With 23 glorious days of performance, public art and participation across the city, the 2025 Brisbane Festival features 106 productions, 1,069 performances and 2,260 artists, transforming the city into a stage. With so much on offer, Australian Arts Review takes a look at 15 events worth checking out:
100 Guitars
Brisbane Powerhouse: Sunday 14 September
Experience music like never before at 100 Guitars, a breathtaking sonic and social event coming to Brisbane Festival 2025. This isn’t just a concert – it’s a powerful, site-specific performance featuring 100 electric guitarists from communities across the city, uniting to create an unforgettable surround-sound spectacle. Founded by renowned Canadian composer and guitarist Tim Brady in 2015, 100 Guitars has wowed audiences at major festivals across Canada in unexpected venues like shopping malls, basilicas, railway stations, and hockey arenas. This special Brisbane Festival performance will feature Brisbane’s own Topology, infusing the experience with their signature rhythmic virtuosity on piano, saxophone, violin, viola, and double bass. Join us at a once-in-a-lifetime immersive sound experience that celebrates creativity, connection, and the electric power of community.
Afterglow
City Botanic Gardens: 5 – 27 September
Let the fire guide you this September with Afterglow – a breathtaking new after-dark experience that invites you to follow the flame into a world of wonder. Journey through a glowing dreamscape of fire sculptures, candlelit installation, live performances, and illumination. Beneath tree canopies and across shimmering waters, the gardens will transform into a living artwork of flame and shadow as night falls and time slows. With ambient soundscapes curated to stir the soul and design-led installations crafted by world-renowned fire artists and local creatives, Afterglow is a slow-burn multisensory journey designed to spark wonder, reflection, and awe.
A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen (or How to Make the Perfect One-Pot Chicken Curry)
Cremorne Theatre – QPAC: 16 – 20 September
Woven from the threads of a sweeping family epic, A Place in the Sultan’s Kitchen (or How to Make the Perfect One-Pot Chicken Curry) is charming, funny, and moving. Theatre-maker and singer-songwriter Joshua Hinton fills the theatre with music, memories, and exotic smells as he attempts to make his grandmother’s chicken curry, live on stage. Sharing childhood memories and family folklore passed down through generations, Joshua transports the audience from the backstreets of Sri Lanka to a bustling city in India, from a schoolyard in Iran to a South African farm, and from his family’s iconic Brisbane restaurant to his home in Wollongong. It’s a show for anyone who’s searched for where they belong in this world, lived between different cultures, or loved and lost family.
Bad Nature
Brisbane Powerhouse: continues to 7 September
A Brisbane Festival exclusive, Bad Nature, combines awe-inspiring movement, multisensory design, international collaboration, couture, and more to push the boundaries of perception. Australasian Dance Collective (ADC) and the Netherlands’ Club Guy & Roni (CGR) bring together an international team of celebrated creatives, including multidisciplinary artists Boris Acket, Maison the Faux, and HIIIT, in this epic world premiere that looks unflinchingly at our relationship to our environment and to one another. The thrilling dance project, led by ADC Artistic Director Amy Hollingsworth and Associate Artistic Director Jack Lister alongside Guy Weizman and Roni Haver of CGR, will see an extraordinary ensemble of 12 dancers – six from ADC and six from CGR – perform alongside two HIIIT musicians and an independent Australian percussionist.
Baleen Moondjan
Queen’s Wharf Brisbane: 18 – 20 September
A powerful celebration of First Nations stories, totemic connections, and the sacred resilience of Country. In his first major commission since leaving Bangarra Dance Theatre, creative visionary Stephen Page brings his contemporary ceremony, Baleen Moondjan, to his hometown. Inspired by a story from Stephen’s grandmother from the Ngugi/Nunukul/Moondjan people of Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), Baleen Moondjan celebrates the First Nations’ relationships between baleen whales and Communities’ totemic systems. The signature elements that have defined Stephen’s career are all present in this work with dramatic storytelling, striking choreography, and haunting live music integrated into an epic visual world from Jacob Nash.
BATSHIT
Brisbane Powerhouse: 10 – 13 September
BATSHIT is a wildly theatrical, darkly comic, and deeply intimate reckoning with the myths and misconceptions of female madness. Fresh from an award-winning run at Edinburgh Fringe, the renegade feminist, guttural, and Prozac-laden dark comedy returns to Brisbane Festival. A requiem for the creator’s grandmother Gwen, who was incarcerated for seeking independence in 1960s Australia, BATSHIT draws on personal stories, in-depth research, and pop culture to unpack how psychiatry has been shaped by gender bias. Created by psycho-siren Leah Shelton (AU) and directed by Olivier award-winning Ursula Martinez (UK), this one-woman tour de force tears apart the labels used to control and undermine women through razor-sharp wit, raw storytelling, and unflinching performance.
Common People Dance Eisteddfod
Edmund Rice Performing Arts Centre: Sunday 7 September
The Common People Dance Eisteddfod has become a revered tradition here in our fair city. Teams from across South East Queensland battle it out over one epic night and need you to cheer and shout as they dance the night away. Dressed in sequined armour, the mighty suburban gladiators will meet on neutral territory and dance it out to see who will be the 2025 Common People Dance Eisteddfod winner. The competition is fierce, the outfits are bold, and the moves are body rollin’. But there can only be one winner! Who will be crowned the champion and take home all the glory?
GEMS
Playhouse – QPAC: continues to 7 September
A landmark Australian exclusive and world premiere, Gems by Benjamin Millepied, is presented in its entirety for the very first time at Brisbane Festival. This bold contemporary ballet trilogy by L.A. Dance Project, in collaboration with Van Cleef & Arpels, reimagines the spirit of George Balanchine’s revolutionary Jewels through a modern lens. Each chapter, Reflections, Hearts & Arrows, and On the Other Side, serves as a contemporary counterpoint to Balanchine’s Rubies, Emeralds, and Diamonds. Together, they form a dazzling triptych of distinct works, each chapter is inspired by the brilliance and character of its namesake gem.
Milestone
Concert Hall – QPAC: Tuesday 9 September
Since celebrating his 80th birthday, William Yang, one of Australia’s most revered visual and performance artists, reflects on his remarkable life in Milestone. Drawing on his vast collection of documentary photographs and poignant personal reminiscences, Yang weaves together themes of family, cultural, and sexual identity with his signature blend of warmth, disarming humour, and total candour. Set against Elena Kats-Chernin’s haunting score, performed live by Camerata – Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra, Milestone is the life of an iconic Asia Pacific artist chronicling key Australian stories. Unassuming, evocative, and honestly examined, Yang looks back on his vast archive of photography, contemplating five decades of social change and the evolution of Australia’s bohemian artist community. Above all, from his viewpoint as the last of his generation, Milestone is Yang contemplating the importance of family and the ties binding relations all around the world.
Sea of Light
Queensland Museum Kurilpa: 20 September – 5 October
With a torch as your paintbrush, paint and stencil your glowing voyage while ships leave radiant trails of light behind them at Queensland Museum Kurilpa. As you explore Sea of Light, artworks by Aboriginal Contemporary Visual Artist Elizabeth Close are painted in light across the sea floor. These paintings speak to the connection between land and sea, earth and water, and draw inspiration from the diverse Australian landscape. Sea of Light brings together magical light and a gentle soundscape to create a unique adventure for the whole family, as part of Queensland Museum Kurilpa’s spring holiday program.
The Lovers
Playhouse – QPAC: 13 September – 5 October
Featuring an electrifyingly original pop score and a boldly reimagined script by Laura Murphy, The Lovers is a fresh, in-your-face remix of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – bursting with heart, humour, and more than a touch of magic. Romantic, rebellious, and irresistibly fun, this contemporary take on Shakespeare’s tangled tale of love and mischief now makes its Queensland debut. For centuries, Oberon and Puck have been the ultimate matchmakers, crafting perfect love stories. But in a world where romance is a chaotic mix of swipes, situationships, and ghosting, Oberon worries that true love is becoming extinct. Just when all hope seems lost, four young lovers cross their path – ready for a night they’ll never forget.
The Platypus
Cremorne Theatre – QPAC: 10 – 13 September
The platypus is a strange creature. It’s composed of odds and ends, as though evolution got tired one afternoon and stopped paying attention to what it was doing. It seems wrong, strangely put together, a curiosity — just like this play about the messy end of a relationship. Written and directed by well-known actor Francis Greenslade (Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell, Winners and Losers) and performed by John Leary (The Good Place, Glitch, The Letdown, Upper Middle Bogan) and Rebecca Bower (The Spooky Files, Offspring, Wentworth), The Platypus is a genre-busting delight – an outrageously clever, wildly entertaining play about theatre, relationships, and the roles we all play.
TINA — A Tropical Love Story
Brisbane Powerhouse: 18 – 20 September
In 1993, in the sweltering Darwin Amphitheatre, a young First Nations boy found himself swept away by the legendary Tina Turner. That life-changing evening would spark a journey of self-discovery and transformation. Blending storytelling, cabaret, and drag, TINA — A Tropical Love Story is a heartfelt tribute to the indomitable spirit of the rock icon. Enter the enchanting realm of First Nations drag performer Miss Ellaneous (AKA Ben Graetz), who shares deeply personal tales of growing up in Darwin and the profound impact of the Queen of rock ‘n’ roll. This dazzling celebration of Darwin, drag, and Tina Turner is written, performed and directed by Graetz with special performances from the drag, First Nations, and queer performance scene.
Unveiling Shadows
Metro Arts: 10 – 13 September
Unveiling Shadows is a profound exploration of survival, self-discovery, healing, and culture. Woven through intimate storytelling and the language of movement, Joshua Taliani boldly confronts inner demons, revealing the layers of silent struggles. Unveiling Shadows is the debut solo work of First Nations (Bidjara/Kullali/Wakka Wakka) Italian artist and performer Joshua Taliani, co-created with collaborator Wanida Serce. Joshua’s signature style is heavy on open choreography, infused with the art form of vogue (a part of the Ballroom culture). Working across genres, from street dance to dance theatre, Joshua’s practice is grounded in hip-hop, with experience that includes contemporary dance. Joshua is also the Father of the trailblazing House of Alexander – a leader in the queer BIPOC community which continues the legacy of Harlem’s Ballroom culture of creating space for, and helping to nurture, Trans and queer BIPOC.
Walk This Way by Craig & Karl
Neville Bonner Bridge, Goodwill Bridge and Kangaroo Point Bridge: 5 – 27 September
Homegrown heroes and kings of colour take over Brisbane. The city becomes a stage as Craig & Karl transform Brisbane’s walking bridges with major immersive art installations across the Neville Bonner Bridge, the Goodwill Bridge, and the new Kangaroo Point Bridge. Be immersed in this dramatic and joyful centrepiece of Brisbane Festival 2025 and explore everything Craig & Karl have to offer as they activate iconic sites across Brisbane with their signature colours and inflatables. Craig & Karl are an internationally recognised art and design duo originating from Brisbane, working across design, illustration, and installation. They collaborate daily from their respective New York and London bases, creating bold, playful, multi-disciplinary works. The duo have exhibited their work internationally and have returned to Brisbane as they take over the city with their vibrant designs.
The 2025 Brisbane Festival continues to 27 September. For more information and full program, visit: www.brisbanefestival.com.au for details.
Images: Walk This Way by Craig & Karl (supplied) | Bad Nature – photo by Andreas Etter | Leah Shelton stars in BATSHIT – photo by Joel Devereux | Courtney Conovan in GEMS – photo by Jade Ellis | Sea of Light – photo by Matt Byrne | Miss Ellaneous in Tina A Tropical Love Story (supplied)