Image: Macbeth, part of the Congo Connections program at Brisbane Festival. Photo by Nicky Newman.
When Brisbane’s Warana Festival was established in 1961, its theme was ‘entertainment for the people, by the people’; but by the 1990s Warana’s homely mix of parades, picnics, theatre and eisteddfods – not to mention the Miss Warana pageant – had become a little passé. Reborn as Brisbane Festival in 1996, the Festival has subsequently gone from strength to strength – especially since its merger with Brisbane City Council’s Riverfestival in 2009.
