How COVID cancellations can enrich a festival

A festival three years in the making, RISING offers multiple entry points for people unfamiliar with contemporary arts experiences.
A vivid green laser beam almost a kilometre long shines above the Yarra River at night.

RISING Co-Artistic Directors Hannah Fox and Gideon Obarzanek could be forgiven for feeling a trifle anxious about their 2022 festival, given that COVID forced its outright cancellation in 2020 and shut down RISING’s 2021 iteration after a single night.

Instead, they’re quietly confident about this year’s RISING, which Obarzanek describes as a ‘three-years-in-the-making festival’.

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the 2019 Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in early 2020. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association in 2021, and a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Photo: Fiona Hamilton. Follow Richard on Bluesky @richardthewatts.bsky.social and Instagram @richard.l.watts