Puffio

For the assembled month or so of thrills-of-a-lifetime, it's hard to go past the month of November in the sometimes quiet burgh of Adelaide. Why, there's the Feast Festival in full swing, the first International Guitar Festival about to spring into life and tapping on the tremelo bar of your conscience, there's about 60,000 concerts to entertain you (YMMV) and there's the added spectacle of a predictably dull electoral campaign winding up over the next two weeks. Clearly, there's no reason not to be out and about enjoying the best sado-political-masturbatory artistic endeavour this side of the Indian Ocean. Shall we begin?

SASO Gallery on Light Square presents the exhibition 'Who Is SŠn?', an eclectic composition of work by the late artist Jai Kinson, opening on Wed 21 Nov, and running through until Wed 5 Dec. Following his unexpected death last year, a group of Kinson's friends got together this exhibition in his honour.

Currently at Jah'z Lounge is a new musical play, 'Design For Living 21C' which opened last week and runs with evening performances at 7pm and Sun afternoon matinee sessions until Sun 18 Nov at 2pm. The show is a humorous take on consumer society and our obsession with the cult of self-importance, all set in a massive suburban shopping mall.

If you're into the wonders of Flamenco Dance, then look no further! Flamenco Dance Areti presents the wonderful 'Noche Flamenca' with special guest guitarist Robbi Varga in performance at the Odeon Theatre on Fri 7 and Sat 8 Dec.

Should you not wish to sit around watching the interminable count on election eve, Sat 24 Nov, then here's a suggestion: Honours performance student and guitarist Jody Fisher is the soloist in the final concert in the Elder Conservatorium Evening Concert Series for the year, and she will be performing the Rodrigo guitar concerto, Concierto de Aranjuez. The concert begins at 6.30pm, in the Elder Hall at the University of Adelaide.

If your children are precocious, nay talented, and fit the right look, then here's the opportunity of a lifetime (to be set free of the slavery of childrearing) forever. The producers of 'Miss Saigon' say the search is on for local children to play the role of Tam in the musical, which opens in Adelaide on Sat 29 Dec. The production requires Asian or Eurasian boys or girls aged between four and five with dark eyes and hair. Children must be no taller than 95cm (3 ft). Contact Paula McKinnon on paulamckinnon.miss-saigon@lww.com.au or 02 9657 9103 and be aware that auditions will be held at the Adelaide Festival Centre on Sat 17 Nov @ 1pm.

'A Century In Focus: South Australian Photography 1840s-1940s' is somewhat of a self explanatory name for a photographic exhibition. The exhibition will feature some of the earliest photographs of SA among 400 to go on display for first time in a landmark exhibition. Have a look at the growth of the settlement, and thence the state, and see what these pioneers lensmen saw. These photographs are on loan from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and have never been seen in this country before. 'A Century In Focus: South Australian Photography 1840s-1940s' is on display at the Art Gallery of South Australia now, and open until Mon 28 Jan.

The Moonlight Cinema returns to Adelaide for Summer 2007/08 and is set to brighten the night sky with panoply of great movies through the warmer evenings. If not, just rug up a little. Once again, the Moonlight Cinema will be hosted by our Botanic Gardens, and this year it's the Australian Premiere of 'The Darjeeling Limited' which will be opening the season on Thurs 29 Nov. It all runs until midway through February 2008 wth fillums such as 'The Nanny Diaries', 'Lions For Lambs', '3:10 To Yuma'and 'I am Legend'.

From the writer of 'Shakespeare In Love', 'The Real Thing' is a hugely entertaining play of sparkling wit, a thinly disguised self-portrait of a playwright who struggles to make sense of that most elusive of human emotions, love. 'The Real Thing' performs in the Dunstan Playhouse from Fri 16 Nov until Sat 8 Dec.

After just one year in existence, the BHP Billiton Youth Arts Fund, a partnership of the South Australian Youth Arts Board and BHP Billiton, has been recognised with the inaugural Australia Council Arts for Young People AbaF Award, which is pretty good news. High 5's and back-slapping all round, everybody.

Every two years or so the ASO climb on the big bus of joy and take a little trip into the country, heading out to Monarto Zoo for the 'Symphony In The Serengeti', a rather wonderful evening concert programme inside the safety of a wired enclosure, but surrounded (up to a point) by all sorts of wild animals. This year the concert is scheduled for Sat 8 Dec, at 6.30pm, and the ASO is doing it for the Chimpanzee Habitat, raising funds for the good works which go on, largely unremarked, out at the Monarto open range zoo. Why do they perform once every two years? It takes the animals that long to get over it, of course.