The inaugural La Mama Festival of Mother Tongues has just opened (12-24 November 2024), a multilingual live performance season with 18 shows conducted in 14 languages aside from English, including Farsi, Persian, Sicilian, Marathi, Spanish, Filipino, Wathaurong, Italian, Polish, French, Māori, Greek, Mandarin and Macedonian. It’s a festival specifically set aside to celebrate the diversity of languages and cultures.
As reported last March, La Mama is going on hiatus next year to review its business operation. So now is the time to catch up with this two-week festival that will take place across four Carlton venues – HQ, Courthouse, COASIT and Motley Bauhaus – before the year ends.
Thuy On is the Reviews and Literary Editor of ArtsHub and an arts journalist, critic and poet who’s written for a range of publications including The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Sydney Review of Books, The Australian, The Age/SMH and Australian Book Review. She was the Books Editor of The Big Issue for 8 years and a former Melbourne theatre critic correspondent for The Australian.
Her debut, a collection of poetry called Turbulence, came out in 2020 and was released by University of Western Australia Publishing (UWAP). Her second collection, Decadence, was published in July 2022, also by UWAP. Her third book, Essence, will be published in 2025.
Threads: @thuy_on123 Instagram: poemsbythuy
