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Nov. 6, 2019

Australian performing arts festival focused on Asia, OzAsia Festival (Oct. 17 – Nov. 3)

This Australian comprehensive performing arts festival is held each year over three weeks from October into November. Focused on Asia, it introduces a broad range of arts from theater and dance to the visual arts, music literature, film and the culinary arts. The OzAsia Festival Artistic Director is Joseph Mitchell. This In addition to artists from Australia, the festival until now has presented artists from Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Japan, Korea Republic, Latvia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Syria, the United Kingdom, the United States and more.

In 2019, appearing in the Theater division from Japan were Niwa Gekidan Penino led by Kuro Tanino and Miss Revolutionary Idol Berserker with a piece based on “Ota-gei.” For Tanino it was his second appearance since two years ago when he presented The Dark Inn in 2017. This time Tanino presents The Dark Master, a work set in a small eatery in which and unimplied customer is suddenly asked to take over the restaurant by its misanthropic owner who disappears and communicates after that only as a voice through a headset the customer is given. Also appearing for the second time in the festival, Miss Revolutionary Idol Berserker performs Totes Absorbs ♡ Hurricane, which debuted in Yokohama in 2018. In the Dance division, Contact Gonzo presents the world premiere of Stuck in the Narrowest Path in collaboration with the local Adelaide group Zephyr Quartet.

Other works on the Theater program included Jaha Koo’s Cuckoo that takes us on a tour of the changes in Korean society’s since shifting to a liberal course in the wake of the 1994 IMF economic crisis; and from India comes Abhishek Thapar’s My Home at the Intersection, a tale about three generations of a family in the country’s Punjab province that have lost a common language to communicate with each other. Attention also focused on the new work of Akram Khan, Outwitting the Devil.

Festival Outline
This comprehensive arts festival organized by the Adelaide Festival Centre is the largest scale festival in Australia focusing primarily on Asia arts. Its programs introduce leading works of theatre, dance, music film and visual arts that stand out in Asia. Since 2009, its programming has selected focus countries, among which Japan was the focus in 2011. In 2015, the programming took on a decidedly contemporary face with artists like Japan’s Ryoji Ikeda and Miss Revolutionary Idol Berserker, Indonesia’s Theater Garasi and Melati Suryodarmo and Chinese director Meng Jinghui.

OzAsia Festival
https://www.ozasiafestival.com.au/