The 2014 Adelaide Festival presents a program of outstanding music, theatre and dance events, a stellar literary festival and momentous visual arts exhibitions. The line-up features 50 events with 29 premieres and 29 festival exclusives over 17 days from Friday 28 February to Sunday 16 March.
Now in his second year as Adelaide Festival’s Artistic Director David Sefton said, “I couldn’t have been happier with my first Adelaide Festival in 2013.”
“The overwhelming response from the festival-goers was that I had the licence to continue pushing the program in ways that would genuinely excite an audience already accustomed to taking risks: 2014 is the result.”
Theatre program highlights include screen icon Isabella Rossellini (ITA/USA) in her one woman show Green Porno, Tony Award winner Denis O’Hare (USA) (True Blood, The Good Wife) in An Iliad, Canadian theatre maker Robert Lepage’s restaged masterpiece Needles and Opium, and from The Netherlands the epic and exhilarating six-hour Roman Tragedies. Israel’s world-renowned Batsheva Dance Company headlines the dance program, returning to Adelaide for the first time since its Australian debut in 1996.
Sefton again pushes the boundaries of his music program headlined by the exclusive Australian debut of John Zorn (USA) with Zorn in Oz, a one-time-only series of marathon concerts across four evenings. The series features 40 of his New York based collaborators including Mike Patton, Bill Laswell, Marc Ribot, Joey Baron and John Medeski.
Radical Israeli maestro Ilan Volkov curates and conducts Tectonics Adelaide, a two-concert program of experimental music; and 2013 sell-out advanced electronic music success Unsound Adelaide returns. The music program also includes Black Arm Band with dirtsong, a critically acclaimed new show from The Tiger Lillies (UK) and out of the Bronx via Haiti and Tahiti, undisputed heavyweight party-starters Kid Creole and The Coconuts (USA).
The colossal visual arts program presents work from more than 40 artists and collectives, featuring the Australian premiere of River of Fundament, a major new seven-part film project by award-winning American artist Matthew Barney and composer Jonathan Bepler; the third Adelaide International 2014: Worlds in Collision; the 2014 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art: Dark Heart; and some of Australia’s most exciting contemporary Aboriginal artists in Four Rooms at Tandanya. All visual art events are exclusive to Adelaide.
It is also a stellar year for Adelaide Writers’ Week with headline guests including Wild Swans author Jung Chung (CHI/UK), celebrated contemporary writer Margaret Drabble (UK), the influential Christian historian Diarmaid MacCulloch (UK), creator of No 1 Ladies Detective Agency Alexander McCall Smith (UK), feminist icon Elizabeth Gilbert (USA) author of Eat, Pray. Love and Eleanor Catton (NZ) the 2013 Man-Booker winner.
In her third year as Adelaide Writers’ Week Director, Laura Kroetsch said, “The 2014 program is brimming with great writing – the only thing as satisfying as reading these books will be listening to the writers talking about their work in the beautiful setting of the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden.”
A celebration of the extraordinary and exceptional from our very own backyard, in 2014 the Adelaide Festival presents Lola’s Pergola. Located on the Torrens riverbank Lola’s Pergola is the festival’s ultimate quarter acre block, the centrepiece being the stunning supersized shady pergola under which long communal tables will be laden with the finest food, wine and ales South Australia has to offer.
For more information, visit: www.adelaidefestival.com.au for details.
Image: Isabella Rossellini by Jody Shapiro