The Three Person Festival

We all love a good festival; which is precisely why veteran festival director Brett Sheehy is always under the pump. Fortunately, for him and us, this year's Melbourne Festival will be his tenth major international arts festival, so he knows a thing or ten about curating engaging, challenging and entertaining arts events. However, for curators like Sheehy, the umbrella of festival programs invariably make audiences more daring. “It's a bit of gift to us as festival directors that we get away with presenting some really tough work that we wouldn't get to do elsewhere,” he says, adding that audiences are always more prepared to “give something a go” if it's included in a brand name festival.

For the 2012 Melbourne Festival, Sheehy has spanned the globe and the genres to create a program packed with contemporary arts superstars, including legendary choreographer William Forsythe, performance poet Luke Wright, Antony & The Johnsons, Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, German theatre ensemble Schaubuhne Berlin and Melbourne's own Chunky Move. “What this one is doing, more than any of the others, is that it's a kind of farewell to festivals with my bringing back of some of the great artists I've worked with before,” he says of his fourth and final Melbourne Festival.

More than simply being a reflection of the director's personal taste, this year's program has loosely evolved around the two key themes of place and identity. “I would never hold the program to rigid themes but it is interesting that those two have emerged. They're such broad themes anyway that most artists address them almost always… But y'know, I wouldn't want audiences to get bogged down in that.” Unavoidable in all of this is the personality and predilections of Brett Sheehy himself. It's hard to sift the man out of the program. As he notes, “It's hard for me to judge whether the festival has a singular personality or if there's a feel to this festival; but you should be able to tell from a festival's program the kind of thing that this guy or this girl likes and get from them their kind of vision of what's interesting in contemporary arts. I guess this is one of the reasons, terrible though it is for us, that we all get turfed out every three or four years.”

Before he departs the director's chair for a post with Melbourne Theatre Company, Sheehy will take audiences on a visceral tour of global arts, with everything from contemporary opera to circus, international film to punk rock, and a dance piece based on the themes of The Slap. According to Sheehy, the job of a festival is to be consciously diverse, edgy and provocative with an accent on what contemporary artists are doing now. When finalising the program, he considers “three people”; namely, the audience, the artists involved and the local arts community. “When I'm looking at work I'm also thinking about what I would love the 25 year-old composers and theatre makers of Melbourne to see and be inspired by; what could have an absolutely brilliant impact on their art making?” From grand old theatres to classic gallery spaces, in cathedrals and on river boats, Melbourne Festival 2012 will doubtless do what all good festivals should: divide opinion, enrage and entertain. Oh, and create a headache for the new director.