rest counting our pennies to see which two or three we can actually afford. There’s a lot of purse tightening with the cost of living this year and while the festival offers many free events, the juiciest art has a pretty high price point attached to it, so there’s some decisions to be made. In addition there are many names returning for another round or five, which is fine, they have a track record so people feel safe with them, but also, some of it feels pretty safe.

Anyway, here is a summary and some tidbits and top tips!

There’s some excellent offerings for the families with Erth’s Shark Dive, an under-the-sea adventure with giant puppets and Hide The Dog, which looks to be the most gorgeous and all-encompassing children’s fable about saving the last Tasmanian Tiger.

There is a big uptick in accessibility options, with many shows offering a range of options beyond mobility device access, and even extending beyond the Undercover Artist Festival which is tucked under the Brisfest umbrella again this year. There’s tactile tours and audio description and relaxed performances and AUSLAN shows you can book without having to call anyone, imagine that! These are options that should exist as standard but are sorely lacking most of the time, so nice to see. (If our biggest festival is not setting the standard here than who is?) There are also two shows that mainstage the experiences of people with disabilities – the whimsical adventure-comedy of Tae Tae in the Land of Yaas and the highly anticipated Personal, in which Jodee Mundy shares her experience growing up as the only hearing person in her family.  Investment in art about disability! Mainstage productions with their stories! International top standard stuff! Amazing! I love! More of this! Keep it coming!

Hide the Dog.

By the way, We Heart the Undercover Artist Festival which is the local indie disability-led arts festival. Artists with disability by the nature of negotiating an able-centric world necessarily practice in an innovative, out-of-the-box, and thoroughly original way. There are always gems to be found here, go try some one-on-one poetry with type-a-poet, see some fricken funny comedy or take your kids to something cool where they’ll either learn something new or find a place to fit in, or both.  Also got our eye on Sheltered, where Kathryn Hall tells us about life in a youth shelter with cerebal palsy, and Blind in the Rabbit Hole from Screech Productions. If you are as jaded as this journo hack then go to Undercover and buy three tickets at random, it’s the fresh you’ve been waiting for.

Back on Brisfest, if disability-led interests you, here’s a hot tip: go check out the creative Fashion Collab for some truly fantastic adaptive fashion and wearable art, it’s a free exhibition at the Tivoli prior to the madness of Bowery Topia.  

Heaps of First Nations work celebrating and exploring and digging and unearthing. Wrestling with the darker histories and emancipations, futuristic technological storytelling, some premium dance with Bangarra’s Yuldea, and bringing it real close home with West End Stories.

There’s an interesting program choice of not one but two shows exploring the pressures placed on a relationship as one partner transitions. Both look fantastic with international offering The Making of Pinocchio (a lighter twist, on a film set, massive interesting props and sets) and local debut Unconditional (darker, intimate, goes all the way down and through, a real toothsome mouthful). In a time where it is increasingly important to support and centre and mainstage trans and genderqueer stories in the face of increasing dangers, it is nonetheless intriguing to offer two stories of the such similar arcs. It’s such a deliberate programming choice that I kind of do want to see them both to see whether they are a set, or a two sided coin, or a random booking opportunity.

For those that love the dark circus and the spicy performance art, there’s the cute black circus show Party Ghost, I saw an early iteration of the show sometime back and its fun. And local legend Leah Shelton is back with On Heat, an updated look at her show about sexual politics, backlash, and surviving the manosphere. There’s also a fun looking offering from debonair visionaries THe Farm with their live action 70’s feature film STUNT DOUBLE, which just opened in Darwin to positive reviews.

I say that the arts world has been reserved so far, but who cares when the wider community has a huge whack of offerings that they are eating up. Classical music lovers can chase a mobile stage to no less than twenty-one concerts with the city wide Brisbane Serenades series. It’s kind of cool that there is such a huge appetite for classical, I love to see it.

Jodee Mundy in Personal.

Siva Mai is the latest incarnation of big celebratory shows that started with Aunty’s Fiafia Night (2021) and The House (2022) that highlights the big hunger for Pasifika and First Nations parties in this city, where a hell of a lot of people are somehow completely undescended from Europe (sarcasm, surprise). And some of us that are of coloniser stock want to get along to things that aren’t.

Lightscape is no doubt going to show up on the Instagram feeds of several billion people, it is very nice and pretty indeed, and very contemporary good times. I’m hoping that the juicy ticket sales are somehow kicking back to support the rest of the festival and the hefty entry fee that is being placed on public parkland is funding something free somewhere else.

I can’t possibly write about every single feature of the festival so I will leave it there for you to explore the rest at your leisure, with my last Hot Tip. ADC are collaborating with Maxine Doyle who is A Name To Know among those that Know These Things (among other fame, she is co-creator of international phenomenon Punchdrunk). Salamander is set to be some kind of earth-moving immersive experience apparently, so snap up tix before they’re gone!

Have fun out there! Make sure to circle back on socials and tell us what you think.