She’s been shaping her sixth Brisbane Festival and Louise Bezzina is as enthusiastic as she was for her first. The festival’s not until September, of course, yet the program is set and will be unveiled to the world in June.
But might we have a sneak peek? Cheeky to ask? If Bezzina tells me too much, presumably she will have to kill me. How about some morsels, anyway? So I start by asking the artistic director about her broad-brush approach to Brisbane Festival 2025.
“It’s a very ambitious nod to 2032,” Bezzina tells me over coffee at Harvey’s on James Street, a short stroll from Brisbane Festival HQ in Fortitude Valley.
“When I say that I am talking about spectacles of scale in the inner-city, public-facing works of scale that are joyous. You won’t miss Brisbane Festival this year, I can tell you that much. Of course, we will have Riverfire by Australian Retirement Trust opening the festival again and the drone show is coming back at the end. Those are our big bookends, wonderful free spectacles that everyone loves.
“But there is going to be another major free project that will enliven the city for the duration of the festival. It will be seen all day and all night and the only clue I will give you is that the way in which we travel north and south of the river from the inner-city will look different. There’s a clue.”
Not enough of a clue to fully explain it, but enough to suggest that something big will be happening that we will all see. Can’t wait.
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‘We’re still recovering from that opening night, watching people’s faces’
Last year’s festival was a ripper with some amazing successes including the signature Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show, which was in your face … and I mean that quite literally. I recall a couple of people with front row seats reporting their shock at the sauciness of parts of the show.
“Yes, it was saucy,” Bezzina agrees, smiling with delight at the memory. “We’re still recovering from that opening night, watching people’s faces. That show demonstrated our ambition and Jean Paul Gaultier is well aware of what a hit his show was. (About) 12,000 people saw it and the company loved being here from France.”
That was one of the best uses of South Bank Piazza ever, although Bezzina does let slip that the venue won’t be in the mix this year. “It’s good to do something new and different,” she says.
Among the big hits from last year was Volcano, a sprawling innovative theatre piece at Brisbane Powerhouse by Luke Murphy’s Attic Projects, an Irish company. It was a word-of-mouth hit. Trouble was, Bezzina points out, that by the time that word-of-mouth got to some people the show had sold out. “We needed a longer season,” she reflects.
Trent Dalton’s Love Stories was a huge hit last year. Photo: Craig Wilkinson
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Then there was the gift that keeps on giving, Trent Dalton’s Love Stories, directed by Sam Strong and produced by Brisbane Festival and QPAC.
“That’s such a good news story,” Bezzina says. “And it’s still going. It had a sell-out season recently at the Adelaide Festival and we are touring it around the country later in the year … to HOTA on the Gold Coast, Canberra, Auckland, Paramatta and Darwin.”
Every Brisbane Festival needs a hero piece and this year it will come from Los Angeles, the Summer Olympics city before us. They will be hosting the event in 2028.
“I can say, without telling you what it is, that we will have a link to Los Angeles this year,” Bezzina says. “I’m going there for a week in May but I have already secured the act for this year’s festival.”
So, I guess if we all sat Googling major performing arts companies in Los Angeles we could come up with a short list, but we will have to wait a couple of months for the big reveal.
What we can tell you is that Brisbane’s own Kate Miller-Heidke will be back this year. Her musical Bananaland was a hit at Brisbane Festival in 2023 and this time she will be involved in Camerata: Your Eternal memories. This concert, featuring Queensland’s own chamber orchestra, will source stories from ordinary people that will be highlighted on stage with music curated by members of the public who share their stories with all of us.
Brisbane Serenades is back and community participation, which has become a hallmark of Brisbane Festival, is firmly on the agenda across a number of events including 100 Guitars, curated by Tim Brady and Topology, at Brisbane Powerhouse. This is a community-based initiative designed to bring guitar enthusiasts from across the city together through the shared experience of inclusivity, creativity and the joy of making something meaningful as a group.
So that’s a bit of an idea of what to expect, though there is so much more that Louise Bezzina will tell us about when the time is right. The Brisbane Olympics and Paralympics 2032 is still a little way off but Brisbane Festival is already gearing up and, in a way, you could say that the Cultural Olympiad is starting early. In September, actually, with Brisbane Festival going for … gold, gold gold! For Australia.