This production, a collaboration with local theatre artists, stages a public debate hosted by the (made up) Melbourne Trust Forum. It unfolds as part media reportage and part gameshow.
Samuel Beckett wrote Watt while hiding from the Gestapo during the second world war. It describes Watt’s journey to, within, and away from Mr Knott’s house, where Watt lives for some time as a servant.
Romy Vager performs during the concert at Melbourne’s State Theatre on Saturday night.
Prudence Upton
Germinal has the intentional naivete of a long brainstorm, made concrete with stage props, music and projection, but it rumbles through some incredibly sophisticated concepts.
Hummus becomes a “choreographic texture” in We Love Arabs.
Gadi Dagon
Caravan tells the tale of a mother and daughter who live in a caravan. Staged in the Malthouse Theatre’s forecourt, it is a sweet look at class and gender.
Taylor Mac performs in The Inauguration at the Melbourne Festival.
Jim Lee
We all store parts of our memory outside of our head: in our phones, our computers and our friends. In 887, Robert Lepage brings his memory to life in a gloriously intricate one-man production.
Paul Kelly, Camille O’Sullivan and Feargal Murray marry poetry and music in a compelling performance as part of the Melbourne Festival.
Sarah Walker
In a new collaboration, Paul Kelly has joined singer Camille O'Sullivan and pianist Feargal Murray to set 100 years of Irish poetry to music. As the emerald isle is sung into being, the words of Yeats and Joyce still stand out.
Collisions director Lynette Wallworth used drones and 360 degree filming to create a totally immersive experience.
Supplied
What if your first contact with the Western world was witnessing an atomic test? This is the story of Nyarri Nyarri Morgan, told in stunning virtual reality in animation/documentary hybrid Collisions.
Festivals can no longer focus solely on their recurring, physical events.
AAP Image/Bella Ann Townes
Festivals are a vibrant part of Australian culture but, as arts funding dries up, festival organisers will have to get creative if they want to survive. The recurring, physical event isn’t enough.
The Experiment is a musical monodrama that examines the nature of experimentation itself against two key themes: memory and trauma.
Shane Reid.
The Experiment – showing at the Melbourne Festival – is just that: an experiment. It aims to create a meditation in which disquieting questions can menacingly float. Does it succeed? Well …
1984’s politics, while tuned for the threat of a different villain at a different time, ring eerily true today.
Manuel Harlan/Melbourne Festival
Orwell’s 1984 is a heavily laden text, which turned the author’s name into a byword for authoritarian nightmare. So what can we take from the 2015 stage version at the Melbourne Festival?
Rokia Traoré’s poetic lyrics expand the themes of love, jealously and pride in Desdemona.
Mark Allan/Melbourne Festival
The Melbourne Festival production of Desdemona, written by Toni Morrison and with music by Malian songstress Rokia Traore, puts the women of Shakespeare’s Othello centre stage.
Desdemona is one of several productions at this year’s Melbourne Festival that invites its audiences to listen to tragedy and its reverberations.
Mark Allan/Melbourne Festival
Tony Morrison’s Desdemona, which opens today in Melbourne, asks many questions of its audience. Perhaps most pressingly: what does it really mean to listen, rather than hear?
Every year thousands of students read George Orwell’s 1984 and are doubtless convinced that its perspective on language and power is “definitive”. Except that it’s not; and hasn’t been since at least the 1970s.
Manuel Harlan/Melbourne Festival
Many still regard George Orwell’s 1984 and its message about the nature of language and power “definitive”. But globalisation has revolutionised how we communicate; 1984 tells us nothing about our future.
Known as “the Pedro Almodovar of dance theatre”, Peeping Tom eschew traditional storytelling in favour of blurred realities in 32 rue Vandenbranden.
Herman Sorgeloos
The founders of Belgian dance company Peeping Tom draw their performance language from the influential Flemish Wave movement of the late 1980s and 90s. Their 32 rue Vandenbranden is part of Melbourne Festival.
Goebbels has a deft hand at creating moments that surprise, turning the surreal and the macabre into exquisite moments of beauty.
Photo: Wonge Bergmann, Melbourne Festival
When the mountain changed its clothing, the Heiner Goebbels-directed show currently on at the Melbourne Festival, is an evasive piece of theatre, but it is through its elusive and mysterious qualities…