Ten Sydney Festival Events Happening in Unexpected Places
Discover something a little different this Sydney Festival.
Ten Sydney Festival Events Happening in Unexpected Places
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Discover something a little different this Sydney Festival.
It's that time of year again. Sydney is soon to be transformed into a city-wide exhibition for Sydney Festival, reminding us yet again of how much we love art, and that our city is full of surprises and hidden venues, tucked away in unusual places. We've already handed over our top 15 events, now we're helping you discover a part of Sydney you never knew existed.
The population of our fair, Emerald City only gets bigger and bigger with each year, so space is at a premium. The Sydney Festival saw, and accepted that as a challenge. This year, a stellar program takes places in a whole bunch of places you wouldn't expect to see world-class theatre, music and installations. A Bankstown carpark will become a theatre, a church will host vocal loops and a Buchla 100 synthesiser, and there will even be an installation tucked behind the Southern Pylon of the Harbour Bridge. Sydney Festival 2017 pops up in the city's unexplored nooks and crannies, inspiring new interpretations of familiar locations. Here's our pick of ten shows to see in unexpected locations.
Top image: The Beach at Barangaroo.
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10
In words attributed to everyone from Mark Twain to Alexisonfire, we should dance like no one is watching, and Glitterbox gives you the chance to do pretty much just that.
Stuck inside a giant colourful cube that’s pulsating with glitter, sitting atop The Star’s Sky Terrace, get your groove on to some killer tunes in an entirely unique situation that’s will make you okay with the fact that glitter doesn’t wash out for weeks.
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9
When you have hair as thick and lush as I do, you don’t think about hair all that much. But, for those less blessed in the follicles, this show is exactly what you need. Featuring Australia’s Prince of Polyester, Bob Downe, The Big Hair Show and Catalunyan hair wizards Osadia, the festival village plays home to curlers, straighteners, a healthy dose of matte-finish styling clay, and a solid helping of hilarity. A strange, hands on mixture of art, performance and extreme barbery, The Hair Salon will be begging you to not leave your hat on.
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8
Hakawati is an Arabic/Lebanese word meaning storyteller. This event at Sydney Festival takes us into the Middle Eastern tradition of sharing a meal and a story over a meal. The National Theatre of Parramatta is teaming up with the institution that is the El Phoenician dining room to lay on dinner and a show that transports you deep into a world of mythical tales with a distinctively Sydney flavour. Hakawati was the major form of entertainment in many Arabic communities before television arrived, so ditch your tv for the night and get old-school with some storytelling.
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7
Fresh from freaking people out at Tasmania’s Dark Mofo festival, the House of Mirrors arrives in Sydney to mess with our minds. Far from your average house of mirrors, this bad boy alters your perspective, literally and figuratively, by altering dimensions among thousands of optical illusions, and promises to baffle the brain. Take on this epic labyrinth and discover the true art in getting yourself out of a maze.
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6
It’s the ethos of the Urban Theatre Projects to breathe a new and unique life into Australian stories, and Home Country promises to be no different. Director Rosie Dennis presents this story of identity and place in a triptych, spread out across three levels of a car park in Blacktown. The play is a collaborative effort between Urban Theatre Projects and Blacktown Arts Centre, bringing the issues of home faced in a multicultural society to fore, all set against the sunset over the Blue Mountains.
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5
There isn’t really a much better place to host an artificial beach than the imposing, architectural blank space at Barangaroo’s The Cutaway. Dreamed up by the off-beat team at Snarkitecture, from January 7 to 29 (but it’s closed on Mondays) the concrete void of The Cutaway will be transformed a beach of 1.1 million balls with no sunburn, no sharks and no worries. Dive in for a swim.
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4
It’s almost impossible for the vast majority of us to imagine a life where we can’t see, and where we can’t hear. In Imagined Touch, hosted at Carriageworks, deafblind artists Heather Lawson and Michelle Stevens invite us into this life, to experience the world the way that they do – without sight or sound. Wearing vision-limiting goggles and chunky headphones, the visitor takes on a unique experience, relying on the remaining senses to feel the story presented by the artists. Imagined Touch is also presented as a free installation, running at Carriageworks from January 10 to January 14.
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Bayala means ‘speak’ in the tongue of Sydney’s first people, and that’s exactly what this series of talks, workshops and performances at Sydney Festival begs of you – to speak the language that lived here, long before we did.
In 1790–91, Patyegarang, a young Aboriginal woman, taught ‘First Fleet’ English astronomer William Dawes the local language during frequent visits to his hut. That site is now known as Dawes’ Point, under the southern pylon of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This is where you can hear Lille Madden, a young Gadigal woman, reading the wordlists and sentences in language as spoken by Patyegarang.
The installation will be open daily from 6am-11pm throughout the festival. Become immersed as Gadigal representatives read from notebooks written in 1790, or take classes with Darug and Gadigal teachers. Check out the rare collection of artefacts that preserve the language, or take your place in the massive performance of traditional songs about country, ancestors and healing. Head to the State Library to take the plunge to learn just a little more about the history that we all share.
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2
As if anyone hasn’t watched Eric Forman embarrass himself at a roller disco in front of Red and Kitty and didn’t think, “I could totally do that.” Well, the Meriton Festival Village is giving you the chance to prove it with a weekly shred at Hyde Park’s very own Roller Jam. Dust off those skates, unravel the tube socks and press those short shorts, because Saturday nights in January mean DJs, disco, and desperately trying not to fall over. Runs every Saturday night from January 7 to 28.
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1
No festival is complete without sweet beats, and Sydney Festival’s program at St. Stephen’s Uniting Church has most definitely got the tunes covered. In a program that runs over two weeks, musicians from the USA, the UK and Australia are calling the church home, bringing an eclectic mix of electronica, folk, jazz and a bit of Appalachian dust to the festival. From new wave sensation Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, to the folk drawl of Dori Freeman, the aural feast begins on January 12.
