What’s on at Adelaide Festival Centre

From 17 Oct to 3 Nov, Adelaide Festival Centre’s OzAsia Festival (Australia’s leading contemporary arts festival engaging with Asia) delivers a line-up of boundary-pushing works across music, theatre, dance, film, literature, and visual art.  

Attendees will be treated to 18 days of performances, screenings, exhibitions and free events including the popular Lucky Dumpling Market, Moon Lantern Parade and JLF Adelaide – a satellite event of the iconic Jaipur Literature Festival.

Lucky Dumpling Market at OzAsia Festival

Major events in the Festival Theatre include Malaysian pop star Siti Nurhaliza, music icon Nitin Sawhney and Stan Lai’s epic theatre production The Village.

Returning OzAsia Festival favourites include Miss Revolutionary Idol Berserker in a whirlwind tribute to Japanese subculture, legendary playwright/director Stan Lai with The Village and Japanese theatre maker Kuro Tanino with The Dark Master, a gripping performance featuring a mysterious chef giving directions through an earpiece.

Following a successful run at OzAsia Festival 2016, Malaysian theatre company Terryandthecuz is teaming up with Black Lung Theatre co-founder Thomas Henning to present LIGHT – an experimental work providing a revisionist history of Penang and the birth of Adelaide told through the respective stories of Frances Light and his son William.

Belgium’s Ontroerend Goed is set to delight with £¥€$ – an interactive theatre work about the global financial system and how the world’s biggest banks pull strings to make it work in their favour.

JLF Adelaide will return to OzAsia Festival in 2019

Now in its second year, JLF Adelaide is a transnational celebration of cultural connections and new perspectives. Speakers confirmed so far include JLF Co-Directors William Dalrymple (UK/IND) and Namita Gokhale (IND); fellow history writers Shashi Tharoor (IND), Frank Dikötter (NLD) and James Crabtree (UK/SGP); provocative Australian writer Charlotte Wood, journalist/author Robert Dessaix (AUS); and world literature scholar Paulo Lemos Horta (UAE).

This year’s OzAsia Festival also presents the Australian premiere of exhibitions by Taiwan’s Joyce Ho and Su Hui-Yu, and French Guiana’s Tabita Rezaire. Sisters Sangam is an exhibition of works from 14 emerging and established artists from India and South Australia brought together by Adelaide’s Daniel Connell. The Art Gallery of South Australia will present its first major display of Islamic art and an exhibition of Taiwanese-American artist Lee Mingwei.

OzAsia Festival 2019 coincides with the inaugural Asia Pacific Creative Cities Conference organised by Adelaide Festival Centre and supported by the Government of South Australia. The four-day conference will host delegates from the UNESCO Creative Cities Network and creative practitioners to foster valuable new working relationships all while experiencing Adelaide’s richly diverse culture. For more information and to register, please visit: https://www.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au/about-us/asia-pacific-creative-cities-conference/