Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina had a lot on her plate dealing with running a festival during a pandemic. But you won’t hear her having an attack of the poor-mes about that.

“I get quite annoyed when people give me the ‘you poor thing’ treatment about my tenure, ‘’ Ms Bezzina says. “Because it has been quite an adventure and a great opportunity.”

The Chinese word for crisis is Wei Ji. Wei means crisis while Ji means opportunity and in the ancient Chinese philosophy opportunities often arise from crisis. And so it was for Bezzina who turned a crisis (Covid) into an opportunity to fundamentally reshape Brisbane Festival.

As she prepares to officially launch the program for her fourth Brisbane Festival (September 1-23) with tickets now on sale, she reflects on how the pandemic gave her the opportunity to refashion the festival with a local flavor. She calls her strategy Boldly Brisbane.

Previously artistic directors liked big flourishes and international imports but the pandemic shut that approach down. So Ms Bezzina created a new style Brisbane Festival focusing on the talent at hand and while she has spread her wings a bit this year the local theme remains.

“Serenades would never have been created, our deeper connection to community wouldn’t have happened,” she says. “Covid gave me the opportunity to create a festival truly loved by the city. It’s not about just shipping in shows. That’s not how I curate and create.

“I mean I understand why people say ‘poor thing’ but I actually feel really blessed that I was given an opportunity to reimagine the festival.”

She cites the hero work Salamander, the centrepiece of this year’s festival, as a good example of her philosophy – a stunning large-scale site-specific dance theatre work by internationally renowned choreographer and director Maxine Doyle and artist and designer Es Devlin working with composer and sound designer Rachael Dease and Queensland’s own Australasian Dance Collective.

This work combines international and local talent and will transform a warehouse on the banks of the Brisbane River at North Shore, Hamilton into a futuristic dream world haunted by desperate characters, labyrinths, and shifting structures in a flooded landscape.

“It’s the most ambitious and significant thing we are doing this year,” Bezzina says, “I wanted something big and this is it.”

Salamander is an epic work about the state of the climate and the world and it will even rain inside the warehouse. (Image supplied).

It’s an epic work about the state of the climate and the world and it will even rain inside the warehouse, although not on the audience we are told. This is the sort of fare festival-goers are looking for, something new, something edgy, something unexpected.

Brisbane Festival will begin with Riverfire by Australian Retirement Trust and that’s another innovation of Louise Bezzina’s. She asked the relevant question – Why do we have to wait until the end of the festival for the fireworks spectacular? She decided to start with a bang and finish with a spectacular massed drone performance entitled Nieergoo: Spirit of the Whale, a celebration of indigenous history and folklore set on the river with crowds massing at South Bank to witness this free closing event.

These spectaculars bookend three weeks of events in theatres and outdoors and right across the city. This year, Brisbane Festival productions are activating new and quintessentially Brisbane locations such as St John’s Cathedral, Chandler’s Sleeman Sports Complex, Victoria Park, South Bank, Northshore and the City Botanic Gardens as well as highlighting the city’s world-class arts venues including QPAC, Brisbane Powerhouse, La Boite Theatre and Metro Arts.

And Brisbane Serenades will spread out across the suburbs. This community outreach program started its life as Street Serenades, a series of guerilla pop-up suburban performances that kept us all entertained in the depths of lockdown. It was sheer genius, the community embraced it and it has survived to become a festival fixture.

It involves all sorts of performance and there is a “classical music truck” that will transport some of our top classical music acts – Camerata, Orava Quartet and EnsembleQ among others – out across the city.

Bananaland is written by Keir Nuttall and composed by Kate-Miller-Heidke and Nuttall. Image: Supplied.

The statistics are impressive this year with more than 1000 performances, more than 230 of them free. There will be 19 world premieres, 2 Australian premieres, 11 Queensland premieres and 57 arts organizations will be involved with more than 1400 Queensland based artists and arts workers including 170 or so First Nations artists.

One of the shows announced early was Bananaland written by Keir Nuttall and composed by Kate-Miller-Heidke and Nuttall. It’s a quirky Queensland story about a band called Kitty Litter that accidentally becomes the next Wiggles. That promises to be a festival hit and it is typical of the sort of accessible fare that fits Louise Bezzina’s philosophy.

Eternity by our own internationally renowned contemporary circus company Circa promises to be another hit with its world premiere to be staged in the hallowed grounds of St John’s Anglican Cathedral in Brisbane. International festival hit The Making of Pinocchio, a profound piece of storytelling and a funny and deeply personal account of gender transition will play at Brisbane Powerhouse. But wait, there’s more. So much more.

And the Brisbane Festival epicentre will again be the Festival Garden at South Bank with the addition this year of a large-scale site-specific installation by much loved visual artist Hiromi Tango and nearby South Bank Piazza will be a versatile venue for circus, music and cabaret acts including Strut & Fret with a new and very saucy show called The Party. Maybe don’t take your mum to that one. Depending on your mum.

Among other attractions is Lightscape, a multi-sensory experience of light color and sound that will illuminate the City Botanic Gardens throughout the festival.

Bezzina says that “a strong sense of community and connection” the lasting legacy of her Covid festival makeover will be key to Brisbane Festival again this year.

And with Brisbane 2032 Olympics and Paralympics on everyone’s mind this is a festival that “shows the rest of the world how amazing this city is” according to Bezzina.

“I feel really blessed that I have had the opportunity to reimagine Brisbane Festival.”

brisbanefestival.com.au