Find your fit and match their freak at Brisbane Festival
By Kate Lockyer
The hot pink Brisbane Festival banners are up around our city once more, heralding the arrival of this year’s program – much like the banners, it is unapologetically loud and attention-grabbing.
Artistic Director Louise Bezzina said the 2024 theme, ‘Find Your Fit’, has come from the festival’s strong fashion aesthetic this year.
She added the concept can expand across so many different ideas; “it’s about finding your place in Brisbane, finding your place in community, finding your show, finding your outfit, finding your people, and finding your art form.”
“John Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show is the hero of this year’s festival, and it’s an international blockbuster exclusive to Brisbane,” Ms Bezzina said.
“This show is the full retrospective of his life. There are 200 pieces of couture all in one collection, in one show; it’s kind of like a musical theatre performance and it’s got circus and cabaret and burlesque and obviously extraordinary fashion.”
Also part of this project is Grace Lillian Lee, a First Nations fashion designer from Cairns, who has been commissioned to make a piece of couture for the show and will then be exhibiting her work at the Brisbane Powerhouse for the festival’s duration.
Another exciting aspect of this year’s program is what Ms Bezzina called “the biggest body of work from artists with a disability”.
“There’s some extraordinary new Australian works that will make their premiere in Queensland or in fact, world premiere,” she said.
Chris Dyke, a dancer living with Downs Syndrome, choreographed and will perform in Lighting the Dark alongside Dancenorth at the Thomas Dixon Centre, inspired by Chris’ real-life heroes Banksy, David Bowie and Freddie Mercury.
At the Brisbane Powerhouse, Restless Dance Theatre will perform Private View, which Ms Bezzina said is “an exquisite production that takes place in four private rooms that you get to watch almost in a voyeuristic way”, soundtracked by cabaret singer Carla Lippis.
Another big moment in the festival will be the premiere of Love Stories, a play based off Trent Dalton’s book, following the successful 2021 Brisbane Festival theatre production of Dalton’s bestseller Boy Swallows Universe.
Ms Bezzina said the two productions are completely different, but there is a romantic thread that links them: “The wife of course is the love interest he meets in Boy Swallows Universe, and Trent’s relationship to his wife Fiona is the central hook in Love Stories.”
CEO Charlie Cush instructed readers to “get your skates on” to buy tickets, as popular shows like Love Stories and GRIMM were selling fast.
This year Brisbane Festival will be bookended with two magical nights: iconic Riverfire and the Skylore — The Rainbow Serpent drone display.
Mr Cush said the feeling of Riverfire night is akin to New Year’s Eve or a Grand Final night, “when something is in the air”.
