brisbane festival

“There’s something really transcendent about dancing so badly that you break through that shell of having to take yourself seriously and you can just exist in your body in this really beautiful, joyful way.”

Whether you’re a Rock Eisteddfod reject or a retired dancer, there is joy and exhilaration to be found in unencumbered shimmying and shaking.

The all-ages, all-abilities Common People Dance Eisteddfod brings the moves, the laughs and the ‘80s and ‘90s bangers when the leotard-clad juggernaut returns to Brisbane Festival for its fourth blockbuster year.

“Common People Dance Eisteddfod’s main point of difference to a normal eisteddfod is the teams can cheat, they can bribe the judges, they can also sabotage the other teams.”

An antidote to the ‘No Lights, No Lycra’ dance movement, Common People Dance Eisteddfod is an exercise in brash dance moves, bold costumes, big performances and body positivity.

In this episode, Common People Dance Project co-founder, choreographer and theatre maker Neridah Waters is joined by dance devotees and sequinned warriors, Amanda Dell and Bryony Walters.

They speak with humour and heart about the power of the dance project to boost body confidence, self-expression and personal empowerment and how making a conscious decision to be brave and try something new can prove life-changing.

“I have seen people’s attitudes to their bodies change, I have seen what they wear in everyday life change because they are just proud of themselves and they are like, ‘look at me, I’m amazing’.”

On the eve of yet another over-the-top dance battle between amateur hot-steppers from the North, South, East and West of Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast, the trio body roll and fist-pump their way through competition tactics, dirty tricks and the optimum ratio of props per dancer (spoiler alert: it’s three).

“As adults, we forget to play and have fun. In Australia, in dance and sport, you’re told by some teacher at some point you don’t have the right physique or the right body to be a dancer or a cricket player and it really crushes that teenager at that point and they never do it again in their life.”

Brisbane Festival returns to fill the city with three weeks of wonder, delight and celebration from 2 – 24 September 2022. For information and tickets, visit brisbanefestival.com.au 

Beginners’ Call records on Turrbal and Yugerra country in Meanjin, Brisbane. Brisbane Festival recognises the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples play in our creative, artistic and celebration spaces and pays respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

Podcast Curator: Louise Bezzina (Brisbane Festival)

Podcast Guests: Neridah Waters, Amanda Dell and Bryony Walters (Common People Dance Eisteddfod)

Podcast Host: Adam Brunes (Aruga) 

Podcast Producer: Gilberto Castillo (The Podcast Boss) 

If the border closures of the last two years have a silver lining for Australian artists and audiences, it must be the renewed focus on Australian work at our capital-city arts festivals.

This year's Brisbane Festival demonstrates what that kind of investment can achieve, with an array of world premieres gracing the city's stages, including Holding Achilles, Tiddas, Slow Boat and Othello.

“My dad grew up on a dirt-floor shack, and why didn’t he become a number-one tennis player?”

Before Ash Barty lifted the trophy at Wimbledon, there was Evonne Goolagong. 

As a young, self-confessed ‘tennis geek’, theatre maker Andrea James remembers being captivated by Wiradjuri tennis legend Evonne Goolagong, the greatest Aboriginal tennis player that Australia has ever produced.  

“I remember very strongly as a young Aboriginal girl growing up in regional Victoria the sight of this Aboriginal woman on the screen… I had never seen that before.” 

Andrea had long been fond of Evonne but when her now-husband gifted her a copy of Goolagong’s autobiography during courting, her tennis obsession became an Evonne-obsession. 

“I could not put the book down… I just thought, ‘Why hasn’t this story been told in this way before?’” 

Andrea’s powerful new work, Sunshine Super Girl, is a celebration of spirit and passion over adversity and a tribute to a woman whose sporting prowess continues to inspire a nation. 

In this episode, Andrea reveals a shared ancestral link with the seven-time grand slam winner, why it was critical to receive Evonne’s blessing in the making of this landmark play, and the challenge of recreating global tennis tournaments for the stage. 

Brisbane Festival returns to fill the city with three weeks of wonder, delight and celebration from 2 – 24 September 2022. For information and tickets, visit brisbanefestival.com.au 

Beginners’ Call records on Turrbal and Yugerra country in Meanjin, Brisbane. Brisbane Festival recognises the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples play in our creative, artistic and celebration spaces and pays respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

Podcast Curator: Louise Bezzina (Brisbane Festival)

Podcast Guest: Andrea James (Sunshine Super Girl) 

Podcast Host: Adam Brunes (Aruga) 

Podcast Producer: Gilberto Castillo (The Podcast Boss) 

“Ten years ago, I read in a book that 580 Chinese indentured labourers had been evacuated from Nauru during World War Two by the allies to Brisbane... They landed on 8 March 1942.”

A compelling discovery about her father’s life sparked a decade-long search for answers for Chinese-Australian Anna Yen – theatre maker, performer and writer of Slow Boat, which receives its world premiere at Brisbane Festival 2022. 

Blending vaudeville, circus, Cantonese Opera and martial arts, Slow Boat is a play within a play, inspired by the unexpected arrival in Australia of Anna’s father during WWII, along with hundreds of other Chinese men. 

At its heart is a powerful question: How can we survive and thrive when so much is out of our control?

In this episode, Anna retraces the serendipitous chain of events that allowed her to piece together her family’s fascinating history, reflects on the power of brotherhood, and contemplates what her arts-loving father would have thought of this remarkable new Australian work.

“This show is actually Australian history that we don’t really know. Even though this story has a particular setting – WWII, Chinese Heritage Men, Australia – it’s actually a universal story about, when times are really, really tough, how do we treat each other?”

Brisbane Festival returns to fill the city with three weeks of wonder, delight and celebration from 2 – 24 September 2022. For information and tickets, visit brisbanefestival.com.au 

Beginners’ Call records on Turrbal and Yugerra country in Meanjin, Brisbane. Brisbane Festival recognises the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples play in our creative, artistic and celebration spaces and pays respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

Podcast Curator: Louise Bezzina (Brisbane Festival)

Podcast Guest: Anna Yen (Slow Boat) 

Podcast Host: Adam Brunes (Aruga) 

Podcast Producer: Gilberto Castillo (The Podcast Boss) 

“We had said to each other, if we don’t have anything at this date, we’ll put a pin in the company until we can find the energy and the passion to drive again.” 

Long before the global pandemic, award-winning theatre makers and global adventurers David Morton and Nicholas Paine of Dead Puppet Society were at a crossroads. Off the back of their most successful project ever – a world-first presentation of their acclaimed production The Wider Earth at London’s National History Museum – a new kind of exhaustion set in. 

“So tired we could barely function, Nick and I left London and headed to New York to try and find some brain and soul space… We didn’t really know where we wanted to go with the company.”

Giving themselves a strict deadline and ultimatum, the pair – both business partners and life partners – agreed that if they couldn’t land on the next creative idea with clarity and conviction, they’d put their 10-year-old company to rest. 

“We scared the living daylights out of each other just by saying that.” 

And thus Holding Achilles was born – a refreshing take on one of the ancient world’s best-known heroes and his relationship with Patroclus, his not-so-well-known lover. 

In this episode, Holding Achilles writer and director David Morton discusses modern storytellers’ tendency to glorify the blood and violence in Homer’s The Iliad, the oft-ignored human cost of major conflict, and his decision to never explicitly define the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus.  

“This is not another queer tragedy. It’s a tragedy with queer characters.” 

Brisbane Festival returns to fill the city with three weeks of wonder, delight and celebration from 2 – 24 September 2022. For information and tickets, visit brisbanefestival.com.au 

Beginners’ Call records on Turrbal and Yugerra country in Meanjin, Brisbane. Brisbane Festival recognises the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples play in our creative, artistic and celebration spaces and pays respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

Podcast Curator: Louise Bezzina (Brisbane Festival)

Podcast Guest: David Morton (Dead Puppet Society) 

Podcast Host: Adam Brunes (Aruga) 

Podcast Producer: Gilberto Castillo (The Podcast Boss) 

“Mabo (the film) meets Hot Tub Time Machine.”

Even Writer and Director Alethea Beetson admits Queen’s City is hard to describe. On the eve of its world premiere at Brisbane Festival 2022, the debut work from new performance collective Blak Social is best explained as part gig, part theatre work, part ‘80s extravaganza and part political commentary. A performance work years in the making, Alethea explains how the story of love and reclamation was inspired by the missing narratives and rewritten histories of colonisation.

“Being able to tell First Nations stories through the modality of the ‘80s is really cool. Queen’s City is insanely fun.”

In this episode, Alethea is joined by Queen’s City artist Loki Liddle to discuss the cultural and creative process of bringing the Queen’s City-verse to life, from engaging cultural dramaturgs to pondering what a “Black Bruce Springsteen” would sound like. While borne of this city, they explain how Brisbane, or Meanjin, served as a creative muse for the work, rather than its definitive source material. They also reveal the joy and enthusiasm that went into creating an original soundtrack of ‘80s-inspired rock, pop, glam and party songs.

“The music is the value I think music has always been on these lands in that it tells the story and you have to pay attention to that music to understand the story.”

Brisbane Festival returns to fill the city with three weeks of wonder, delight and celebration from 2 – 24 September 2022. For information and tickets, visit brisbanefestival.com.au 

Beginners’ Call records on Turrbal and Yugerra country in Meanjin, Brisbane. Brisbane Festival recognises the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples play in our creative, artistic and celebration spaces and pays respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

Podcast Curator: Louise Bezzina (Brisbane Festival)

Podcast Guests: Alethea Beetson and Loki Liddle (Blak Social)

Podcast Host: Adam Brunes (Aruga) 

Podcast Producer: Gilberto Castillo (The Podcast Boss) 

“It can start off very awkward, maybe a little bit uncomfortable but at the end of it you get this really beautiful experience.”

Diving into uncomfortable situations sits at the heart of the performance experiences created by Canada’s Mammalian Diving Reflex. But what starts as difficult, awkward and even a little terrifying can give way to beautiful connections and surprising interactions, says Creative Producer Virginia Antonipillai. Rather than shy away from the challenge, Brisbane audiences are flocking to experience Mammalian Diving Reflex’s site-specific and social-specific immersive performance, Nightwalks with Teenagers, at Brisbane Festival 2022.

“Let’s have teenagers lead us through a city and involve audience members not only as spectators to our antics but to also participate in them, resulting in a beautiful intergenerational experience.”

In this episode, Virginia explains why no two productions are never the same, how some nights the cast will play a game of basketball with the audience and other nights, they’ll tell a spooky ghost story. She reveals how the young stars of Nightwalks with Teenagers are not professional actors and how the experience seeks to bridge gaps between teenagers and adults by positioning teenagers in a place of influence.

“We need these sorts of activities to reinvigorate the community and get youth involved and really listen to them because they often have great ideas and are left out of big decisions; we need to involve them in life.”

Brisbane Festival returns to fill the city with three weeks of wonder, delight and celebration from 2 – 24 September 2022. For information and tickets, visit brisbanefestival.com.au 

Beginners’ Call records on Turrbal and Yugerra country in Meanjin, Brisbane. Brisbane Festival recognises the integral role Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples play in our creative, artistic and celebration spaces and pays respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

Podcast Curator: Louise Bezzina (Brisbane Festival)

Podcast Guest: Virginia Antonipillai (Mammalian Diving Reflex) 

Podcast Host: Adam Brunes (Aruga) 

Podcast Producer: Gilberto Castillo (The Podcast Boss)