Melbourne festival 2013: top 10 picks

Gurrumul - Melbourne festival — Indigenous singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu will perform with Sarah Blasko and Philharmonia Australia at the Melbourne festival. Photograph: Melbourne festival Photograph: Melbourne festival

This is creative director Josephine Ridge’s first Melbourne festival and her curation is exciting and diverse, with established international artists featuring alongside Melbourne’s brightest independent performers. With a program ranging from visual arts to contemporary dance, these are my picks of the festival, in no particular order.

1: The Life and Times: Episodes 1 – 4

This ambitious project from New York theatre company The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma is the life story of one of the company members. The production is still a work in progress (they hope to have it completed by 2017) and at the festival they're showcasing the first four “episodes”. The production can be seen over three nights or in one marathon, 10-hour session that includes a barbecue dinner. Ten hours is sure to be confronting, perhaps occasionally dull, and challenging for the audience as well as the performers. Not only is this must-see theatre, the must-see way to watch it is to go for the marathon.

Showing: 22 to 26 October, Arts Centre Melbourne (Playhouse), Melbourne

2: Ontroerend Goed

Once and for All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen by Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed was one of the hits of the 2009 Melbourne festival, and is still a talking point among audiences. Teenage Riot and All That is Wrong sees the company deliver two parts of their trilogy on what it means to be a teenager. The two shows are sure to be impassioned, capturing the fears, frustrations and sheer energy of their teenage casts.

Showing:

3: Sylvie Guillem

It’s impossible to not be struck by how lithe French ballerina Sylvie Guillem is, and that’s without taking into account she’s 48. Her movements are always executed with precision and breathtaking control, but there is ease – and often a light irreverence – to her performance. For the festival, Guillem will appear in two productions, Push and 6000 Miles Away, each featuring work by some of the world’s leading contemporary choreographers.

Showing:

4: Gurrumul: His Life and Music

Indigenous singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu will be bringing his rich voice to an outdoor concert in the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, where he’ll be accompanied by Sarah Blasko and the orchestra Philharmonia Australia. Using song, film and storytelling, this performance promises to provide a glimpse of the life of this important Australian artist, and highlight his voice’s unique and arresting qualities.

Showing: 12 October, Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne

5: M + M

Theatre Works, the organisation that is working with and developing the careers of the strongest artists in Melbourne’s independent sector, has co-commissioned two festival works. The first, M + M by the Daniel Schlusser Ensemble, is inspired by The Master and Margarita, with a heavy commentary on contemporary Russian politics and religion. Schlusser divided critics and audiences with Menagerie as part of Melbourne Theatre Company’s Neon festival earlier this year: some raved, others were disparaging and some were simply confused by his treatment of Tennessee Williams’s work. The production is sure to be political, ambitious and urgent.

Showing: 8 to 16 October, Theatre Works, St Kilda

6: Tacita Dean: Film

This year’s festival has strong film and video art programming, and my pick is British artist Tacita Dean’s Film – an installation at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art. Projecting 35mm film on to a 13-metre-tall monolith, this is only the second time the work has been shown. In a world where most of the video we see is on small screens, and even at the cinema most of it digital, Dean’s work is a homage to analogue, and what film can capture and relate that digital cannot.

Showing: 10 October to 24 November, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Southbank

7: In Spite of Myself

Part art lecture, part exhibition, Nicola Gunn’s In Spite of Myself will uncomfortably blur the lines between imagined character and the real Gunn, between the art itself and a piss-take on everything about art that takes itself too seriously. I caught a development showing of the work earlier this year, and almost laughed loud enough to drown out Gunn herself. Likely to be one of the comedic highlights of the festival.

Showing: 9 to 13 October, Arts Centre Melbourne (Fairfax Studio), Melbourne

8: Trailblazer

The Melbourne festival is staging a kids’ weekend with various shows, exhibitions and activities for children, and I’ve got my eye on the world premiere of Ployglot Theatre’s Trailblazer. The Australian company’s interactive work uses children as instigators of discovery – this piece for kids aged up to 12 promises to open eyes to unnoticed sections of Melbourne’s familiar Federation Square.

Showing: 19 to 20 October, Federation Square, Melbourne

9: Making Models: The Collaborative Art of Wendy Ewald

This retrospective of the work of American photographer Wendy Ewald spans four decades and four continents, and is the first time it has been shown in Australia. Her practice is not just about the photographs she takes, but also about teaching children to take photographs to document and better understand their worlds. The exhibition will showcase Ewald’s photographs alongside those taken by the children she has taught around the world – contrasting the perspectives of an adult visiting a community against the children who make up the community.

Showing: 12 October to 10 November, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Fitzroy

10: The Shadow King

The Shadow King is a modern Australian retelling of King Lear with an all-Indigenous cast. It will test our relationship with Shakespeare’s tragedy, placing it in northern Australia with a community divided over relationships to the mining sector. The cast includes established and emerging artists and will be joined by a live band. There will be no Shakespearean language, packing the story into just 105 minutes.

Showing: 11 to 27 October, Malthouse Theatre (Merlyn Theatre), Southbank

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