• Ben Eltham
• Meanjin

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14 December 2009What is it that makes festivals such a compelling proposition for audiences asks Ben Eltham in Meanjin

And how did we end up with an expensive and publicly funded arts festival in every state capital of Australia? I spent a couple of months interviewing many of the best-known artistic directors in the Australian festivals scene, trying to find out. What I discovered was not just a remarkable diversity of views, but an almost instinctive belief in the human love of assembly, and the power of festivals as platforms for presenting culture.

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In March 2009 I produced a show at the Adelaide Fringe’s Garden of Unearthly Delights. Entitled The Colors Interactive Comeback Show, it was an odd but sometimes hilarious mixture of music, cabaret and art prank, created by Sydney musician Alon Ilsar and Melbourne writer/director Erick Mitsak. Like most shows in fringe festivals, it sold poorly. On the other hand, it may well have been one of the most enjoyable things I have ever done. To understand why, you need to know a little more about this strange event. Better yet, it would help if you have experienced it.

For more than a month in the often perfect weather of an Adelaide autumn, the Garden of Unearthly Delights is open six nights a week to all comers. There is no entry fee; instead, patrons enter for free through a decorated arch to find an enchanted pleasure garden of ticketed side-shows, amusements, small theatres, circus tents, food stalls, bars, roving buskers and performers and, of course, the obligatory Spiegel tent. All told, the program listed eighty-seven shows for 2009, many of which sold out, and some of which generated extraordinary interest for relatively unknown performers, such as the mysterious Boy with Tape on His Face, or the rather more straight-forward but equally enjoyable Circus Trick Tease. While it is not quite Burning Man, to describe it as ‘carnivalesque’ understates its wild revelry; on certain evenings ‘Bakhtinian’ might be a better description for its excess.

The development and staging of Circus Trick Tease is a good example of how a company and a festival interact. According to Malia Walsh, one of Circus Trick Tease’s principals, ‘someone from Strut & Fret [the Garden of Unearthly Delights’ organisers] had seen our show and thought it would work beautifully in the Garden’. After a meeting, they were offered a four-week show.

As arts companies often do, Circus Trick Tease formed in a bar. The diminutive Walsh met strong-man Shannon McGurgan and ‘he picked me up and played catch with me’. Walsh’s background was in ballet, but she found she enjoyed the different artistic vista of circus. ‘We all come from vastly different backgrounds: Shannon was a nurse to start with, and Farhad, being from Iran, was into trad circus.’

Despite their success, Circus Trick Tease struggled to make a dollar. ‘Doing a Fringe show doesn’t help the bank balance in any way, shape or form,’ Walsh remarks ruefully. But the social and artistic aspects help make up for this.

>>Read the full article in Meanjin