Adelaide Festival 2017 Program

The debut Adelaide Festival from Artistic Directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy will mark a return to artistic works on a grand scale, with epic opera and theatrical spectacle under the stars in the 2017 program.

The line-up features 31 theatre, music, opera, dance, film and visual arts events alongside Adelaide Writers’ Week and WOMADelaide, including 16 Australian premieres, 17 events exclusive to Adelaide and three world premieres over 17 days from March 3 to 19, 2017.

After a two year absence the official Adelaide Festival hub will return in the form of the Riverbank Palais, a two-storey, purpose-built entertainment venue floating on the River Torrens, based on the little-known floating dance hall that was the pinnacle of Adelaide’s nightlife throughout the 1920s. One of the largest single constructions ever undertaken by the Festival, the Riverbank Palais is set to be an exciting hub of food, wine and entertainment, with its full program to be announced in January 2017.

A major highlight of the 2017 program is the return to Adelaide of Barrie Kosky with the opera Saul. Produced by the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, this sumptuous production is set to be a centrepiece of the Adelaide Festival in its exclusive Australian season.

Also exclusive to the Festival is the Australian premiere of Richard III by Berlin’s Schaubühne Theater, a gritty interpretation of Shakespeare’s classic directed by Thomas Ostermeier and starring Lars Eidinger in the title role.

Offering the kind of epic theatrical experience synonymous with the festival,Sydney Theatre Company’s multi Helpmann Award winning productionThe Secret River directed by Neil Armfield will make its Adelaide debut in a new open-air performance staged in the Anstey Hill Quarry at Tea Tree Gully. Presented in association with State Theatre Company of South Australia, this will be the first time a major theatrical production has been performed in one of the local quarries since the legendary Mahabharata at the 1988 Adelaide Festival.

Heading up the music program is Rufus Wainwright, presenting an Australian premiere double bill of his most celebrated works – Prima Donna and highlights from Rufus Does Judy - in a one-night only, concert exclusive to the Festival.

Another musical highlight is Chamber Landscapes, a three-day festival-within-the-Festival of chamber music curated by Anna Goldsworthy, featuring the Australian String Quartet,La Gaia Scienza (Italy), Seraphim Trio and more, held in the hillside surrounds of the Ukaria Cultural Centre in Mount Barker.

A major highlight of the dance program is Betroffenheit, a hybrid of theatre and dance created by Jonathon Young, one of Canada’s best-known actors and co-founder and artistic director of Vancouver’s Electric Company Theatre, and internationally lauded Canadian choreographer Crystal Pite of dance company Kidd Pivot.

Other Australian premiere productions include family favourite Peter and the Wolf starring Miriam Margolyes alongside the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Gala by award-winning French “anti-choreographer” Jérôme Bel, two contemporary dance works by Israeli company L-E-V, as well as a one-night only performance of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo by Italian baroque ensemble Concerto Italiano.

World premieres include Intimate Space by South Australian company Restless Dance Theatre, an immersive dance piece set inside the Hilton Hotel, and Backbone by South Australian acrobatic troupe Gravity and Other Myths, with both companies enjoying their debut appearances at the Adelaide Festival, as well as The Backstories by Wiliam Yang and Annette Shun Wah, a theatre piece telling the stories of Asian South Australian identities Cheong Liew, Moya Dodd and Razak Mohammed.

Every exhibition in the visual arts program is an Australian premiere exclusive to the Festival, including RED, the directorial film debut of del kathryn barton starring Cate Blanchett, and Versus Rodin both on at the Art Gallery of South Australia, and Yidaki: Didjeridu and the Sound of Australia, a collaborative exhibition between the South Australian Museum and the Yolngu people which explores the didjeridu through sound, story, moving image.

Artistic Directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy said they wanted their first Adelaide Festival to present extraordinary events in new and unique contexts.

Mr Armfield said: “We wanted to amplify what a major international arts festival does best: bring audiences together with the most exhilarating and original artists of our generation and present extraordinary events in new and unique creative contexts, be it in the natural cathedral of a disused quarry, a Palais floating on the riverbank, the interiors of a city hotel or a chamber music venue surrounded by the Mount Barker bushland.”

Ms Healy said: “Since 1960, the Adelaide Festival has built its international reputation on the extraordinary quality and range of the artists that visited and performed in the city; and the ambition and scale of its signature events. We’re so thrilled that the wait is over and we can shout with joy about our first festival. To Adelaide with love – and there’s more to come! See you down at the Palais.”

Adelaide Writers’ Week, with its free open air readings and conversation, will take place in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden from Saturday 4 March to Thursday 9 March.

The 2017 Writers’ Week program features a wide range of poets, historians, novelists, biographers, journalists, refugees and feminists. Guests include Irish playwright, novelist and poet Sebastian Barry, Jessie Burton (UK), UK journalist and war correspondent Patrick Cockburn, Janine di Giovanni (US), Australian journalist and broadcaster Richard Fidler, Alberto Manguel (ARG/CAN), Kate Summerscale (UK), Booker Prize nominated Canadian author Madeleine Thien, and American feminist and internet troll hunter Lindy West.

In her sixth year as Adelaide Writers’ Week Director, Laura Kroetsch said: “It is a real thrill to be announcing the first of our guests for Adelaide Writers’ Week 2017. We have a wonderful line-up this year, a wonderful group of writers, writing about a vast range of topics. And if there is a message here among all these thoughtful words, that message is for tolerance - here in Australia and right around our troubled world.”

Premier Jay Weatherill said:  “Not only is the Adelaide Festival one of the world’s great festivals with a reputation for bold, innovative programming, its economic impact continues to grow each year. In 2016 the Adelaide Festival generated an estimated gross expenditure of $78.3 million for the state and almost 20,000 visitors came from interstate or overseas to attend. With such a strong program for 2017, including the Australian exclusive performance of Barrie Kosky’s acclaimed opera Saul, there is no doubt in my mind that this staggering growth will continue. This world-renowned opera is just one of a long list of highlights for the 2017 program across theatre, music, opera, dance, film and visual art that further cements Adelaide’s reputation as the arts capital of Australia.”

Adelaide Festival Chair Judy Potter said: “We are thrilled to be launching an exciting program curated by our new artistic directors Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield, and I am confident this season will continue to build on our reputation as Australia’s pre-eminent international arts festival.”

www.adelaidefestival.com.au

Images: The Secret River - Nathaniel Dean and Ningali Lawford-Wolf - credit Hugh Hartstone, and Miriam Margolyes - credit Kyte Photography