If you are thinking of sleeping in during Brisbane Festival this September, think again. Newish artistic director Ebony Bott, who is presenting her first festival for us this year, has planned a dawn to dusk affair that will then kick on well into the evening.
And it will all begin at the Cultural Forecourt outside QPAC, with a range of morning activities scheduled to start each festival day.
“The Festival Village will be activated at first light to mark that Brisbane is an early rising city,” Bott says. “This active morning lifestyle is something I noticed when I first came and every morning there will be something.”
She says Brisbane Festival has long been the civic heart of the city – essential to its cultural identity and intrinsic to its sense of place. Under the banner of Switch On, Light Up, Come Alive, Bott’s debut program does exactly what it promises, igniting Brisbane’s streets, rivers and stages with works that bring the world to this city, and this city to the world, from September 4 to 26.
From the expansive Festival Village at South Bank to a dedicated early morning program that rises with what Bott reckons is one of the earliest waking cities on Earth, this will be a festival that moves to the rhythm of its people, she says.
‘Brisbane Festival is tuned to the frequency of this city – from first light through to after dark’
Operating at first light to after dark, it will be the only major arts festival in the country with a program that stretches across the full breadth of the day, from sunrise ceremonies and morning yoga to late-night performances and riverside drinks beneath the stars.
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“This year, Brisbane Festival is tuned to the frequency of this city – from first light through to after dark,” Bott says. “It is a festival shaped by Brisbane’s energy, outdoor life and sense of momentum and possibility, bringing extraordinary artists from Queensland, across Australia and around the world into theatres, parks, riverbanks and the Festival Village.”
Global alcohol-free morning dance and wellness phenomenon Daybreaker comes from New York to the Festival Village, combining high-energy DJ sets, yoga, movement and unexpected moments of play for a community experience that starts the day fully alive. Coffee over cocktails, connection over convention – whether you arrive with your crew or step in solo, Daybreaker is an invitation to dance, sweat and be present at daybreak.
“You wake, you come, you start with yoga or movement then it turns into a dance party,” Bott says.
And this year she is bringing back the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent as the jewel in the crown of the village. Each evening it will be transformed into a working bar as the home of West End smash, The Choir of Man, a raucous, roof-raising celebration enjoyed by audiences around the world.
Among many other live gigs and performances, the Spiegeltent will also host The Listies’ anarchic family show, This Show is a Joke, and a unique collision of country music and opera in Are You Lonesome Tonight with arias and songs by Puccini, Verdi, Slim Dusty, Troy Cassar-Daly and Dolly Parton.
“Come and be a villager,” Bott enthuses. “Festivals need to be visible and I think there needs to be a hub, a beating heart. We need a physical beacon to tell people that the circus has come to town and that’s what the Festival Village will be.”
A direct nod to the Athlete’s Village and a statement of intent as Brisbane surges toward 2032, Bott says “this moment in time is all about momentum and celebrating arts and culture in the runup to the Olympics”.
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The outdoor Village Green will buzz across the festival’s three weeks – including the school holiday period – with Indigenous-led contemporary circus Living Sculptures’ How the Birds Got Their Colours, dance workshops, morning mantras with Camerata, sock puppet and circus workshops, weekday wellness sessions, a talks program and a rolling line-up of DJ sets and live music.
A field of microphones, a community-curated song list and a subtle sound system that weaves individual voices into something unexpectedly beautiful – Giant Sing Along – is an interactive installation by Montreal-based studio Daily tous les jours, that invites festival goers to add their voice to a live mass choir.
As evening falls, the Festival Village at South Bank will become the perfect vantage point for Bright Nights by ANZ, the festival’s nightly spectacular that transforms the Brisbane River into a canvas of floating fountains, water screens, lasers and water jets, set to an original soundtrack by The Veronicas. Three times a night during the festival there will be a Welcome to Country and a place-making story by traditional owner Yuggera and Turrbal man Shannon Ruska, to celebrate Brisbane and its landmark river.
At QPAC, Strong is the New Pretty will be one the most anticipated world premieres of the festival. A co-production between Brisbane Festival, Sydney Theatre Company and Trish Wadley Productions, the new work sees celebrated Australian playwright Suzie Miller – the force behind Prima Facie and RBG: Of Many, One – turn her extraordinary talents to the untold story of how the AFLW was born.
Visceral, high-octane and breathtaking, Escape is the latest production from LA company Diavolo. Architectural structures will become the stage for elite athletic performance across dance, acrobatics, stunt work and circus arts, backed by a pounding soundtrack. This is contemporary performance at its most physically and emotionally spectacular.
Fresh from premiering at New York’s St. Ann’s Warehouse, Scorched Earth is the bold new work from Luke Murphy’s Attic Projects, creator of the multi-award-winning Volcano, one of the hits of Louise Bezzina’s final festival as artistic director last year. Set in a stark interrogation room, the reopening of a 12-year-old unsolved murder dredges up one of the darkest questions of the Irish psyche: what right do we have to the land beneath our feet, and what are we willing to do to keep it?
New York puppetry company Wakka Wakka presents Dead as Dodo, a mesmerising musical odyssey set deep in the underworld, where two skeleton friends, a Dodo and a boy, are thrown into chaos when the Dodo miraculously sprouts feathers and begins to transform. Infused with puppetry, humour, music and stunning visual effects, it is a wildly inventive tale of survival, transformation and the power of friendship.
No One Gets Out of Here Alive from Gold Coast company The Farm transforms mortality into a visceral, darkly funny and unexpectedly cathartic communal experience. Drawing on opera, ballet, dance, voice and music, the work confronts not just the big D, but all the quiet everyday endings that shape a life.
But wait, there’s more, including Brisbane Serenades, the Moorooka Block Party, the annual Quandamooka Festival and the Common People Dance Eisteddfod.
The festival’s opening weekend will announce itself with the return of Riverfire – presented by Australian Retirement Trust – lighting up the Brisbane night sky and uniting the city with a shimmering fireworks display launched from bridges, barges and rooftops, preceded by a thrilling RAAF flyover – on September 5.
Brisbane Festival runs September 4 to 26. Tickets are on sale now.
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