‘March with us, picnic with us’: Biggest Feast Festival ever launches
“To live is the rarest thing in the world.” This year’s Feast Festival is all about joy in a world that feels increasingly hostile to queer people.
Ahead of its 30th anniversary next year, Feast Festival returns from November 1 to November 22 with its biggest programme ever, jam-packed with more than 150 events ranging from theatre to drag
There’ll also be theatre, cabaret, comedy, drag, visual art, film, music and community events.
This year’s programme is informed by the theme of joy, with Feast’s executive director Skye Bee explaining it’s about queer people feeling pride; they quote Oscar Wilde, who said: “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all”.
“I feel like joy is quite rebellious for a group of people who are quite often persecuted or on the outside or othered,” explains Skye, who has been attending Feast over the past 15 years and working on the event for the past two.
“It takes a whole lot of courage to be able to decide that you’re going to live authentically and happily and own your story, wherever that might take you, in a world that’s nice to you all the time.”
The theme is particularly resonant at a time when the world feels increasingly hostile to the LGBTQIA+ community, with Skye saying it feels like the world has gone backwards 15 years politically just over the past 12 months.
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“It feels like there’s a lot more anger and negativity towards us as a community, and it feels a little bit more volatile than it did only a couple of years ago,” they say.
“Feast, we are an arts festival, and so how we feel and maybe how we can talk to that is one [important element] – to be there to support those groups, to support our community, but also to share our stories and who we are in a different way,” adds creative director Katherine Sortini, who has been working at Feast for the past four years.
The theme of joy is also represented in the cover artwork for the festival created by Adelaide artist Eddie Normington; its aim is to depict the feeling of celebratory happiness.
This year’s Feast Festival begins with the return of the free Opening Night Street Party on October 30 at Hyde Street, where there will be both local and interstate artists.
Among the highlights of this year is the Feast Festival Hub at the Goodwood Theatre, where there’ll be the Gayla gala hosted by Lori Bell on November 7, as well as art displays, board game nights, theatre, cabaret and drag.
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The Hub will wrap up with The Damage is Done, a one-person show by Katherine about a queer Italian woman who comes out to her parents, but it doesn’t exactly go to plan.
“There were so many other queer Italian women in the audience, and they came up to me, and they’d be like, ‘That’s me’,” says Katherine about her show.
Another event is the Adelaide Queer Film Festival running at The Piccadilly from November 11 to November 15 in collaboration with the Adelaide Film Festival.
The Queer Film Festival has been curated by Dr Jess Pacella and Dr Stuart Richards, with SKIFF as the opening film and Bird Cage to close the festival.
There’ll also be NUNGAY Night, with queer First Nations artists at Dom Polski Centre on November 20, while Yoz Mensch’s show My Grandpa Doesn’t Follow Me On Instagram will be touring regional locations.
Feast will go out with a bang, with the free Picnic in the Park event at Whitmore Square/Iparrityi on Sunday, November 22, with Katherine encouraging everyone to “march with us, picnic with us”.
Local musician My Chérie will open for headliner, the Filipino Australian rapper Bernie Van Tiel, while there’ll also be market and food stalls, as well as the “famous” dog show hosted by Feast co-founder Margie Fischer.
Asked why art is such a good way to express queerness, Skye and Katherine both say it’s like another vocabulary.
“Often when I write, or I’m deciding I want to produce a play, it’s because I’m struggling with something and I don’t understand it, and I’m like, I need to work through it, and then I want to share it because I want to know what other people think,” Katherine says.
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