Daily Review
Murray Bramwell

OzAsia Festival 2019 Program

Artistic Director Joseph Mitchell talks about this year’s OzAsia line-up with Murray Bramwell.

Adelaide’s OzAsia Festival has come a long way since its inception in 2006. Initiated by Adelaide Festival Centre CEO, Douglas Gautier, who brought his extensive list of contacts from the Hong Kong Arts Festival, the program remained in the capable hands of Artistic Director Jacinta Thompson until 2015, when Joseph Mitchell began his stint.

This is now Mitchell’s fifth …

Ulster American
by David Ireland
Traverse Theatre Company
Dunstan Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
March 13. Bookings: adelaidefestival.com
Tickets: $40- $79. Duration: 1 hour 25 mins (no interval)
Until March 17.

Ulster American, a new play by Belfast-born playwright David Ireland, is a raucous, funny, disconcerting satire on the cascading consequences of an ill-considered remark where, through social media, the private can become indelibly public. “I grew up during the Troubles,”writes Ireland,”I’m well aware of the dangers of tribalism and …

Manus
by Leila Hekmatnia, Keivan Sarreshteh
Verbatim Theatre Group
AC Arts Main Theatre
March 7. Duration 75 minutes.

Devised and performed by the Iranian Verbatim Theatre Group from Tehran, Manus tells the stories of eight asylum seekers leaving persecution and personal danger in Iran, and the events leading to indefinite incarceration on Nauru and then, Manus Island in PNG.

Director, researcher and performer, Nazanin Sahamizadeh is the company’s driving force and the text for Manus has been gathered from her …

La Reprise. Histoire(s) du theatre (1)
Conceived and directed by Milo Rau
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
March 4. Bookings: adelaidefestival.com
Tickets: $30- $79. Duration: 90 mins (no interval)
Until March 7.

La Reprise, (The Repetition) a Belgian-German collaboration developed by director, Milo Rau, is an anatomy of a murder. It is also a careful dissection of the business and strategies of theatre. This intriguing essay on human transgression wittily explores its own best ways for making us, not …

Daily Review

OzAsia is a Festival to Remember

In recent years OzAsia has become one of the highlights of Adelaide’s festival calendar but never more so than in 2018.
The hugely popular Moon Lantern Parade, cruelly thwarted by uncertain spring weather in recent years and cancelled several times, has benefited now that the festival begins in late October instead of a month earlier. More than 40,000 attended this year’s parade which featured contributions from ethnic community groups, schools, performance companies …

Lines of Communication

Here is the Message You Asked for …Don’t Tell Anyone Else ;-)
Created by en? (What has happened ? How does it come to this ?)
Chunqiu Theatre Company, Dream Can.
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre.
November 1.
OzAsia concludes November 11.

OzAsia is in its final week in Adelaide and again highlights artistic director, Joseph Mitchell’s flair for finding the new and intriguing in Asian performance art. This time it is 33 year old Chinese director, …

OzAsia Festival
Adelaide.

While I Was Waiting
by Mohammad Al Attar
Directed by Omar Abusaada
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre
October 30.

Four and a Half Stars

Murray Bramwell

At the Q&A, held after the first of only two performances of Syrian playwright, Mohammad Al Attar’s While I Was Waiting, someone asked the director, Omar Abusaada what message he wanted audiences to take away from the play. His reply was that he did not want his theatre to be …