PERTH FESTIVAL UNVEILS A FABULOUS FOUR

PERTH FESTIVAL UNVEILS A FABULOUS FOUR

Boorna Waanginy: The Trees Speak returns to Kings Park by popular demand

Vietnam’s AO Lang Pho creators bring new circus show Lang Toi (My Village) to Perth

Athens Olympics artistic director presents theatrical masterpiece The Great Tamer

Barrie Kosky’s Komische Oper Berlin casts a spell with Mozart’s The Magic Flute

Our city will be hotter than ever next February with a spectacular 2019 Perth Festival Opening Weekend and the spellbinding Australian premiere of a once-in-a-lifetime family opera experience.

After thrilling audiences at the 2017 Festival, the epic nocturnal wonderland of Boorna Waanginy: The Trees Speak lights up Kings Park once more over a four-night Opening Weekend in celebration of our indigenous Noongar culture and the uniquely beautiful and biodiverse South Western Australia.

This free outdoor family adventure from 8-11 February opens the Festival with two other Australian exclusives: the breathtaking Lang Toi (My Village) from the Vietnamese circus troupe behind 2017 Festival hit AO Lang Pho and the exquisite stage show The Great Tamer by 2004 Athens Olympics artistic director Dimitris Papaiaonannou.

These are the world’s greatest performance-makers creating shows that people won’t get to experience anywhere else in Australia.

Capping off the Festival’s ‘Fabulous Four’, Perth audiences also will be the first in Australia to see acclaimed director Barrie Kosky’s wildly inventive production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

This brilliant blend of live action, thrilling music and animation is brought vividly to life by Kosky’s Komische Oper Berlin, British theatre group 1927, West Australian Opera and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra.

Lovers of musical theatre, opera and live entertainment spectacles will fall under the spell of this Flute at His Majesty’s Theatre from 20-23 February.

Perth Festival Artistic Director Wendy Martin says: ‘These four incredible works from the imaginations of some of the world’s most inventive artists are spectacles of incomparable beauty, wonder and scale.

‘From Boorna Waanginy’s magical transformation of Kings Park to an iconic opera blending animated film and live action, these exclusive Festival events offer unforgettable experiences for everyone.

‘They are just a taste of a 2019 program packed with diverse delights that will make the 2019 Perth Festival an irresistible highlight of summer in this city.’

Perth Festival runs from 8 February to 3 March 2019. Look out for more details when the full Festival program is announced on 1 November 2018.

BOOKINGS AND FESTIVAL INFO: perthfestival.com.au

Priority bookings: Tickets on sale now for Friends of the Festival and (for the Magic Flute) WA Symphony Orchestra and WA Opera Subscribers.

General public: Tickets are available from 12pm, Friday 10 August. Entry to Boorna Waanginy is free but prices start at $36 for the three ticketed productions.

EVENT DETAILS

Boorna Waanginy: The Trees Speak

Kings Park, Fri 8 Feb – Monday 11 Feb

AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE

Free event

Big-event director Nigel Jamieson and the Boorna Waanginy creative team return for an encore of the 2017 Festival’s landmark free outdoor walk-through spectacular. Families, friends and strangers alike will flow as one along a kaleidoscopic stream of 3D projections, animation, sound and lighting effects to experience the splendour and diversity of the Noongar six seasons of the South West. Trees bloom with colour, stories and the urgent need to protect our environment are shared as you take an enchanting and unforgettable 1.5km journey along Fraser Avenue and deep into the park. Thousands of school students around the State will create Seeds of Change, a major light installation devoted to protecting our precious environment.

Lang Toi (My Village)

Nouveau Cirque du Vietnam (Vietnam)

The Regal Theatre, Fri 8 Feb – Sun 17 Feb

AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE

Lang Toi is a daring display of acrobatics, physical theatre, live traditional music and playful bamboo constructions to delight the entire family at the Regal Theatre from 8-17 February. This poetic and joyous celebration of Vietnamese village life transports its audience into the heart of the action in a rice field, at a child’s game, at the market or during a storm.

The Great Tamer

Dimitris Papaioannou (Greece)

Heath Ledger Theatre, Fri 8 Feb – Tue 12 Feb

AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE

Dimitris Papaioannou, the director of the 2004 Athens Olympic Opening and Closing ceremonies, has created a theatrical feast of surreal delights with The Great Tamer. Papaioannou vividly explores the mysteries of life, death and the beauty of humanity with enigmatic, dreamlike scenes and visual riddles inspired by the ancient Greek poet Homer, Renaissance artists like Da Vinci, El Greco and Caravaggio and filmmaker Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. His magical stagecraft brings to life a series of inventive live paintings using ten performers and a shape-shifting floor that undulates to the sumptuous music of Johann Strauss’ Blue Danube.

Mozart’s The Magic Flute

Barrie Kosky, Komische Oper Berlin and 1927 in association with West Australian Opera and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra.

His Majesty’s Theatre, Wed 20 Feb – Sat 23 Feb

AUSTRALIAN PREMIERE

Mozart’s glorious comic opera is staged in the most exhilarating way by renowned Australian director Barrie Kosky, his famed Komische Oper Berlin and British theatre group 1927. Flying elephants, gaudy 1920s flappers, comic-book villains, gigantic spiders, butterflies and wolves run rampant as performers interact with animated characters in this fantasia of thrilling music, non-stop action and visual delights. This Flute is made for film buffs, families, art lovers and fans of fine opera and has enchanted half a million people in 22 cities around the world.

Perth Festival runs from 8 February to 3 March 2019. Look out for more details when the Festival program is announced on 1 November 2018.

BOOKINGS AND FESTIVAL INFO: 08 6488 2000 – perthfestival.com.au

Category: News