Community, celebration and stars: Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2024

Artistic Director Virgina Gay describes the tone of her inaugural Adelaide Cabaret Festival and enthuses about some of the program highlights.
A white woman with short blonde hair poses dramatically before a gold lame screen. Her hands are behind her head, her face is turned to the right, and she is singing or screaming with joy. She wears a white shirt under a black suit, and her midriff and a hint of her black bra are visible.

‘Sex, sass, queerness, community and celebration … that’s the vibe that I think best encapsulates my particular take on cabaret,’ says Virginia Gay, Artistic Director of the 2024 Adelaide Cabaret Festival.

Gay, an award-winning Australian writer, actor and television personality whose career has embraced everything from an acclaimed production of Calamity Jane and Melbourne Theatre Company’s Cyrano, to television drama All Saints and light entertainment program Dancing with the Stars, as well as cabaret both in Australia and overseas, fell in love with cabaret as an art form when she was 14.

Unlock Padlock Icon

Unlock this content?

Access this content and more

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