Sydney Fringe Festival has announced the first round of what it promises will be the “most ambitious program yet”.
Highlights announced include the month-long Kensington Street Festival Village in Chippendale, which will launch on September 2 with Fringe Ignite – the official opening party. Two pop-up spaces will operate for the month: comedy venue The Glasshouse, and immersive theatre space The Cottage.
Cirque Africa features 38 performers from six African countries, while the Digital Dinner at Broadway infuses dining with digital media, music and art.
Circus show The Boy Who Was Born With A Moustache and Japanese ghost storytelling performance Ghost Jam! are two highlights skewed towards kids, although they both sound like a good time for adults, to be honest. Cinewest will be presenting a series of what they dub ‘mini film festivals’ – a highlight of which will be the entire Stockholm Fringe film program being imported and presented to Sydneysiders.
A collaboration between Lah Lah’s Big Live Band and the Australian Youth Orchestra at the Town Hall will bring the program to a close.
There are also big plans to convert a space adjacent to Sydney Park into the new HPG Festival Hub – a hangar-sized area which will be “enlivened by Fringe with monthly events starting this May and continuing through the month of September with multiple performance spaces, a circus hub, exhibitions, creative offices, installations and immersive art experiences.” This comes after the Sydney Fringe partnered with local property developer, HPG Australia for this year’s event.
Sydney Fringe CEO and Festival Director Kerri Glasscock believes the partnership will have huge effects outside of the Fringe calendar. “We are thrilled for Sydney Fringe to have a new Principle Partner for 2017. With space at an absolute premium in Sydney, artists increasingly need to think outside the box for performance space with Fringe focusing on pop-ups in recent years.
“This is a game-changing opportunity for the Festival to form a collaborative partnership with the private sector to create a working model that utilises large-scale unused space in the city to create a buzzing festival hub.
“The Sydney Fringe Festival highlights the creative heart of our city offering an annual snapshot of how Sydney feels, where we are and where we are heading. 2016 was our most successful festival to date, and 2017 is shaping up to be bolder, braver and more ground breaking than ever before!” adds Glasscock.
The festival runs throughout September. The full program will be announced in August 2017. Visit the site for updates.
