Adelaide Festival reveals 'feisty and defiant' 2022 line-up

Adelaide Festival has unveiled a 2022 program featuring Australian and international artists in more than 70 events, including a free opening night acrobatics and music ‘extravaganza’ at the Oval, Patricia Piccinini’s soaring Skywhales, a major dance work performed by 38 dancers from 14 African nations, and an oratorio about the 1972 murder of law lecturer George Duncan.

‘Wild, frenetic, unbound’: Artists announced for 2022 Adelaide Biennial

The 25 Australian contemporary artists selected for the 2022 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art have been announced, with curator Sebastian Goldspink promising Free/State will be a biennial for the times, ‘reflective of a nation still in the throes of grappling with its past and defining its future’.

Barrie is back for the 2022 Adelaide Festival with a fairytale Russian opera

The centrepiece of the 2022 Adelaide Festival will be Barrie Kosky’s new production of Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Golden Cockerel, an opera the celebrated director says is weird and wonderful – part fairytale, part psychological drama and part political satire.

Strong ticket sales see Adelaide Festival beat 2021 box office target

With its final weekend still to come, the 2021 Adelaide Festival has sold almost 61,000 tickets and achieved a box office income of more than $3.7 million, despite reduced venue capacity and other challenges posed by COVID-19.

Writers' Week chief to leave after 2022 festival

Writers’ Week director Jo Dyer has announced that next year’s event will be her last. She talks to us about why she’s leaving, plans for her final effort in charge, and the harrowing personal challenge that came into focus in the midst of 2021’s event.

Festival review: A Child of Our Time

As one of 20th-century music’s great anti-war statements, is the message of peace and understanding in Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time as relevant today as it was during World War II?

The right tone: seeing the world in a different light

A new exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia invites viewers to spend a day in the life of Clarice Beckett, a significant Australian painter who disappeared from the art history narrative for 35 years.

David Gulpilil: 'I don’t have to try to act, I just jump in and the camera sees me.' Photo: Miles Rowland

Festival review: My Name is Gulpilil

This nuanced and gentle farewell film from charismatic actor David Gulpilil offers fascinating insights into the way a man as celebrated as he is continues to inhabit his own culture, writes Penelope Debelle.

Festival review: Supernature

Dancers in insect bondage gear, others with heads joined by elastic-strapped hammocks: Garry Stewart blows our minds once again with an ambitious and innovative exploration of what the future might hold for humanity.

Festival review: Unfolding and S/Words

A double bill of contemporary dance by locally grown, globally minded choreographer Lewis Major invites a meditation on the universal truths of our times through two contrasting, memorable performances.

Festival review: Impermanence

The fragility of existence is laid bare in Sydney Dance Company’s Impermanence, a masterful display of music and movement held in perfect symbiosis.

Making moves: Lewis Major's unfolding dance career

Lewis Major’s contemporary dance career has taken him from a sheep farm in SA’s South-East to stages across the world. Now the young choreographer is presenting an ambitious new double bill at the 2021 Adelaide Festival.

David Gulpilil’s final story

From a childhood spent immersed in Yolngu culture, to celebrity, dining with the Queen and time in prison, David Gulpilil has lived the extremes. In a new documentary, the actor’s extraordinary life is offered as a final gift from this significant national storyteller.

Thousands revel in live music at reimagined WOMADelaide

PHOTO GALLERY: Almost 19,000 people attended WOMADelaide’s series of four COVID-safe sunset concerts over the long weekend, with highlights including performances by Archie Roach, Midnight Oil, Lior, and Tash Sultana.

Festival review: BLKDOG and Six Years Later

Game-changers from opposite ends of the spectrum – the streetwise avant-garde and the dance establishment – lifted the veil on a brave new world in this double bill streamed live from London’s Sadler’s Wells.

Festival review: Medea

Euripides’ Greek tragedy is reimagined with blood, ash and buffering issues by writer/director Simon Stone and Internationaal Theater Amsterdam in one of Adelaide Festival’s experiments in COVID-era adaptation.

The heartbreaking story of Jimmy the pig

What just happened? This was the only question to ask at the close of Adelaide Writers’ Week 2021, where for six days the Canberra scandal kept intruding and COVID kept the big international stars away.

Skye Gellmann's performance is at time stress-inducing to watch in High Performance Packing Tape. Photo: Tony Lewis

Festival review: High Performance Packing Tape

Brace yourself for a series of perilous predicaments as High Performance Packing Tape throws away the safety guidelines and tests the limits of the contents of your local hardware store.

Dry argument: The trouble with almonds

At an early autumn Writers’ Week discussion about the ruin of the Murray-Darling River system it was revealed – depressingly – that South Australia is the source of a new and particularly thirsty problem: almonds.

Politics, power and personal tragedy at Writers' Week

Day four of Adelaide Writers’ Week saw former politician Christopher Pyne addressing the rape allegations rocking Canberra, while another session tackled the changing nature of political power in the Australian media.

Humans being nature – it's a delicate dance

In Australian Dance Theatre’s Adelaide Festival work Supernature, outgoing artistic director Garry Stewart continues his quest to understand the inextricable place of human society within nature.

Festival review: Race Cards

This installation, constituting 1000 questions on the topic of race, creates a deeper intellectual and emotional resonance than could ever be achieved by an artwork purporting to have answers.

Angels and aliens: stories from the frontline

The struggles of paramedics and the extraordinary power of belief – be it in Creation, ghosts or UFOs – were explored in two key sessions at Adelaide Writers’ Week.

Festival review: Guttered

Taking place in the middle of a 10-pin bowling alley, Restless Dance Theatre’s Guttered is a colourful, engaging performance that encourages audiences to ponder the dignity of risk and the art of failure. So, do you consider yourself a risk taker?

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull signing books at Writers' Week on Sunday. Photo: Tony Lewis

Turnbull calls for inquest: Writers' Week charts darkness and light

Another former Prime Minister has used the forum of Adelaide Writers’ Week to weigh in on the latest distressing allegations about sexual crimes in federal politics, while the author of one of 2020’s most-loved Australian books talked about finding light in dark times. Here’s our latest despatch from SA’s premier books and ideas event.

Festival review: Fangirls

Bursting with big vocals and soulful harmonies, Yve Blake’s exuberant debut musical celebrates the culture of fandom and gives audiences a heady taste of teen euphoria.

Pandemic and politics: Writers' Week begins with some big questions

Pandemic fiction and a rockstar appearance by Julia Gillard marked day one of Writers’ Week.

Festival review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream sits squarely in the tradition of a comedy of errors. Benjamin Britten’s take on the play, directed by Neil Armfield, is likely to throw fresh challenges to aficionados of opera and Shakespeare alike.

Festival review: The Boy Who Talked to Dogs

Slingsby takes Martin McKenna’s memoir The Boy Who Talked to Dogs back to County Limerick where it began, with a show featuring an Irish pub band, shadow dog puppets and a brilliant performance by Irish actor Bryan Burroughs.

Festival review: The Pulse

At the throbbing heart of The Pulse is the beauty of endless renewal, depicted as bodies and voices unite, retreat and reconnect in a monumental display of synchronicity and skill.

Festival review: The Plastic Bag Store

The Plastic Bag Store, Robin Frohardt’s temporary supermarket with a powerful twist, has popped up in Rundle Place – and it might change your shopping habits forever.

A German Life: The bare walls of an aged-care room serve as screens for archival footage that punctuates the narrative. Photo: Andrew Beveridge

Festival review: A German Life

Robyn Nevin gives a mesmerising performance as a woman looking back on an extraordinary life that saw her working in Joseph Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda in Nazi Germany.

Don’t miss these Adelaide Writers’ Week sessions

Ahead of the opening of Writers’ Week, Jo Case recommends five sessions that promise to captivate and spark conversations about everything from pandemic fiction to politics.

'It's about future-making happening in the present'

The four artists exhibiting in the 2021 Adelaide//International all present different visions of the future through moving image, performance, sculpture and installation.

Restless and the fight to continue promoting inclusivity through dance

Restless Dance Theatre has spent decades changing attitudes and diversifying Australia’s artistic landscape, but a significant funding cut means support is needed more than ever before.

InReview's festival season picks

With the Adelaide summer festival season kicking into gear this week, we asked some of InReview’s contributing arts journalists and reviewers to share the Festival and Fringe shows they are most looking forward to – from visual arts to theatre, music and more.

Fangirls: A ‘Trojan horse’ tribute to teenage girls

Writer and composer Yve Blake believes pop idols, and the legions of young fans who love them, have been maligned and belittled for too long. With her musical Fangirls, Blake hopes to leave even the most hardened non-Belieber with no choice but to Stan.

The boy who talked to dogs and triumphed over shadows

The story of Martin McKenna’s early life in Ireland goes to some dark places but it is the indomitable spirit of the boy who grew up to become known as the “dreadlocked dog man” that captivated Adelaide theatre-maker Andy Packer.

Sunset at UKARIA. Photo: Andrew Beveridge

Incredible Floridas promises to delight, challenge and inspire

Some of the most audacious and path-changing musical minds in modern times will be in the spotlight at UKARIA Cultural Centre for this year’s Adelaide Festival.

Shutdown artists and companies make the world their stage

In the toughest of years for the arts, South Australian companies created new ways to find audiences – and some of these innovations are here to stay.

Adelaide Writers’ Week unveils full 2021 program

Adelaide Writers’ Week has launched its full program for 2021, with an extra 73 Australian and international guests announced as part of the six-day line-up in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden.

American opera star’s Adelaide quarantine concert

Young American counter-tenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen has kept his fellow hotel guests entertained while quarantining in the city ahead of his performance in the 2021 Adelaide Festival opera A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Adelaide Festival show a casualty of border closures

The recent COVID-19 outbreaks in Sydney and subsequent border closures have forced the cancellation of the Adelaide Festival season of Set Piece – a new theatre show from the creators of previous festival hit The Second Woman.

Midnight Oil to headline 2021 WOMADelaide concerts

Midnight Oil, Archie Roach, Lior and Tash Sultana are among artists announced in the line-up for WOMADelaide’s sunset concert series in the Adelaide Park Lands in March.

Adelaide Festival reveals full program of 70 events for 2021

Adelaide Festival has overcome challenges posed by the global pandemic to launch a 2021 program featuring 70 events – including a record number of Australian premieres, a free opening night concert, two international installations and a series of performances livestreamed from Europe direct to Her Majesty’s Theatre.