Feast Festival 2007

Feast Festival 2007

With his first Feast Festival, Artistic Director Daniel Clarke has burst onto the festival scene like a human cannonball, propelling Adelaide’s home-grown lesbian and gay arts festival onto the national festival stage with a serious line up that looks the real deal. 

Clarke announced the Festival’s exotic and exciting theme, “love”, early on in the process of forming the festival, and what an inspired idea it was, with many of the festival performers rising to the challenge to look at love in any one of a hundred – well, nearly 500, when you take all the artists involved – different ways.

A small but significant international dimension comes to Feast 07 with two shows from the famed Wau Wau Sisters, a New-York based, entirely unconventional vaudeville act that’s been storming the international festivals and fringes for years. Fusing circus skills, acrobatics, burlesque, comedy and music, the first of their two shows begins with “the act that got them expelled from Catholic School”. Enough said! The UK-based Topping and Butch make a much awaited return to Australia with their latest vinyl-clad show, “Take it up the octave”. The number of Adelaide artists with international connections remind us of the quality of our local product, with Matthew Carey and La Bohème presenting “Cabaret Confessional”, Catherine Campbell reprising her New York success “My Blue Angel – Dreaming of Dietrich” and Libby O’Donovan’s five-star success “The Meredith Crocksley Project”.

The Theatre and Cabaret programs (along with the Visual Arts, of which more below) are very strong in this year’s Feast. “Two Old Queens” concerns the friendship between Noël Coward and the Queen Mother, while “Born to be Wilde” presents a laden table of Wildean delights, ranging from new theatre based on some of Wilde’s love poems, an ensemble performance of ‘The Ballad of Reading Jail’ and a reading of Moises Kaufman’s celebrated ‘Gross Indecency – The Three trials of Oscar Wilde’. The GALA Award-winning “Cracked Pot” will be presented in its final form, and speaking of award-winning, Vitalstatistix and Wishingwell Productions will present Bryony Laver’s “Her Aching Heart”, inspired by the writings of Daphne du Maurier. Perennial Feast favourites Out Cast Theatre are back, this year at the Bakehouse, with “Jane Austen’s Guide to Pornography”, another of Stephen Dawson’s wonderfully funny and absolutely arch creations – oh, and invariably containing a decent butt or two!

Exotica abounds in the Cabaret program. Rochelle, Fifi and Vonni sold out their “Girly Side of Butch” show in 2006, and return with the new “Confessions of a Diva”, while the “Drag Drama” talent night at the Mars Bar on November 11 will make for a Remembrance Day like no other! Brenda Baklava is also on the autobiographical trail with “It’s Still All About Me”, Miz Ima Starr reprises her all-request show “You Asked For It!”, and the gender lines blur a little more with a series of shows from the legendary Berlin Cabaret and Little Black Box’s “Mützenball”. The girls of the excellent Three Hot Chillies will be singing up a storm in “Hollywood … All Bust!” and one chilli, Kelly O’Brien, presents her solo show “Confessions of a Queer Soprano”.

There’s a real assortment in the Music and Dance programs, ranging from cool classics to newest wave electronica, with acts like the Japanese transgender cult band Ikochi leading the line-up. Sam Lohs and Susie Keynes (of FRUIT fame) present their own songs in “Anecdote” and from the sublime to the probably ridiculous, “Bad Father” features electro-opo from the small European country of Klamidia!   The short but sweet dance program includes the Sydney Dance Company’s performance of “Grand” in the Festival Centre’s ‘Pivotal’ series, and premiere performances from talented young Adelaide dancer Jay Robinson in “Four Faces”.

The “I can see queerly now” film project returns to Feast with four new films for Feast 2007, and for something completely different, get out the panel van and head for the Gepps Cross Drive In November 12 & 19 for two great double bills (including the sensational “The Hunger UK” with Catherine Deneuve, David Bowie and Susan Sarandon).  Apart from film, the Visual Arts program is once again very impressive, with ‘love’ the theme for many of the exhibitions.  Watch out especially for “You and I” by Vanessa Papandrea and Kate Waaldyk, “Love – Let me count the ways”, Troy-Anthony Baylis’ “Sunkiss/Landlove”, Russell Leonard’s retro tea-towel designs in “Dry Those Dishes – Bitch”, and Harvey Collins’ “Love 4 Life”. Photographic exhibitions from the members of international touring band FRUIT and playwright Stephen House add a new dimension to our experience of both these Adelaide ‘institutions’.

As we’ve come to expect, a raft of parties, dances, balls, and special events of every kind are once again on offer. The November 10 Pride March and the November 25 Picnic in the Park top and tail the fun, with all sorts of LOVE-ly treats in between, especially the unique “Loved Up” celebration on Montefiore Hill with a public commitment ceremony followed by a reception in the grounds of Carclew, where there will also be a Wedding Cake Competition!

For further information, get a copy of the program guide from an outlet near you, or see the Feast website, feast.org.au. Tickets to all events now on sale.

Courtesy of Blaze.

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