2023
Initiated by Co-Artistic Directors Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield AO and presented by newly appointed Artistic Director Ruth Mackenzie CBE, the 2023 Adelaide Festival (3 – 19 March) featured the first full-strength international program in two years. AF23 welcomed 893 artists from 18 countries, bringing with them global voices, brave new visions and contemporary theatre classics.
A total audience of 239,280 attended all 2023 Adelaide Festival events both ticketed and free (including WOMADelaide). The total number of tickets sold to Adelaide Festival performances was 83,312.
The free opening concert Spinifex Gum, which featured the vocals of Marliya, the music of Felix Reibl and Ollie McGill, singer-songwriter Emma Donovan and the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (ASO). The event opened with the debut performance of the Citizens’ Orchestra, part of the Floods of Fire project initiated by the ASO under Artistic Director Airan Berg. Over 4,000 people attended the concert in Elder Park.
The centrepiece of the 2023 Adelaide Festival saw Giuseppe Verdi’s mighty Requiem brought to life by Ballett Zürich in Messa da Requiem. Theater Amsterdam brought the epic interpretation of Hanya Yanagihara’s devastating novel A Little Life to sold out audiences at the Adelaide Entertainment Centre Theatre. Sydney Theatre Company dazzled us with Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde adapted and directed by Kip Williams. Adelaide audiences were also treated to the exhilarating dance theatre work Revisor from Kidd Pivot, inspired by Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector.
Music highlights included, Lorde (with MUNA and Stellie), Escolania de Montserrat, KRONOS Five Decades, Julia Jacklin and Ngapa William Cooper.
Free events were again a staple of the Adelaide Festival program and were well attended with visitors taking advantage of concerts, exhibitions and installations.
New Director Louise Adler well and truly put Adelaide Writers’ Week on the map from 4 to 9 March. Themed Truth Be Told, the 38th writers’ festival drew a crowd of 17,000 from across South Australia and interstate to the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Garden. Over six days, 158 writers and authors gathered from around the world for 130 sessions, both live and virtual. Sessions were live streamed into 92 libraries, schools, retirement villages and nursing homes. Favourites in the Garden included authors, Fintan O’Toole, Louise Kennedy, Shaun Micallef, Sally Hepworth, Grace Tame and David Hare.
In the Adelaide Hills, Lost Dogs’ Disco by Australian collective ENESS. Unvanished, an artistic collaboration between Barkindji artist Kent Morris, Studio John Fish and sound designer James Henry, took up residence on the Festival Plaza.
Create4Adelaide (C4A), a cultural initiative of the 2023 Adelaide Festival, was launched at the beginning of the 2023 Festival. This new project gives young people the opportunity to voice their concerns about climate change in South Australia and propose solutions through their own artworks as part of a major, year-long environmental project for next year’s Festival. Artwork can take any form – from drawing, painting or photography, to written, musical or filmed pieces.
