Mona Foma curator Brian Ritchie reveals full 2020 festival program

Mona Foma curator Brian Ritchie has announced the full 2020 festival program, which will feature more than 400 artists — including Paul Kelly — performing across 25 venues in Launceston.

MORE than 400 artists will perform across 25 venues in Launceston as part of Mona Foma’s monumental 2020 program.

Festival curator Brian Ritchie announced the full program today at one of the festival’s venues, the city’s 1960s-built Elphin Sports Centre.

Highlights in the massive line-up include a Paul Kelly show and a major new theatre work, which will be performed on a temporary stage over part of Cataract Gorge swimming pool.

Paul Kelly performs before the 2019 AFL Grand Final. Picture: RYAN PIERSE/AFL MEDIA/VIA GETTY IMAGES

“We have a huge [free] performance called King Ubu, [an absurdist] musical theatre play and puppet show with live music and lots of crazy stuff,” Mr Ritchie said.

“It’s the most important thing we are doing this year and it’s also the first time we have created a new work. It’s happening in the Gorge around twilight and we will be using the pool during the course of the play for some of the action scenes.

“It’s an adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, a fantastic avant-garde play from the late 1880s, which launched every art movement of the 20th century. It’s been adapted to a Tasmanian landscape and we’ll have a lot of satirical local references.

“It’s an interesting play because the main character who can’t really be called a protagonist — he’s more like an antihero or something — he’s quite similar to the likes of Trump or other dictatorial figures. So this play has had revival ever since it first happened in 1896 because unfortunately there’s always some buffoonish character.”

Mona Foma, from 11-20 January, features music, visual art, special projects and dance works. There’s a strong thread of electronic music acts and also shows about dying languages (Jeremy Dutcher from Canada and Ripple Effect from Arnhem Land) in this year’s program.

Family friendly acts include the Ubu play at the Gorge and Daedalum Luminarium, an inflatable maze made up of 17 domes in Royal Park with music created by Midnight Oil’s Jim Moginie.

Midnight Oil guitarist and keyboard player Jim Moginie performs with Midnight Oil at the Derwent Entertainment Centre. Picture: PATRICK GEE

The Penny Royal’s waterborne Dark Ride has been reimagined by artists as a psychedelic dream world with lasers, video art and a specially commissioned synth-soundtrack.

“It will be a trippy and fun experience with an electronic music soundscape from the female composers at MESS,” Mr Ritchie said.

The 2020 festival has colonised new and at times unusual venues, including the Elphin Sports Centre, which will be transformed with an exhibition of video works by international and local artists that reflect on the concept of sport, athletics, and the body.

“We want to involve ourselves with the city and take on some of the places that are taken for granted and make people see them from a different perspective,” Mr Ritchie said.

The Albert Hall will host electronic music concerts, including Stockhausen / Launceston / 50, recreating the late German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen’s electronic compositions to mark the 50th anniversary of his 1970 performance at the same venue (when he toured to Launceston as part of a world tour).

Mona Foma festival curator Brian Ritchie in Launceston for Mona Foma 2019.

“We are re-creating that concert. One of the reasons for doing this performance is to show that electronic music is not new. It’s been happening at least since the 1940s. In some ways it will probably be some of the most advanced music we show in January,” Mr Ritchie said.

The Princess Theatre will host headline concerts by Paul Kelly (January 16), Italian pianist and composer Ludovico Einaudi (January 19) and Amanda Palmer (January 20).

Palmer will be asking the women of Launceston to join her at Confessional, inside a shipping container, where they will be invited to share their thoughts, fears and stories. She’ll then transform these confessions into a new song and perform it live on stage as part of her show There Will Be No Intermission: An Evening of Piano, Pain and Laughter.

‘If you put people in a room with Amanda Palmer anything can happen. I think they’ll go in there with their trauma. Amanda is fearless and she can take it on,” Mr Richie said.

“This is a very well balanced program because for everything that is really provocative or hard edged there’s something else which balances that out.”

All tickets will be on sale from 10am on Monday, October 21 at monafoma.net.au.