Artistic Director’s Statement
I am very proud to note that Melbourne
Festival is in extraordinarily good health –
financially and artistically – as this
Report indicates.
economic enterprises, particularly in the
arts sector. So I thank our artists, our
stakeholders, the people of Melbourne, and
the Festival team for helping us achieve
these record results.
In The Age newspaper’s wrap-up of
the 2011 Festival under the headline
‘Melbourne Festival Hits its Highest Note
in Years’, the Festival themes of protest,
politics and revolution were noted. These
proved to be particularly prescient, with
the Arab Spring being followed by the
world-wide Occupy movement, which
saw the Melbourne protestors setting up
camp around one of the Angels-Demons
in City Square.
The 2011 program again saw record
gross box office and the highest audience
engagement in the Festival’s history, all
aided by the largest public art project ever
undertaken in Melbourne’s CBD – AngelsDemons.Parade, along with the ‘son et
lumiere’ Cacophony. These achievements
are astonishing given the ongoing Global
Financial Crisis and the fragility of all
On a personal note, I was especially proud
that we enabled the first presentation,
anywhere in the world, of a contemporary
theatre production from the People’s
Republic of China (the Rhinoceros in Love
tour), and the first collaboration between
two iconic Victorian organizations –
Chunky Move and Victorian Opera
– with Assembly which, along with our
presentation of Back to Back Theatre’s
Ganesh Versus the Third Reich, swept the
2011 Victorian Green Room Awards. We
also had the unique opportunity to feature
some of Melbourne’s finest artistic talent
as we presented the cultural program
of the 5th World Summit on Arts and
Culture. Other much-lauded productions
included Hedda Gabler by the Schaubühne,
Political Mother by Hofesh Shechter
Company, The Manganiyar Seduction from
India, the home-grown multi-national
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Oratorio KURSK, the world premiere of
Australian National Academy of Music’s
purpose-built acoustic venue Quartethaus,
and the final instalment during my tenure
of our international collaborations with
The Black Arm Band, as they were joined
in the Sidney Myer Music Bowl by singing
legends Joss Stone, Mavis Staples, Rickie
Lee Jones, Emmanuel Jal, Paul Dempsey
and Archie Roach to name but a few.
As I remarked last year, the Festival
continues to ‘punch above its weight’
mightily in comparison with the
international arts festivals of other
Australian cities, and has the second
highest ratio of box office return to
program budget in the nation, despite
being fifth in size of program purchasing
power. Its constant evolution from strength
to strength is something of which all
associated with it can be immensely proud.
Brett Sheehy AO