Gaultier, Trent Dalton and all the best shows to see in Brisbane Festival 2024

Break out the stripey shirts and conical bras: Jean Paul Gaultier’s outrageous life and fashions are set to hit the stage as the centrepiece of Brisbane Festival 2024.

The festival’s full program has been unveiled, with Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show as an Australian exclusive. An episodic performance that audiences can “binge-watch” and a dance piece by a choreographer with Down Syndrome are other highlights of the festival, which will run from August 30 to September 21.

Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak Show is a collision of fashion, music, pop culture, cabaret and art.Credit: Mark Senior

Festival director Louise Bezzina said the Gaultier show originated at the Folies Bergere in Paris and would play in Brisbane at South Bank Piazza.

“It’s a full retrospective of Jean Paul Gaultier’s life in a theatrical production: big numbers, lots of couture, and all the big pop icons that Gaultier has influenced, like Madonna, David Bowie and Boy George,” she said.

Bezzina said the show would nonetheless have a strong local link, with the participation of Queensland Indigenous artist Grace Lillian Lee.

“People are looking to be excited, they want to see something that they don’t get to see every day,” says Artistic Director Louise Bezzina on curating her fifth Brisbane Festival.Credit: Nigel Hallett

“She travelled to Paris and had some time with Jean Paul Gaultier, which will result in pieces of couture especially made by Grace Lillian Lee in the Fashion Freak Show. And sitting next to that is Grace’s first major solo exhibition.”

More than a little of the irreverent, sexy spirit of fashion’s “enfant terrible” infuses the Brisbane Festival program.

“The festival theme is ‘finding your fit’, which is inspired obviously by Gaultier, but it’s also about finding your love,” Bezzina said.

As announced previously, the stage adaptation of Trent Dalton’s Love Stories will play for three weeks during the festival.

Private View, a production by Restless Dance Theatre, explores sexuality and disability. Credit: Matt Byrne

Private View, a show co-commissioned by Brisbane Festival that premiered at the Adelaide Festival, explores an often taboo topic.

“It’s an opportunity to understand the sexual desires and feelings of people with a physical or intellectual disability,” Bezzina said.

Sex and disability is also the subject of neurodiverse performer Oliver Hetherington-Page’s “non-romantic comedy” The No Bang Theory, playing at Metro Arts.

Meanwhile, acclaimed Townsville-based company Dancenorth will present Lighting the Dark, a dance piece choreographed by Chris Dyke, who is a person living with Down syndrome. The piece is inspired by Dyke’s heroes Banksy, David Bowie and Freddie Mercury.

“It’s the first time to our knowledge that an artist with Down syndrome has made a full-length work for a major performing arts company, and it’s going to be incredibly heartfelt and beautiful,” said Bezzina.

She said that Volcano, a dance theatre piece from Ireland, was another festival highlight.

“It’s like a science fiction, dream-like performance that takes place over four episodes that you watch consecutively, and you’re taken on this mind-blowing journey.”

Volcano is a production in four parts by Luke Murphy’s Attic Projects.Credit: Emilija Jefremova

Opera Queensland’s Straight from the Strait is a new musical about the Torres Strait Islanders who broke productivity records in the 1960s laying railway tracks from Queensland to Western Australia.

Another Indigenous-themed musical, Big Name, No Blankets, telling the story of the Warumpi Band, will also play.

Other highlights include the world premiere of Jonathan Mills’ Eucalyptus – The Opera, and Grimm, a new show from Brisbane’s Shake & Stir theatre company that retells Brothers Grimm fairy tales from a dark and sinister angle.

Concert highlights include guitar great Paco Pena, The Cat Empire, Eishan Ensemble, Australian Chamber Orchestra and the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.

Bezzina said the Brisbane Serenade concerts across Brisbane would return, as would the Riverfire fireworks display, the enormously successful Lightscape in the Botanic Gardens, burlesque afloat with Brisbane’s Art Boat, and the popular drone show, this time titled Skylore – The Rainbow Serpent.

The festival will feature more than 1000 performances, of which 320 will be free, performed by 1215 Queensland-based artists and arts workers.

Minister for the Arts Leanne Enoch said the festival would delight audiences with 23 days of cultural experiences.

“Brisbane Festival 2024 reinforces the state’s reputation as a leading cultural tourism destination,” she said.

Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner said Brisbane Festival provides “fantastic economic return to local business, filling our hotels, booking out our restaurants and flooding our entertainment precincts with residents and visitors”.

The full program and tickets are available at www.brisbanefestival.com.au.