Getting political: David Berthold’s debut Brisbane Festival

Explorations of race, colonialism and the environment are among the many connecting threads running through the 2015 Festival program.
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Brisbane Festival’s Flexn. Photo by Stephanie Berger.

From an all-male, Singaporean production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest to a life-affirming response to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s brutal colonial past; at first glance there’s little to connect the diverse array of art works from West Africa and South-East Asia which Artistic Director David Berthold has programmed in his inaugural Brisbane Festival.

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Richard Watts is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM, and serves as the Chair of La Mama Theatre's volunteer Committee of Management. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, and was awarded the status of Melbourne Fringe Living Legend in 2017. In 2020 he was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize. Most recently, Richard was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Green Room Awards Association in June 2021. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts