‘Doggy divas’: Local pets to headline Brisbane Festival
It’s billed as one part dog show, one part TED Talk and three parts family photo album and it stars some of Brisbane’s most beloved fur babies.
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Is Daniel Evans crazy? The talented Brisbane director and occasional mad scientist of the Queensland theatre scene admits he may be just a little bit that way.
Who else would try to put on a show with dogs? Real dogs.
Let’s Be Friends Furever is bound to be one of the hits of Brisbane Festival next month. It’s billed as one part dog show, one part TED Talk, three parts family photo album and it will be a theatrical homage to dogs and their owners and a kind of theatrical love song to pooches and their people.
It will be presented in the Powerhouse Theatre at Brisbane Powerhouse where, presumably, staff will have pooper scoopers on hand.
Daniel Evans can’t quite believe he’s doing it.
“What am I doing?” he says when we chat.
“I have never worked with more divas before in my life. Do you know how hard it is to direct dogs on stage?”
We can guess. They do say one should never work with animals or children. Putting on a show like this requires what Evans describes as “dogistics”.
“I mean, it’s a military operation,” he says.
“But we have been encouraged by all the interest in the show. People have been waiting for a show like this.”
Evans is a respected theatre director and will be seguing back into his normal theatre career after this when he directs Michael Gow’s classic Australian play Away for La Boite.
But before that he has his Brisbane Festival passion project, inspired by his own family’s love of canines.
“I grew up with two toy poodles, Oscar and Nelson,” he explains.
“That’s where this show came from. When me and my sister left home they became Mum’s empty nest fur babies. They both had to be put down together in 2019 and watching my mum go through losing them made me think. I was inspired and I wanted to create something that was a homage. When I first pitched it to Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina the first thing she did was laugh. Then she got serious and said … I’ll do it.”
Evans says the show will be a series of interviews with dogs and their owners (who will be on stage) interspersed with a “dogumentary” screened in the Powerhouse Theatre. Meagan Babore, 36, from Ipswich, a teacher and producer, will be one of the stars.
She will be wrangling her three rescue dogs, a “motley crew” – Scout (labrador cross), Brett (staffie cross) and Steven (10-month-old blue heeler).
“I laughed when I heard about the show,” Babore says.
“But if anyone can pull it off Dan can. It’s a calculated risk. I’ve got no idea what’s going to happen though. It’s theatre at it most primal. I said to Dan … if this isn’t my big break I will never speak to you again.”
The show will explore the highs and lows of dog ownership and people will talk about loving and sometimes losing beloved pets.
It’s a warm and fuzzy idea and just the sort of thing that appealed to Bezzina who has a knack of programming things that resonate with a wider audience.
Her festival is a broad church with everything from edgy, even controversial, fare to feel-good family shows and the long- awaited world premiere of the stage version of Trent Dalton’s much-loved bestseller Boy Swallows Universe from Queensland Theatre.
Bezzina’s artistic directorship is a lesson in resilience.
She brilliantly snatched the festival from the jaws of defeat last year pivoting to present a Covid-safe event that was a triumph against the odds.
One of the programs that made it so special last year was Street Serenades, a series of pop-up performances right across Brisbane. Every suburb got a go and that will happen again this year with Street Serenades: At Our Place. The difference being this year we will know where they are popping up.
Last year it was a surprise although your correspondent got the heads-up on a few so he could go and witness the magic of Street Serenades at work.
One of my fondest memories of last year is rocking up to a park in Hendra to watch Tyrone Noonan and friends, who had just arrived in a little pink caravan, play a 20-minute gig.
Watching folks trickle out of nearby houses to congregate with kids and dogs was just so lovely and the spirit of that will be retained this year with an extensive program featuring everyone from Camerata and Queensland Ballet to Bear and Boy, The Seven Sopranos and some star turns including performances by Montaigne and Christine Anu.
Bezzina says she had last year in mind programming this year’s festival.
“I’m looking back at last year and feeling proud,” Bezzina says.
“Last year was very much about coming together as a community. We learnt to cherish what we have. We had to rely on local talent and we’re doing that again a lot this year but just because it’s locally focused doesn’t mean it’s not extraordinary.”
She says shows such as Let’s Be Friends Furever will add a feel-good factor.
“I fell in love with that show from the minute Dan Evans told me about it,” Bezzina says. “It’s such a clever idea and so heartfelt. But a festival needs to be broad and diverse and offer something for various tastes. It needs to be inspiring and comforting and there’s a clear sense of optimism involved in this year’s festival.”
Last year’s was dubbed Boldly Brisbane while this year it is Brightly Brisbane.
Over 23 days from September 3-25 this year’s Brisbane Festival will present 18 new works, 15 world premieres, deliver 139 productions and present events in a staggering 223 locations across the city including major hubs of activity - QPAC, Brisbane Powerhouse, The Tivoli and the newly refurbished The Princess Theatre, among other venues.
The program will engage 63 Queensland companies and employ 1183 artists, 1011 of who are local.
And this year’s festival will deliver the largest First Nations program yet with 168 First Nations artists.
The festival commences with Jumoo, a smoking ceremony at South Bank on September 3 and South Bank will be the main festival hub with the BOQ Festival Garden and includes productions such as Heart is a Wasteland by the Ilbijerri Theatre company.
Circa’s major immersive work Silver City was to be performed on the Rainforest Green at the BOQ Festival Garden but the giant constellation of chrome bubbles in which Circa’s acrobats were to perform were held up in Europe and that event had to be cancelled.
When I spoke to Bezzina she was scrambling to replace that work with another attraction.
One thing she has done this year is look to the river, and Northshore Hamilton, another festival hub, will be one of two ports of call for a most surprising offering … Brisbane’s Art Boat … a new floating art experience cruising between South Bank and Northshore Hamilton, immersing audiences in a glowing world and bathing the Brisbane River in a new light.
Airship Orchestra, a multisensory inflatable installation up to six metres high sets sail on the Art Boat from September 3-12 with Sky Castle, an interactive dreamscape of inflatable, luminous arches and ethereal symphonies taking to the water later in the festival.
A festival that happens by the river and finishes with an explosive event above the river, Sunsuper Riverfire, is now going on the river too.
“You have to kind of use your imagination sometimes and I think people will really respond to this idea of travelling on the Brisbane River in a new way,” Bezzina says.
“It was my dream from the beginning to use the river and use a boat. Our river is so beautiful. Then I had been travelling in Europe I had seen how European cities use their rivers.”
Using local talent as well as geography is a hallmark of Bezzina’s work, honed over eight years as director of the Gold Coast Bleach festival prior to taking up the role at Brisbane Festival.
Among local heroes at this year’s festival is the edgy Brisbane company Polytoxic which is creating a new show, Demolition, which will run for a week at Brisbane Powerhouse. Described as “an explosion of cabaret, theatre and social activism set to rebuild the world from the ashes up” it will feature music, dancing and provocative social commentary with a tradie aesthetic.
Polytoxic is led by two intersectional feminist performance makers, Lisa Fa’alafi and Leah Shelton and they are renowned for smart, sexy, confronting work that challenges audiences.
“We like to draw people in with the sexiness and then challenge them to see the world in a different way,” Shelton says.
“In Demolition we say let’s tear it all down but then we ask – what can we put in its place? The stage is set up as a work site and people will feel like they are entering a demolition site. We go through a series of scenes looking at different experiences and have eight incredible femmes and Lisa and I are back on stage this year.”
Last year they served as puppet masters with Snapshot, a performance and projection work that told the stories of local artworkers using the front of Brisbane Powerhouse as a kind of screen.
Bezzina has cast her net wide for Queensland talent and has drawn in the acclaimed Townsville-based Dancenorth Australia who will be performing a show called RED in a warehouse space at the Northshore Hamilton hub.
The program describes the show this way. “Air is slowly emptying from a large, transparent inflatable structure, ultimately sealing its inhabitants in preserved isolation.”
“It sounds like a deflating experience,” I suggest to Dancenorth’s artistic director Kyle Page and he laughs adding that one of the central ideas is a “poetic comment on the accelerated loss of biodiversity around the planet”.
One unique thing about the show is that the dancers have red hair.
“Tens of thousands of years ago a genetic mutation gave rise to red hair in humans. Now, like many, they are endangered,” reads the program.
“The two dancers both have this beautiful red hair,” Page says.
Of course the subtexts can be explored freely but with contemporary dance it can also simply be enjoyed for the aesthetic.
Dancenorth’s work is always compelling and this 45-minute work (always leave people wanting more, Page says) promises a rich artistic experience with an original soundtrack. Of course you don’t have to be a ranga to attend. Just saying.
Queensland’s north offers rich talent and though Christine Anu lives in Wollongong, NSW, nowadays she hails from Cairns and Rockhampton originally and she’s coming home to Queensland, Covid willing, as one of the stars of Street Serenades: At Our Place this year.
Anu, who has Torres Strait heritage, loves the idea of performing in the community and promises that she will sing her most famous song, My Island Home, which has become something of an anthem.
“That song reminds me that the north is always going to be my home,” Anu says.
“I still go for the Maroons. My team is still the Broncos although a lot of my Torres Strait island friends and family switched to the Cowboys. Queensland is still home for me.”
Anu says, “It’s always great when music can go ahead.”
She’s been in lockdown lately although she has been able to travel to Sydney for her Weekend Evenings ABC radio show.
We hope she makes it to Brisbane for her gigs. Fingers crossed.
Bezzina acknowledges that it’s still a difficult time but she’s buoyed by our track record of keeping Covid at bay.
The return of Sunsuper Riverfire will be a very special finale this year. Touch wood.
Brisbane Festival, September 3-25;
brisbanefestival.com.au
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