Midsumma: Melbourne’s gay & lesbian festival

When Melbourne’s queer cultural festival Midsumma was first held in January 1989, the world was very different than it is today. Anti-gay violence was still common, discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community was commoner still, and positive representations of queer life in the media were few and far between.

The festival, too, had a very different face, being entirely volunteer-organised and running for just 10 days, with a limited arts program that catered almost exclusively to gay men.

Today, with gay and lesbian characters prominent in popular television programs like Glee and films such as The Kids Are All Right; and with Midsumma’s annual Pride March attracting tens of thousands of cheering onlookers, it seems as if the bad old days of violence and discrimination are long gone. But you don’t have to look too hard – or travel too far out of the inner city – to realize that the battle for equality goes on.

“In the inner city we might be all cool with the queer and LGBTI community, but as soon as you wander out a little further, I think it’s still incredibly important that there’s somewhere to go and something to reach for,” says Midsumma’s Associate Producer Cara Dinley.

“The most important part of Midsumma is that it provides something, particularly for young people. It has a responsibility to reach out further and further into the outer suburbs.”

Such queer outreach programs as Dinley refers have most recently been created by a partnership between Midsumma and the City of Hobsons Bay (covering the suburbs of Altona, Altona Meadows, Altona North, Newport and Williamstown in Melbourne’s south-west), now in its second year, and include a diverse range of events and activities, from Wes Snelling’s queer cabaret night at The Substation, A Walk on the Wes Side, to a Rainbow Families Picnic – celebrating the growing number of gay and lesbian families – at Altona’s Logan Reserve.

The diversity of programming in Melbourne’s west is a perfect snapshot of Midsumma in microcosm, representing as it does the significant number of community projects listed in the festival program alongside professionally curated arts events.

“Midsumma has grown, certainly, but it’s important to us that whether you’re an emerging artist or an established artist, you still get seen,” Dinley says.

Opportunities for exposure this year include a dynamic visual arts program, supported by the City of Yarra and the City of Melbourne, and an ever-growing number of festival hub venues, including Northcote Town Hall, Hares & Hyenas Bookshop, Kaye Sera's BiZARRE, The Butterfly Club, and Gasworks Arts Park.

Although not an official hub, CBD venue fortyfivedownstairs is also home to numerous Midsumma events, including the much anticipated return of award-winning musical Prodigal – the first Australian musical ever produced in New York City.

Eleven years ago Prodigal – the first musical by the award-winning creative team of Dean Bryant and Mathew Frank – had its world premiere during Midsumma. Its return at the 2011 festival is the perfect example of the positive impact the support of a festival like Midsumma can have on an emerging artist’s career.

“It’s really wonderful to be able to say that in 2000, Dean and Matty started as a part of Midsumma, and now they’re two of the highest quality artists working in music theatre in Australia. They’re working with the MTC, with commercial producers – Dean’s just come off installing Priscilla, Queen of the Desert overseas as a director – they’ve just gone from strength to strength,” Dinley tells Arts Hub.

“If you have somewhere that you can put on a work – and going back to what we originally spoke about, whether there’s a place for Midsumma today – I think that sometimes artists are a little scared to put on work that is so specifically queer; but if you have a place for it like Midsumma, you’re welcomed. I think that the support the community gives to artists like Dean and Matty, there’s no doubt that it’s helped them along their way. It’s a great story, and I’m very proud to have them in [the festival], as I am proud of the whole program.”

Midsumma
January 16 – February 6

For more details, including ticketing information, see the festival’s Arts Hub event listing