In Review 2016 by Brisbane Festival

*UNPROMPTED AWARENESS

2016 YEAR IN REVIEW

HIGHLIGHTS BRISBANE FESTIVAL IS AN INTERNATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL AND 2016 HIGHLIGHTED PIONEERING WORK FROM THE WORLD’S STAGES. En avant, marche! was a poignant collaboration between the great Belgian company les ballets C de la B and our own Brisbane Excelsior Band. This piece has played hundreds of times through Europe, and the Belgian team thought the Brisbane band the best they’d ever encountered.

PEOPLE CLEARLY LOVED THE EXPERIENCE OF ARCADIA THIS YEAR. MORE TICKETS WERE SOLD IN THE HUB THAN IN ANY OTHER HUB WE’VE HAD, EVER.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream broke the rules with a laugh riot that played with the audience in the most exhilarating ways – might Geoffrey Rush play Bottom for one night only? Rules of the Game came to us ahead of its New York premiere,

Meow Meow’s Little Mermaid was another fairy tale

and displayed ground-breaking American choreographer Jonah

favourite, this time playing in Arcadia, our burgeoning hub.

Bokaer at the top of his own game.

Two Spiegeltents hosted that curious cat along with the champagne-poppingly popular burlesque Blanc de Blanc

La Verità reminded us, with the help of the divine madness of

and a huge range of music and comedy. Much of the music

Dalí, that circus and life are sweetly connected. The audience

was genuinely legendary – Robert Forster, Custard, Mick Harvey,

went for the ride.

Kim Gordon and Stones Throw (along with the surprise george

Our commissioned new work included a piece from Brisbane’s own circus superstars, Circa. Troppo played The Courier-Mail

reunion concert we housed in QPAC’s Concert Hall) – mixing it with the bright new talents of Montaigne, Kilo Kish and others.

Piazza and will have international dates over the next year or two.

People clearly loved the experience of Arcadia this year.

We also contributed to the commissioning of En avant, marche!,

More tickets were sold in the hub than in any other

Terrapin Puppet Theatre’s You, Me and the Space Between, and

hub we’ve had, ever.

a fresh look at Snow White in a co-production with La Boite and Opera Queensland. The latter work formed part of a fairy tale

The same goes for our other hub, Theatre Republic at the QUT

thread that included the French and fabulous Ballet Preljocaj

Creative Industries Precinct. It was a record-breaking fourth

Snow White that filled QPAC’s Lyric Theatre.

year for this special space that is home to some of the most adventurous independent theatre from Brisbane, around the nation and around the world. Echoes, which addressed mostly unspoken aspects of the Syrian crisis, and Hart, which spoke to our own Stolen Generations crisis, were highlights among many.

MAGAZINE 4% FM RADIO 3% TV 7%

AM RADIO 9%

ONLINE NEWS 57%

NEWSPAPER 20%

3-24 SEPT

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September, 2016 Where Magazine (Brisbane), Brisbane

04 Sep 2016 Sun Herald, Sydney

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ARTS

Risque to cabaret Brisbane Festival lifts off NEWS, PAGES 10-11 Monsieur Romeo (above) is Blanc de Blanc’s maitre d’ while (left) Jaimi Luhrmann is the show’s resident dancer and balloon jumper. Pictures: David Kelly (main), Mike Keating

HIGHLIGHTS Photo: Tammy Law

Risque to cabaret: festival camps

under Spiegeltent Strap yourselves in, the Brisbane Festival is under way, writes Nathanael Cooper.

he nights are warming up and for party people that is a sure sign that the Brisbane Festival has begun. For three weeks in September the city drags itself out late into the night to sample the best arts from around the city, around the country and around the world. From world class Spiegeltent shows to a world leading ballet production and a smattering of world ﬁrsts, the Brisbane Festival is kind of like World Expo only inﬁnitely cooler.

This year the festival boasts productions from as far aﬁeld as Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland and the United States, as well as from all around Australia. The festival offers a smattering of productions, from the world premiere of local circus and physical theatre troupe Circa in the Suncorp Piazza, to a variety of works in the Theatre Republic. The independent theatre festival is held within the broader event. Whether you love dance, theatre, music or art, David Berthold has curated a festival that will appeal to at least one of your interests and even if you aren’t a regular arts consumer, there will be at least one event in the program that you can try. With hundreds of events on offer over the three weeks, our Brisbane Festival expert (and reigning may-

BURLESQUE WITH BOUNCE

or of the Spiegeltent, according to Foursquare) has narrowed it down to the top seven things you should get to this week.

The Game This is innovative and explorative theatre at its absolute ﬁnest. The Game gives audiences a look into a world we all know about but few of us enter – buying sex. Each night ﬁve male volunteers, who have no idea what they are in for, enter the stage without a script and without being told what is about to happen. The piece explores the role of sex workers and people who buy sex in a fascinating way, for what is sure to be a confronting, exciting and challenging night at the theatre. September 3-5, Visy Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse.

A semi-naked woman jumping around inside a giant inflatable? All part of the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent cabaret show, Blanc de Blanc PHIL BROWN

onsieur Romeo’s faux French charm is appealing but we’re not buying it. Until we realise that, well, he really is French. So French. So chic, as they say. He’s a 38-yearold male model and performer who has worked with some of the world’s top designers (Armani for one) and performed alongside the likes of Beyoncé and Kylie Minogue. And now he’s the oh-so French maitre’d, the host with the most in charge of Blanc de Blanc, Strut & Fret Production House’s latest saucy minx of a show. It is on in the Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent at Arcadia (out the front of QPAC at South Bank) throughout the Brisbane Festival and is a sexy mixture of circus, cabaret and burlesque. Monsieur Romeo – his real surname – think’s you’ll like it. “But it’s not really a story,” he says. “It’s more a celebration. It starts off as a sophisticated French

cabaret and ends up as a party.” And apparently we’re all invited. Monsieur Romeo’s own transition on stage is instructive. He starts out wearing a tuxedo. “I eventually remove that and I end up in Speedos in a jacuzzi,” he says. And here’s the rub: you could end up in the jacuzzi with him, so be warned, there is audience participation. “In Sydney I had a grandmother in the jacuzzi with me,” Romeo says. “If you come along to this show you might get wet, or touched, or be brought up on stage.” Blanc de Blanc is a bubbly show, as it should be since it takes its name from a type of bubbly, one made from chardonnay grapes. Brisbane Festival artistic director David Berthold loves it and wants everyone (except the kiddies) to come to this “champagne show”. “It’s in the tradition of the naughtiest

burlesque,” Berthold says. “So expect the tease of the strip, the bawdy and the sensual, all with a bit of tongue in cheek.” The bloke behind it, Scott Maidment, who gave us shows such as Fear & Delight, and Limbo, premiered Blanc de Blanc at the Sydney Opera House early this year and has just returned from London with his cast. He admits that doing a show such as this in Brisbane 30 years ago might have attracted attention from the constabulary. “It’s true there is nudity and it is risque,” Maidment says, but adds, in his own defence: “There’s no bad language. But it is certainly not for the easily shocked.” Maidment is thrilled to bring the show home to Brisbane where it all started for him and he’s enthusiastic about it being performed in a spiegeltent. “There’s something magical about a spiegeltent,” Maidment says. “It’s like the carnival has come

to town.” While he says Parisian cabaret inspired him, Maidment admits the show dissolves into “a bit of a piss-take of French sophistication”. The champagne theme is quite literal at times and a few bottles of expensive French bubbly are used during the show – he doesn’t specify how. The retinue he has assembled to create his theatrical party is global and includes Japanese performer Shun Sugimoto, who combines breakdancing with contortionism; and American Spencer Novic, an actor, mime artist and clown. There are two Australians in the mix, one of whom is Jaimi Luhrmann, 24, a Brisbane artist who now performs around the world. She is J’aimime in this show (pretentious, right?) and does clowning and an act in which she performs inside a giant inflatable. “I climb inside a big balloon and bounce around in it,” she says. “I do handstands in it and all sorts of things.” Luhrmann does some acrobatics too but mainly clowns around. Maidment discovered her 10 years ago when she was a teenage student with Brisbane’s Flipside Youth Circus. Now she’s in a grown-up show and her folks, who live at Redland Bay on the southern bayside, are okay with that, he says. “I warned my parents but they love it,” Luhrmann says. “It is risque but in a comical way. “We were a little concerned about how people in London would take it but they ended up loving it.” The other Australian in the show is Sydney’s Emma Maye Gibson, billed as an “obscene beauty queen, surreal showgirl and sex clown”. One of the international stars is Masha Terentieva, 29, originally from St Petersburg in Russia. The daughter of a clown, she has worked with Cirque du Soleil and has a range of skills, including acrobatics. Her signature act involves acrobatics and aerial shenanigans with a hotel luggage trolley. “I got the inspiration for that from being on the road so much, always staying in hotels,” Terentieva says. “What do you do when a bunch of drunken acrobats come back to the hotel and want to play around?” You vault over the luggage trolley? Yep. See for yourself.

Blanc de Blanc runs until September 24, Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent, Arcadia, South Bank, $38-$78; brisbanefestival.com.au

Philip Bacon AM Thomas Bradley QC

Anonymous x 2 Jeff and Amanda Griffin Cory Heathwood Daniel Morgan Diane and Magnus Murphy Sam and Georgie Robson David and Gub Schlect Craig and Andrea Templeman

2016 YEAR IN REVIEW

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