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The 11th Annual Feast Festival
Sat 10 - Sun 25 Nov 2007
In venues everywhere
The festival theme announced by Feast Festival Artistic Director Daniel Clarke earlier this year was 'Love'. Certainly, that's a pretty big script and an all-encompassing idea, but somehow I can sense a feeling of 'love' in the air. By the time the Feast Festival kicks off the weather may have turned into those beautifully balmy spring days we all love, and the Feast Festival will add some colour and life to the city which seems to need and respond to it.
The Feast Festival has become an institution, but in the best possible way. Having just celebrated its decade in 2006, Feast returns this year with a new team at the helm, a few new ideas and what seems a renewed vision and hope for the future. Certainly, the programme for the two weeks of Feast seems crammed with goodies, such that this will be undoubtedly the largest Feast yet staged.
As before, some of the most visible events for Feast are the free and community occurrences, kicking off with the Pride March, which congregates and begins its procession from Light Square on Sat 10 Nov, meeting at 6pm. The Pride March is a big bustling and wonderful celebration of the gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, intersex and queer lifestyle. Once the marchin's done the party's just begun. Held in the Cloisters at Adelaide University until late...
If you're looking for other fun events spread across the two weeks, look no further than the 'Love Up - The Wedding Of The Year' and 'Picnic In The Park'. Firstly, 'Love Up' is a public celebration through a mass marriage ceremony to be held in the presence of other consenting couples at Montefiore Hill on Sun 18 Nov from 2pm. The ceremony will be followed by a party in the grounds of Carclew. The traditional 'Picnic In The Park' is the final organized event for this year's Feast Festival, taking place in Veale Gardens (South Terrace) on Sun 25 Nov from midday. Taking place- - as it does - the day after the Federal election, this might be the biggest and most colourful public manifestation of a liberated Australia you're ever likely to see.
Elsewhere in the Feast calendar of events there are visual arts exhibitions, theatre and cabaret performances, music gigs and a whole host of other things tucked into performance spaces all over the city. From New York City come the raucous and world famous Wau Wau Sisters, performing two different shows in the Little Theatre at Adelaide University over the season. By all accounts, these will be shows not to be missed.
A powerhouse team of thespians get together at the Festival Centre for a season of pure Oscar Wilde. 'Born To Be Wilde' presents four different pieces of theatre inspired by the love poems of the Irish lettersmith and queer icon. The season is to be found in the Space Theatre. Also at the Centre, in the Playhouse, Sydney Dance Company perform 'Grand', a dance by Graeme Murphy. And at La Boheme on Grote Street there is a return season of Catherine Campbell and Frank Ford's 'My Blue Angel - Dreaming Of Dietrich', in which a much loved tribute to Dietrich is afforded a return season after successfully wowing 'em in both Adelaide and New York over previous years.
If it's film you're after look no further than the exceptionally popular 'I Can See Queerly Now', back for its fifth season of short and innovative cinema with a bent. There's four new films which have been especially brought to the screen for Feast: 'Checking In', 'Love Is Blue', 'How To Bury The Dead' and 'Dyke!'.
There is much much more than can possibly be touched upon in this small space, so the best thing to do is grab a programme and make it a bit of a pilgrimage - to get out to at least one more Feast event than you have attended in previous years. The challenge is there.
Alex Wheaton
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