Adelaide Festival
PROJECT PRODUCING
Release Creative was engaged in the 2021 and 2022 seasons to produce seven separate works for Adelaide Festival. We were extremely proud to work with Adelaide Festival to produce the following works.
Spinifex Gum with Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, Supported by Citizens Orchestra
Adelaide Festival’s 2023 Free Opening Event
Friday 3 March 2023
Elder Park
Since its stunning premiere at the 2018 Adelaide Festival, Spinifex Gum has disarmed and uplifted audiences across Australia, bringing together the lush vocals of Marliya, the music of Felix Riebl and Ollie McGill (The Cat Empire) and the choreography of Deborah Brown.
In this fully orchestrated version, the artists of Spinifex Gum will be joined by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and powerhouse singer-songwriter Emma Donovan as Adelaide Festival’s free opening night concert returns to Elder Park.
A Cairns-based choir of talented young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and girls, Marliya is the beating heart of Spinifex Gum. Under Lyn Williams AM (Gondwana Choirs), their vibrant voices blend stunning harmonies with a joyous pop-choir sound, singing in both English and Yindjibarndi to speak to important social and cultural issues with passion and exuberance.
This unique show confronts some of the most hard-hitting issues of our time, while emphasising the importance of empowerment and recognising what can be achieved when we come together as one.
The concert will open with the premiere performance of the Citizens’ Orchestra. Under the artistic direction of Airan Berg, and the musical direction of Tim Steiner and Ricardo Baptista, the 2023 ensemble consists of Adelaide Symphony Orchestra musicians, local South Australian artists, Quirkestra (Tutti Arts), amateur community musicians, and community members who have never before been involved in music. The ensemble has been created through an exciting collaborative & community-centric creative process and innovative participatory workshops. The concert includes first performances of their original collaborative compositions, inspired by South Australian landscapes, communities, and experiences.
Spinifex Gum has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body and the Major Festival Initiative in association with the Confederation of Australian International Arts Festival Inc., Adelaide Festival, Sydney Festival and Monash Academy of Performing Arts.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde
THEATRE / AUSTRALIA
3-12 March 2023
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
By Robert Louis Stevenson Adapted and directed by Kip Williams Sydney Theatre Company
Written and directed by Kip Williams, this spellbinding adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s mystery for the ages is an unmissable production on the cutting edge of theatrical and cinematic design. The award-winning creative team behind the smash hit The Picture of Dorian Gray returns with another vivid adaptation of a Gothic classic, transformed for the stage through engrossing live video.
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde follows London lawyer Gabriel Utterson as he attempts to unravel the mysteries surrounding his friend Dr Henry Jekyll and the shadowy new presence in his life: Mr Edward Hyde. One of the most gripping and intricate tales ever told, this chilling detective story has captivated readers, artists and audiences alike for generations.
Two virtuosic actors, Matthew Backer and Ewen Leslie, perform all roles in this gripping chronicle of the doomed and divided Jekyll, the rapacious Hyde and the transfixed Utterson, caught in between.
Blurring the lines between good and bad, the self and the other, public and private, and artist and audience, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a dazzling production not to be missed.
Generously supported by Adelaide Festival Contemporary. Thanks to Leading Patrons Bob Warner CBE & Jill Hill and Margo Hill-Smith & Sam Hill-Smith.
Revisor
DANCE THEATRE / CANADA
17-19 March 2023
Her Majesty’s Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
Produced by Kidd Pivot | Created by Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young
Nikolai Gogol’s satire The Government Inspector( Revizor in Russian) was written in 1836 but its themes never grow old. Corruption, misinformation, hidden agendas, paranoia, mistaken assumptions and double-speak are just the beginning.
As with Canadian company Kidd Pivot’s masterpiece Betroffenheit (the celebrated hit of the 2017 Adelaide Festival, its Revisor combines Crystal Pite’s movement and Jonathan Young’s text, lip synced by the dancers or heard in voiceover, with an exhilarating, go-for-broke muscularity. Revisor is a true hybrid of dance and theatre with startling depth and complexity. Voiced by actors, the recorded script provides the score for Pite’s arresting choreography, brought to life by the phenomenal dancers of acclaimed Vancouver-based company Kidd Pivot.
Produced by Kidd Pivot in association with Eponymous. Co-produced by Sadler’s Wells, Théâtre de la Ville/La Villette, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Canadian Stage, Seattle Theatre Group, The Hamber Foundation, The CanDance Network Creation Fund, Danse Danse, National Arts Centre, DanceHouse and Dance Victoria. Supported by the Canada Council for the Arts through the New Chapter Program. Developed with support from the National Arts Centre’s National Creation Fund.
Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk] // Marrugeku
DANCE THEATRE / AUSTRALIA
10-12 March 2023
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
Marrugeku
Brimming over with sadness, anger, joy and steely resistance, Jurrungu Ngan-ga is a deeply affecting and urgent work by one of our nation's most innovative dance theatre companies that confronts Australia's shameful fixation with incarceration.
This breathtaking new work connects the shockingly disproportionate levels of Indigenous Australians in custody and the indefinite detention of asylum seekers in Australia’s immigration detention centres.
Jurrungu Ngan-ga, translated from Yawuru as 'straight talk', takes inspiration from the words and experiences of Yawuru leader Patrick Dodson, Kurdish-Iranian writer and former Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani, and Iranian-Australian scholar-activist Omid Tofighian.
Blending movement, music, soundscape, spoken word and projection, Marrugeku’s unique intercultural work reflects the impact of government-sanctioned brutality. The company’s exceptionally talented dancers evoke dark aspects of the Australian psyche, drawing on cultural and community experience to move deftly between horrific surrealism, truth-telling and stunning physicality.
With dark humour and courage, Jurrungu Ngan-ga interrogates our capacity to lock away that which we fear and shines a light on new ways to resist.
Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk] was commissioned by Carriageworks, International Summer Festival Kampnagel, Hamburg with Körber-Stiftung and the City of Melbourne through Arts House. Marrugeku is funded by the Australian Government through the Australia Council its arts funding and advisory body, the Government of Western Australia through the Department of Local Government Sport and Cultural Industries, Create NSW, the Australian Government through the Indigenous Language and Arts Program, the Nelson Meers Foundation, and International Summer Festival Kampnagel, Hamburg.
Maureen: Harbinger of Death // By Jonny Hawkins and Nell Ranney
THEATRE / AUSTRALIA
14-18 March 2023
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
By Jonny Hawkins and Nell Ranney
Framed by velvet drapes and bedecked with Jatz cracker crumbs and cigarette ash, Maureen invites you into her bohemian living room. She’s here to take you on an intimate journey brimming with witty repartee, well-worn life advice, an exotic array of friends now gone and the dauntless potency of limitless imagination.
With exquisite storytelling, writer and performer Jonny Hawkins transforms into Maureen: a razor-tongued doyenne of Kings Cross in its heyday. Co-created by Nell Ranney, this poignantly funny solo show takes inspiration from Hawkins’ friend, a self-described “working class glamour queen” and one of life’s true eccentrics.
Magnificently flouting many of the rules of drama and narrative, Maureen: Harbinger of Death redefines our concepts of older women. Caustic and moving, it is an uplifting demonstration of the wisdom, vitality, kindness and humour of women too often overlooked or dismissed by society.
A night of wit, imagination and storytelling with a character you won’t forget.
A Soft Tread production in association with Sign of the Acorn.
Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan
CHAMBER OPERA / AUSTRALIA
2 – 8 Mar 2022
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
Composer Joseph Twist
Libretto by Alana Valentine and Christos Tsiolkas
Director Neil Armfield
Conductor Christie Anderson
As his body hit the water, few heard the impact, but the ripple effect of the murderous act defied natural law and swelled to seismic scale.
It’s 50 years since the infamous drowning of Dr George Ian Ogilvie Duncan; a moment in time that triggered an alleged police cover-up, a city-wide scandal, national outrage, a Scotland Yard investigation, pioneering gay law reform... and a glaring absence of convictions.
Watershed, a new oratorio commemorating this moment, is the product of some of Australia’s most acclaimed creative talents. A searing, no-punches-pulled libretto by Alana Valentine and Christos Tsiolkas has been set by Brisbane composer Joe Twist, winner of the Chanticleer Prize for international choral composition. His affecting score is given theatrical life by director Neil Armfield and choreographer Lewis Major, bringing together solo voices, a dancer, the Adelaide Chamber Singers and an elite chamber orchestra under the baton of Christie Anderson.
Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan has been co-commissioned by Feast Festival, Adelaide Festival and State Opera South Australia, supported by Arts South Australia. Presented in association with Feast Festival. Generously supported by the Adelaide Festival’s Commissioning Circle, Sidney Myer Fund and Nunn Dimos Foundation.
MACRO with Gravity & Other Myths and Djuki Mala
Adelaide Festival’s 2022 free opening event
Sat 05 Mar 2022
village green, Adelaide oval
2022’s opening night spectacular confirms what we’ve known all along: that the mighty and venerable Adelaide Festival is the Edinburgh International Festival's slightly younger and less chilly southern sister. Our favourite homegrown “contemporary circus powerhouse”, Gravity & Other Myths (GOM), whose sphere of fans has snowballed throughout the UK, stars in an opening co-production, which will also ring in the 75th Anniversary Edinburgh International Festival in August. Those who saw The Pulse in 2021 will know what to expect when the full 30-strong troupe team up with a mass choir. Now add ancient Celtic rhythms to the equation. And fireworks. And amplification. And giant projection scrims and a colossal ascending triangular lighting rig. We don’t have a castle, but GOM’s inspirational towers and turrets of bodies are equally breathtaking. This will be a fun, beautifully produced, free event for families and friends to marvel at. A heart-in-mouth display of skill and coordination. But it was more than that. From their humble DIY origins, every show mounted by this company is founded by a profound unspoken principle: to show what humans can do when they trust each other, support each other and urge each other to go further. Whether here on the grass or 16,000 kilometres away on the cobblestones, we need to be reminded of those simple things. This was an awesome community of performers in a celebration like no other.
Supported by the UK/Australia Season Patrons Board, the British Council and the Australian Government as part of the UK/Australia Season. In association with Country Arts SA this event will be livestreamed to Regional Communities and Co-commissioned by Adelaide Festival and Edinburgh International Festival.