Festival time in Brisbane seems to be all year round now with the river city moving into a decadent spring festival phase through November.

The combination of MELT Festival at Brisbane Powerhouse and Wynnum Fringe by the bay means it will be busy. Very busy.

The range of attractions provided by both is impressive with the fourth iteration of Wynnum Fringe from November 15 expected to attract even more than last year’s record audience of 36,000 people. Not bad for a festival that founder and CEO, performer Tom Oliver, started during Covid in 2020 to give struggling performers work as the pandemic took hold.

“It’s weird and so exciting that we’re now talking about the future and using words like strategy and legacy that we weren’t using in that first year,” Oliver says.

“It was just like, oh my gosh, let’s try this thing – we don’t know what’s happening with the world, but we’re all in Brisbane, so let’s try. And now it happens every year.

“This year we are doing 200 performances across three weeks, so I’d have to boil the kettle to mention all of them. But at the top of the list, we’ve got Darryl Braithwaite and Marcia Hines who are headlining this outdoor concert called Rock the Bay.

“We’re building a new show called Rhonda’s After Party with Rhonda Burchmore. We’ve got Diesel and Rai Thistlethwayte and Sarah McLeod doing acoustic sessions on Thursdays. We’ve got comedians – Jimeoin, Will Anderson and Geraldine Hickey.

“And I think the biggest news is that Bluey and Bingo are coming to do a couple of shows on the second weekend.”

Both festivals have found extra resonance this year with Wynnum Festival having its first Bay Pride event, while MELT Festival, an annual celebration of queer art, artists, allies and ideas which kicks off November 11, takes over Brisbane Powerhouse for the eighth year running with a provocative program of home-grown artists alongside international sensations.

MELT Festival highlights include an opening night dance party featuring Kah-Lo,  supported by emerging First Nations artist Djanaba.

Overflow is a show that takes an hilarious and devastating tour of women’s bathrooms – who is allowed in and who is kept out?

And this year renowned American photographer and artist Spencer Tunick takes nude volunteers to various locations along the Brisbane River for a major photo shoot and mass installation celebrating diversity in his newest creation, TIDE.

And when it comes to pushing boundaries – not many productions come close to the show Bunny, a rope bondage and audience participation co-production led by Melbourne performer Luke George and Daniel Kok from Singapore.

Bunny has toured the world to 15 cities across Asia, Europe and North America, with Luke George noticing important cultural variations in the way the show evolves on stage in each place it’s performed. He says with momentum around informed consent building in the queer and the broader community, the show is particularly timely as it explores those themes suspended within a world of macrame and sailor’s knots.

“It’s a live negotiation, very raw, very live negotiation of how we navigate consent,” he says.

“So, it depends on who’s in the room and where we are, what kind of community that we’re in, and what kind of culture around consent is already bubbling away in that community and how we navigate this. And people saying no is absolutely welcome in this work. And it’s actually really necessary that people see that no is possible.”

Wynnum Fringe founder and CEO Tom Oliver hopes both festivals become even closer next year to host Bay Pride together.

“Brisbane’s bayside has never had an event that celebrates the LGBTIQA+ community,” Oliver says.

“Now we’ve put together this programme of headliners and various acts to appear at the festival and on the second Sunday we’re doing a march down the Esplanade with hopefully a thousand people. We’re doing a maker’s market of queer business owners, we’ve got ticketed shows, we’ve got a lot of queer friendly programming.

“I met up with Kate Gould at Brisbane Powerhouse the other day and we were both talking about how it’s the right time and we’re actually hoping to collaborate next year to connect the festivals.”

Oliver is also excited about the breadth of the First Nations programming at Wynnum Fringe, including the Opening Ceremony Friday November 17th with a sunset walk (Yana Marumba which means “walk good” in Quandamooka language) along the foreshore led by Indigenous leaders as well as song, dance and yarns.

MELT Festival 2023, Brisbane Powerhouse, November 11-26

brisbanepowerhouse.org/melt-festival-2023

Wynnum Fringe, November 15 to December

wynnumfringe.com

This article is republished from InReview under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

InReview is an open access, non-profit arts and culture journalism project. Readers can support our work with a donation. Subscribe to InReview’s free weekly newsletter here.