Responding to and celebrating place: Perth Festival’s 2025 program revealed

Anna Reece discusses some of the highlights of her first Perth Festival as Artistic Director.
The light installation 'Karla Bidi' will run for the duration of Perth Festival 2025. Six people stand with their backs to the camera beneath a starry sky, on the banks of the Swan River. A bright beam of light rises from the riverbank into the sky before them.

“Always, when you’re considering programming a festival,” says Anna Reece, Perth Festival’s new Artistic Director, “the big question is: how are we relevant? How are we responsive and how are we unique?”

For her debut Festival program, Reece has reflected on the strengths of Perth’s arts ecology, but also its weaknesses, programming works accordingly.

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in 2020. In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association. Most recently, Richard received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts