“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.
Consequently, the 2025 Perth Festival features a number of significant additions to the program, including a takeover of the derelict East Perth Power Station, which has been closed to the public since 1981, a renewed focus on contemporary music in a deliberate attempt to attract younger audiences by programming bands and artists who may otherwise not visit Western Australia, and a major new visual arts program, Boorloo Contemporary, in recognition of the fact that Perth lacks the equivalent of Darwin’s Telstra NATSIAA and the Adelaide Biennial.
Decommissioned over 40 years ago, the East Perth Power Station has long been a site accessed only by urban explorers and graffiti artists, and even then illegally.
“This is a building that has lain dormant since the 1980s, so many generations have had both legal and illegal experiences at the East Perth Power Station,” Reece tells ArtsHub, adding that she sees the venue playing an ongoing role in the Festival beyond 2025.
“We’re taking over the grounds and the surrounds and its extraordinary façade in year one, with a hope very much to get inside the building in the future … and we’re extremely thrilled just to be infiltrating the space and making it into a precinct. And I suppose, even in year one, it’s kind of really celebrating the stories of the building itself and the stories of the country that lies beneath it.”
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The East Perth Power Station precinct will feature an after-dark outdoor stage hosting the likes of Australian electronic dance duo Electric Fields; a DJ set from Norwegian duo Röyksopp; a performance by German pianist, composer and producer Nils Frahm; and Ibibio Sound Machine, a fusion of electronica with West African funk and disco fronted by Nigerian singer Eno Williams. The precinct’s full music program will be announced in December.
Also at night, East Perth Power Station’s walls will host illuminated projections by Noongar artists Allan Yarran, Ilona McGuire and Daniel Hansen as part of the inaugural Boorloo Contemporary, while during the day – each afternoon from Wednesday to Sunday – the venue will host Casa Musica, a celebration of Perth’s migrant communities featuring music from across the Indian Ocean rim and beyond, including acts from Réunion Island, South Africa, India and Italy, as well as local artists.
International highlights
In addition to previously announced performances by English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey and Dublin post-punk band Fontaines DC, the 2025 Perth Festival features several international exclusives, including the Australian premieres of new dance works from Greece and Portugal and a major new production of the Sanskrit epic poem, Mahabharata.
“The Mahabharata by Why Not Theatre from Canada is an exceptional production,” Reece says. “It’s a 4000-year-old tale that’s been told, really, in every Indian household across the world across so many generations. It’s a story of two families who go to war over love and power and money and religion, and it’s still incredibly relevant today.”
Peter Brook’s epic all-night production of The Mahabharata at the Adelaide and Perth Festivals in 1988 has taken on legendary status among those who experienced it, but has arguably lost some of its sheen in recent years as the arts community’s understanding of cultural appropriation has become more nuanced.
“It was a lauded production because it brought this phenomenal Indian story into the Western world. But it was also a production that got a lot of criticism because of the reality or the perception of cultural appropriation,” Reece explains.
This new production (which can be experienced as two separate shows over subsequent nights or as a theatrical marathon in one day, with an optional traditional Indian feast and storytelling session) is led by a South East Asian cast and taps into the immersive festival experience that has made such epic works as Toneelgroep Amsterdam’s Roman Tragedies at the 2014 Adelaide Festival and Taylor Mac’s A 24-Decade History of Popular Music at Melbourne Festival in 2017 such memorable and remarkable experiences.
“Festivals have to generate this real sense, this real belief, this energy, that this is a moment in time – the only moment in time where these extraordinary ideas and these incredible shows collide,” Reece says of such productions.
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Why Not Theatre’s Mahabharata is “a once in a generation theatrical experience, and I’m just really thrilled that we’re bringing this production to Perth, so a new generation of audiences can experience this absolute epic. You are invited to gorge on this production, which takes you on this wild journey featuring the gods and the supernatural and the urge to seek bloody vengeance. And it’s all brought to life by this hypnotic live soundtrack of classical Indian music and dance woven together by the most extraordinary storyteller, Miriam Fernandes,” she tells ArtsHub.
Other Perth Festival exclusives in 2025 include Greek choreographer Christos Papadopoulos’ Larsen C, “which is the name of the giant 10,000-year-old ice shelf in Antarctica that’s about twice the size of Wales. It dropped away in 2017 as a result, of course, of the climate crisis, and began to move, so Christos, this incredible choreographer, is really very beautifully exploring the concept of what it would be like if a glacier began to dance. It’s incredibly hypnotic, intoxicating choreography.”
Local delights and a welcome to Country
Local companies and cultural traditions are also well represented in Reece’s inaugural Perth Festival, including the live film-meets-theatre production Night Night, the latest genre-bending work by Perth collective The Last Great Hunt, which has been co-created with Luke Kerridge, the former Artistic Director of Barking Gecko Theatre (which recently merged with youth arts festival AWESOME Arts) and STRUT Dance’s ongoing celebration of diverse dance forms and community engagement, Perth Moves.
“We have an incredible arts sector here. I think there’s something about the isolation of Perth and Western Australia that really makes the local arts sector very, very collaborative. I’d say there’s a lot more multidisciplinary artists here who work right across all these different art forms, in a way, because they’ve kind of had to, you know? Everyone is very supportive of each other.”
The Festival opens with the world premiere of Karla Bidi, inspired by the Noongar tradition of lighting fires to greet and guide visitors – a major installation that will transform the Derbarl Yerrigan/Swan River into an illuminated pathway, with beacons of light stretching along the river, each serving as a symbolic campfire of welcome, warmth and inclusivity.
“It’s a beautiful honouring of Noongar tradition, and indeed many, many First Nations traditions of lighting a campfire to say, ‘Can I come into your country?’ and lighting one back to say, ‘Yes, you are welcome’. This is a very beautiful, very gentle, extraordinary installation that will be positioned all the way along our river, along our bilya, from the hills to the mouth of the Indian Ocean.
“It’s really saying to everyone in Perth, ‘you are welcome. You are safe. Perth Festival is here’. It’s something people can connect to. It’s where they can connect to each other, and they can connect to this place before they get even close to a box office, a cultural institution or a venue, you know? And it’s something that will come back and grow every year.
“There’s nothing wrong with festivals having these backbones that are familiar and create this sense of ritual and anticipation. And once we have the hook, once we have people who know we’re here, that’s when we can draw them into those hard-hitting, truth-telling, mischief-making moments inside the theatres,” Reece concludes.
The 2025 Perth Festival runs from 7 February to 2 Match. Visit the website for full program details. Tickets for the general public go on sale on Monday 11 November at midday AWST (3pm AEDT).
