Inspirational 2019 Adelaide Festival Breaks Records As It Draws To A Close

The 2019 Adelaide Festival curated by Artistic Directors Neil Armfield AO and Rachel Healy was steeped in exclusive events, standing ovations, box-office success and critical acclaim. With two days still to go, the Adelaide Festival has set a new record with the biggest box office takings in the event's 59-year history, so far achieving a total box office income in excess of $5,989,183 (figure is inclusive of umbrella shows).

The 2019 Adelaide Festival offered more than 70 unique events in theatre, contemporary and classical music, opera, dance, forums, food and visual arts - along with its three festivals-within-the-Festival: Adelaide Writers' Week, WOMADelaide and Chamber Landscapes at UKARIA Cultural Centre.

The Festival's box office total is up by 31% per cent on the previous box office record of $4.56 million, set by Armfield and Healy's second program in 2018. A total audience of more than 316,129 have attended Adelaide Festival events (including WOMADelaide). The Festival has sold in excess of 72,000 tickets across 64 events, with several shows still to run across the closing weekend. Interstate audiences accounted for 22% of ticket sales.

Audiences of more than 44,486 attended free visual art exhibitions at the Art Gallery of South Australia for the World Premiere of Quilty, Another Life: Human Flows/Unknown Odysseys from the Thessaloniki Museum of Photography at the Adelaide Festival Centre, The Violet Ballet at ACE Open, Roger Ballen at GAGPROJECTS and Adelaide//International at Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art. This figure also includes the FREE National Geographic Symphony For Our World concert in Elder Park on the opening weekend, as well as Breakfast with Papers and Festival Forums which were free to the public on board the Palais.

Corporate growth and philanthropic support have again contributed to the success of the festival not only hitting all targets in 2019 but ensuring as many people as possible were able to access the best the Adelaide Festival has to offer. Through such programs as the Pay What You Can system generously supported by the Balnaves Foundation, over 500 people who are at an economic disadvantage had the opportunity to attend a number of Adelaide Festival flagship productions.

The Adelaide Festival schools program continues to grow with 39 different schools attending 45 separate performances across 19 different shows, with the most popular being A Man of Good Hope. There were also numerous opportunities for direct engagement between students and Festival artists including workshops, master classes and Q & A sessions, a highlight being a master class given by the great British conductor Daniel Harding (Mahler Chamber Orchestra) with conducting students at the Elder Conservatorium.

New Director Jo Dyer's debut Adelaide Writers' Week kicked off on Thursday February 28 with a sold-out Opening Address from Man Booker Prize-winning author, Ben Okri, before attracting capacity crowds to the Pioneer Women's Memorial Garden from March 2. 119 Writers from Australia and around the world featured across the six days of free open-air readings, panel sessions and literary conversations exploring the theme Telling Truths. After a slightly slower start on Saturday due to the 41 degree heat, the Gardens were soon abuzz as audiences responded to Dyer's contemporary programming, building to the highest ever day of book sales in the Book Tent on Thursday (the final day of Writers' Week). Best Seller in the Book Tent across the week was Trent Dalton's Boy Swallows Universe, who was announced as the 2019 winner of the MUD Literary Prize in the lead up to Writers' Week.

Of particular note was the enthusiastic response to the new Twilight Talks program in the Pioneer Women's Memorial Garden on Monday 4 and Tuesday 5 March. There was also an exceptional turn-out for the inaugural Middle and Young Adult Readers day on Sunday 3 March, including the powerhouse performances at Hear Me Roar, the slam and spoken work performance showcase. Writers' Week closed on Thursday March 7 with the final event of the Zeitgeist Series, Reframing the Future, a powerful discussion featuring Birgitta Jonsdottir, Ndaba Mandela and Megan Davis, chaired by Scott Ludlam.

The 2019 Adelaide Festival has an impressive line-up of performances still scheduled before the event concludes on Sunday 17 March. The appropriately-named Grand Finale, an exclusive Australian premiere from Israeli-born Hofesh Shechter, is an ecstatic, hypnotic work which has taken the world by storm. Traverse Theatre's world premiere production of Ulster American was the undisputed smash hit of the 2018 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It opened in the Dunstan Playhouse on Wednesday night to a tumultuous standing ovation and had its audience caught between 'gasps, guffaws and the urge to storm out' before after-show discussions went long into the night. Next door at the Space Theatre, Meryl Tankard and Adelaide's own Restless Dance Theatre present the world premiere of Zizanie. Cabaret legend and local hero Robyn Archer continues her new work Picaresque, where the globetrotting chanteuse takes her audience to the famous buildings and cities she's visited around the world. For families, France's Compagnie Non Nova and their breathtaking production of Foehn are delighting and amazing audiences of all ages at AC Arts by animating plastic bags into exquisite creatures whose strange journey is performed to the music of Debussy. Dazzling Irish cabaret singer Camille O'Sullivan performs her acclaimed homage to the music of Nick Cave on the Palais across the closing weekend, with late night concerts by Megan Washington on Friday night and Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever on Saturday night.

The Festival's record breaking results and some of the fastest moving shows ever, are indicative of the ecstatic audience reception to the third program from Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy whose tenure at the Festival has been extended to 2023, a record seven Festival stint. Sold out shows include: The Magic Flute, Two Feet, Un Poyo Rojo, La Reprise. Histoire(s) du théâtre, Thirteen Ways to Look At Birds, The Sretensky Monastery Choir, Uncle Vanya, many of the Chamber Landscapes series at UKARIA. On the Palais, sold out events include all three Long Lunch events, the Opening Address with Ben Okri for Adelaide Writers' Week and musical acts The Others, They Might Be Giants and Sarah Blasko.

Not only has the 2019 Adelaide Festival program been a resounding success at the box office but also critically, earning near unanimous acclaim for its world class program.

Executive Director Rob Brookman said: "We thought that the 2018 Adelaide Festival would be hard to top but there's a palpable sense that 2019 has gone one better. Not only have we achieved record-breaking box office, huge attendances, great tourism numbers and overwhelming critical acclaim but the responses of audiences have been phenomenal. From Barrie Kosky's utterly brilliant The Magic Flute to stunning outdoor events such as National Geographic Symphony For Our World, to the Palais lighting up the River Torrens, Rachel and Neil's brilliantly eclectic Festival program and Jo Dyer's powerful and insightful Adelaide Writers' Week program have again put Adelaide centre-stage as one of the world's great festival cities."

Artistic Directors Neil Armfield AO and Rachel Healy said: "This year's Festival has been joyous, nourishing, unflinching in its interrogation of world affairs and a celebration of imagination and creativity. It is a genuine privilege to invite and then host the extraordinary and diverse range of artists and companies whose work has made the 2019 Adelaide Festival such a success. Our job is about bringing the work of these artists together with Australian audiences and it has been thrilling to witness the response from locals, visitors from across our borders and across the globe, schools, festival regulars and new attendees. The opportunity to welcome audiences of all ages and demographics through the Pay What You Can system has also meant that increasing numbers of people have had the opportunity to attend Festival events, a long-standing priority. We've loved presenting large scale works (The Magic Flute, National Geographic Symphony For Our World, Mahler Chamber Orchestra), introducing new major works from overseas to Australia (Carmen, A Man of Good Hope, Grand Finale, Sretensky Monastery Choir, Two Feet, Ulster American, La Reprise. Histoire(s) du théâtre, Manus, Schuldfabrik, Un Poyo Rojo, By Heart), present brand-new shows co-commissioned by the Adelaide Festival (Thirteen Ways to Look at Birds, Counting and Cracking, Man with the Iron Neck, Two Feet, Picaresque, Quilty) and support local South Australian performances (Out of Chaos, Zizanie, Baba Yaga)."

Adelaide Writers' Week Director Jo Dyer said: "It was a great honour and pleasure to present my first Adelaide Writers' Week as Director. We were privileged to have such a wonderful array of minds and voices joining us from all over the world and this country, presenting an extraordinarily diverse range of ideas and perspectives. Special thanks to those who braved the heat on Saturday - the loyalty and commitment of the Writers' Week audiences are astonishing indeed. I thank all of them for the warm welcome they afforded me, and the incredible authors who joined us in Adelaide this year, all of whom remarked on the size, curiosity and generosity of our audiences."

The 2019 Adelaide Festival ran for 17 days and nights from Friday 1 March to Sunday 17 March. Adelaide Writers' Week ran for 6 days and nights from Saturday 2 March to Thursday 7 March.