Top 10 Accessible Shows
We want to make to all our shows accessible for everyone – with that in mind, we’ve put together a list of the shows that (pretty much) tick all the boxes for anyone who’d like to come along!
To help with this, we've moved all our access bookings online. This means for all Auslan interpreted, captioning, audio description, tactile tour, wheelchair or companion card bookings you now have the option to book online, over the phone, in person or via email.
So, what are you waiting for? Check these shows out!
Image credit: Pier Carthew
ANTHEM
Closed Captioning, Tactile Tour, Audio Description – Fri 14 Feb 7pm
Auslan Interpreting – Thu 13 Feb 7pm
The long-awaited follow-up to one of Australian theatre’s most acclaimed collaborations asks a bold question: does Australia share a dream and do we really sing with one voice?
Twenty-one years ago four playwrights and a composer came together to create Who’s Afraid of the Working Class?, a series of powerful interwoven vignettes that captured the zeitgeist of Australia in the 1990s. Now the same team reunites to take the pulse of our nation today.
A funny and ferocious portrait of a country unable to reconcile its past and uncertain of its future and political vision, Anthem turns up the volume on the everyday injustices we choose not to hear.
Image credit: Damien Bredberg
LEVIATHAN
Tactile Tour, Audio Description - Sat 29 Feb 7pm
Circa’s internationally-renowned ensemble joins with a local cast of circus performers, professional dancers and young people for a world premiere circus event. The art of circus is taken in an exciting new direction as 36 performers hang from a grid suspended in the air and propel themselves across the stage, tumbling, balancing and soaring together.
Leviathan connects the local with the global and the emerging with the visionary in an exhilarating circus experience directed by Yaron Lifschitz. The dramatic power and extreme skill of Circa’s trademark acrobatics thrillingly expose the tension between the mass and the individual in an epic theatrical event that is both deeply moving and physically stunning.
Image credit: Garth Oriander
BLACK TIES
Closed Captioning – Sat 15 Feb
Tactile Tour, Audio Description – Sun 16 Feb 6pm
Auslan Interpreting – Fri 14 Feb 7.30pm
It's the biggest, blackest wedding ever and you're invited! Join a mob of Aunties, Uncles and cousins from both sides of the ditch in a hilarious and heart-warming immersive theatre experience. BLACK TIES reimagines the popular wedding rom-com from a distinctively First Nations perspective. Created by a brilliant team of Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Māori artists, featuring a peerless cast and set to a live score of Black anthems and wedding classics, this will be a party to remember.
Image credit: Pia Johnson
CLOUDSTREET
Closed Captioning, Tactile Tour, Audio Description – Sun 8 Mar 12pm
Auslan Interpreting – Wed 11 Mar 6pm
Join two of WA’s favourite families for a once-in-a-generation theatre event as Tim Winton’s award-winning novel Cloudstreet comes to life on stage.
The Lambs and the Pickles are as contrasting as the Australia they inhabit. In post-war Perth they share an old house at No 1 Cloud Street that’s haunted by a dark history. Over the course of two decades their stories become entwined with those of our suburbs, our city and our river.
After breaking box office records in Melbourne, this iconic story born of our city is coming home. Directed by Perth's own Matthew Lutton and with a cast of Australia’s finest actors, Cloudstreet is an epic Festival experience packed full of hardship and heart.
I'M A PHOENIX, BITCH
Closed Captioning – Sat 29 Feb 7pm
Tactile Tour, Audio Description, Auslan Interpreting – Fri 28 Feb 7pm
Combining personal stories with epic film and original pop songs, I’m a Phoenix, Bitch is a mythical legend performed straight from a heart still pulsing with pain.
In 2016 UK performance maker Bryony Kimmings nearly drowned. Postnatal breakdowns, an imploding relationship and an extremely sick child left her sitting beneath the waves hoping she could slowly turn to shell. Four years later and she is able to deal with life again, but wears the scars of that year like a dark and heavy cloak.
I’m a Phoenix, Bitch is a show about motherhood, heartbreak and finding inner strength – a powerful, dark and joyous one-woman tour-de-force.
Image credit: Tristram Kenton
TAO OF GLASS
Closed Captioning, Tactile Tour, Audio Description - Fri 21 Feb 7pm
Auslan Interpreting – Thu 20 Feb 7pm
Phelim McDermott is a master storyteller – a theatrical alchemist and spinner of yarns who has summoned this astonishingly original show about making a show.
Composer Philip Glass and performer-director Phelim McDermott have worked together on acclaimed opera productions around the world. Now they have joined forces for their most personal collaboration yet.
Tao of Glass takes ten brand-new pieces by Philip Glass and pairs them with ten meditations on life, death and Taoist wisdom performed by McDermott with an ensemble of musicians and puppeteers. The result is a warm, fun and utterly compelling fusion of music, theatre, puppetry and philosophical musing held together by a highly-personal monologue about the nature of creativity, memory and personal identity.
Part-concert, part-performance, Tao of Glass is a storytelling tapestry, soundtracked by Glass’s mesmerising music and bursting with theatricality.
Image credit: Jacob Nash
BUŊGUL
Tactile Tour, Audio Description – Sat 8 Feb 7pm
A buŋgul is a ceremony, a meeting place of dance, song and ritual.
Created on country in North East Arnhem Land with the Yunupiŋu family, Buŋgul is a ceremonial celebration of one of the transcendent albums of our time. You are invited into an immersive experience of
the dances, songs, country and paintings that inspired Gurrumul’s award-winning final album, Djarrimirri (Child of the Rainbow), in a live performance by Yolŋu dancers, songmen and the West Australian Symphony Orchestra.
Senior Yolŋu Don Wininba Ganambarr and Nigel Jamieson direct this majestic union of two disparate worlds. Buŋgul offers a unique window into the extraordinary power, understanding and beauty of Yolŋu culture.
Image credit: Cam Campbell
HIGHWAY TO HELL
Audio Description, Auslan Interpreting – Sun 1 Mar 5pm
We’re reclaiming the iconic Canning Highway and turning it into the world’s longest stage for a day!
Bring the family and join us as we celebrate our city and its connection to iconic Aussie band AC/DC. From the Raffles Hotel to the Old Fremantle Traffic Bridge we’re closing the road to create a musical event that will have everyone singing along. Taking inspiration from the AC/DC song of the same name and Bon Scott’s connection to the area we’re paying homage to Highway to Hell.
It all kicks off at 5pm when a convoy of flatbed trucks sets off down the highway as moving stages for our huge line up of local, interstate and international musicians. From Aussie rock to Finnish folk, big band to symphonic sounds, artists as diverse as Pigram Brothers, Amyl and the Sniffers and Perth Symphony Orchestra will belt out their versions of AC/DC classics and other top tunes.
Celebrate this free family event with a picnic along the highway, enjoying the show as it drives on by, get more music at one of our free outdoor performance venues or join in the passing parade and highway smoking as you walk behind the trucks on their Highway to Hell journey.
'THE DEAD DON'T DIE' at LOTTERYWEST FILMS
Audio Description – 2-8 Dec 8pm
Located in the stunning outdoor cinema at Somerville UWA, in this deliciously deadpan comedy, an environmental crime has tilted the earth from its axis, causing the dead to rise up. These stumbling undead don’t crave human flesh so much as earthly pleasures – WiFi, coffee, chardonnay. King of indie cool, Jim Jarmusch, twists the immortal zombie genre into new shapes in this sardonic caper, taking timely swipes at Trump-era middle America. The greatest zombie cast ever disassembled includes cult pop-culture stars from Tilda Swinton and Bill Murray to Iggy Pop, Tom Waits and RZA
Image credit: Matthew Newton
LITERATURE & IDEAS
We are thrilled to give you a taster of the Literature & Ideas 2020 program – a conversation series about literature in its broadest sense.
Novelists, songwriters, comic book illustrators, filmmakers, politicians, artists, DJs and comedians come together to talk about the most pressing issues of our time in a program packed with all the things that matter: Land. Money. Power. Sex.
Listen, talk and play at UWA over the Literature & Ideas Weekend or join us at events around town.
Stay tuned for details of the full program we’ll unveil on 16 January.
Until then, here are a couple of the events that feature Auslan Interpretation:
Dervla McTiernan – Wed 19 Feb 6.30pm
Maria Tumarkin on Power – Sat 22 Feb 12.30pm
Prize and Prejudice – Sat 22 Feb 9.30am
Rick Morton on Money – Sat 22 Feb 11am
Sanam Maher on Sex – Sat 22 Feb 2pm
Story Club at The Heartbreak Hotel – Sat 22 Feb 7pm
The Sound of Picture Books – Sun 23 Feb 10.45am & 12pm
Bruce Pascoe – Fri 21 Feb 7pm
You can find out more about Perth Festival's commitment to Access and everything we have on offer here.