ARTISTIC DIRECTIONS
The curatorial imagination of successive directors has given Melbourne a kaleidoscope of informed perspectives on the world .
A preference for particular art forms , individual aesthetic influences , and personal engagement with specific artistic and political issues , has shifted emphasis and determined priorities as much as the external conditions the Directors have had to navigate : from budget fluctuations to urban anniversaries to government interventions . Jonathan Mills was ferociously busy with three festivals to program in two years with the addition of Federation celebrations to the annual roster . Clifford Hocking had to deal with censorship controversies . Brett Sheehy had Melbourne ’ s turbulent spring weather against him when he planned a huge outdoor program for his first year .
The continual renewal of artistic imagination has brought surprises and disagreement . People often grumbled when a Festival didn ’ t deliver the expected , even while others were praising it for freshness and vitality . This is a good thing , of course . Passionate discussion , even passionate disagreement , is vital to the health and development of the arts and signals engagement and ideas worth arguing about . Festivals by their very nature are ideally placed to offer bursts of immersion in unusual , risky , even outrageous works , the kind that stretch the heart and the mind .
Gian Carlo Menotti ( 1986 — 88 ) brought the world here when he inaugurated the Festival , giving it a particularly Italian spin : appropriate to both the demographic of the southern capital , with its huge and active Italian community , and to the Festival ’ s origins . It was highbrow , less cutting edge than the Adelaide Festival , but exciting for audiences who craved classical culture , and it took some time to break through the noise in a city with a busy cultural calendar . Some detected cultural cringe in the emphasis on foreign companies , even though the program contained lots of local work .
“ The continual renewal of artistic imagination has brought surprises and disagreement .
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When John Truscott ( 1989 — 1991 ), a Melbourne-born actor , Academy Award winning costume designer and production designer , took over from Menotti , he brought a more Australian flavour to the Festival . Truscott invited Melburnians outdoors . Three thousand musicians took part in the Festival of Bands and landmark festive arches were built across St Kilda Road . His popular Botanica , curated by landscape designer Paul Bangay , was a celebration of Melbourne ’ s passion for gardening . The Festival ’ s reach began spreading beyond dedicated lovers of the high arts to the proverbial man and woman in the street who might never set foot in a theatre .
Truscott kept the excitement of foreign companies at the core of his programming , but put Australian content on an equal footing , artistically and in terms of prestige . He upped the arts from Asia , our region , and commissioned local multicultural collaborations . He began to rebalance the emphasis away from a forum for international blockbusters to a richer ecology of the arts — foreign and local , commercial and independent , classical and experimental — that has become the norm today .
Truscott brought us the storied Leningrad Kirov Ballet from Russia and the challenging DV8 Physical Theatre from the UK . He invited Barrie Kosky , then only 22 , to direct Michael Tippett ’ s The Knot Garden and brought the Angry Penguins exhibition — an exploration of one of Australia ’ s seminal art movements — under the Festival banner . By the end of his term Truscott had made the Festival Melburnian and Melburnians began to take it to their hearts .
/ Artistic directions