Sydney festival has been brightened from the beginning by the Visual Artist in residence Telly Tuita. His kaleidoscopically colourful ‘Tongpop’ ribbons and totems and sculptures and costumes, interactive rooms, and even boats, are splashing the Pacific all over Sydney.
The SS John Oxley sitting alongside Pier 2/3 in Barangaroo is a wonderful display day or night.
The 49th edition program kicked off 3rd January with a mini festival display of a few highlights. Sydney Festival Director Olivia Ansell, and The Hon. John Graham, Minister for the Arts officially launched the event, alongside Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC, who gave a moving speech about why she thinks Sydney is so good at getting creative.
Sydney Festival’s own Creative Artist in Residence, Jacob Nash, also the curator of the 2025 Blak Out Program, has brought together brilliant First Nations artists from both Australia and overseas.
We asked him what how he thought this years First Nations productions and events were shaping up, “This years 2025 Blak Out Program for Sydney Festival is simply Irresistible,” he said. We couldn’t agree more.
Chela at ACO on the Pier
Chela may be changing her stage name, but upstairs on the Pier, the multi-hyphenate artist and musician still known as Chela gave a high energy bouncy and lyrical set accompanied by dancer Hana Truban. They held the small square dance floor stage tight, and invited the crowd to gather around, and even gave a little line dancing lesson. The highly enthused audience hardly needed any encouragement, and wherever this talented young Filipino-Australian singer-songwriter’s career is going, and under what guise, she’ll definitely be taking a loyal, cool, and growing fan base with her.
A Model Murder by Melanie Tait and Sheridan Harbridge, at Darlinghurst Courthouse
We have a review of the play and an in depth and exclusive interview with the writer and director Sheridan Harbridge here. It’s on a waitlist now, but we suspect this won’t be the last we see of A Model Murder, a play that eloquently and perkily dissects the baby boomer period in history, gender politics, murder, nightclubs and old skool Sydney, as well as the deep rituals and rules around justice. Pink feather fans and backstage lighting in court never looked so good.
Cliff Cardinal from Crow’s Theatre Toronto in As You Like It or The Land Acknowledgement at the Sydney Opera House
Billed as a ‘Canadian First Nations cultural provocateur‘, Cree/Lakota artist Cliff Cardinal did in fact come to Sydney to make a point. He first put on this show in his home town Toronto, billed simply as As You Like It. Cardinal delivers a well thought through and passionate admonishment of the platitudes that surround the Welcome to Countrys in well meaning communities who then fail to think about what the acknowledgement is trying to say and asking everyone to do. He ask for less ceremony and more employment, less clapping and more opportunities, les smugness more action. Audience members definitely had their feathers ruffled. Which is exactly the point.
Dark Noon at Sydney Town Hall
A breakout hit in Edinburgh hit, Dark Noon, has also just had a five-star run at New York’s St Ann’s Warehouse. The fix+foxy creative team includes writer and co-dirctor Tue Biering and choreographer and co-director Nhlanhla Mahlangu. The history of the Wild West is ripped apart, as is our collective romanticism of the movies that depict the times. The cast of seven South African actors dance shout and sing through the centre of the Town Hall, with the audience penning them in on three sides. They build a sort of old fashioned film set throughout the play, complete with a camera track and accompanying video footage, that also purports to the racism and genocides that were acted out in the name of progress. The frontier spirit and how that has laid the tracks for ongoing inequality and segregation both in the US and South Africa is further explored in equally charming and disturbing personal stores from the actors at the end.
