Performance Space's 2024 Liveworks Festival Set For This Month

Performance Space has announced the program for the 2024 Liveworks Festival, a celebration of bold and captivating performances that push the boundaries of creativity and storytelling, held at Carriageworks from 23rd to 27th October.

In their 41st year, Performance Space is Australia’s leading organisation for the development and presentation of experimental art. This year’s lineup features a diverse array of works exploring how we practise care and intimacy, how we hold each other in collapse, how we find release and joy in unexpected places, and the power of small actions to make big change, brought to the iconic arts space by artists from around Australia and across the Asia Pacific.

Highlights for the 2024 Liveworks program include Emily Parsons-Lord and Shan Turner-Carroll’s speculative installation It’s Already Happened, We’re Just in the Past, the vibrant theatrical extravaganza THUNDERBLOOM-LIVE by HOSSEI and his ensemble, and Marcus Whale’s visceral solo stage show Ecstasy, which intersects rave culture with Christian liturgy. Daley Rangi’s interactive roleplaying piece dissent and Luke George’s intimate performance Fell both delve into personal and communal narratives, inviting audiences to rethink their relationship with their environment and each other.

This year’s Festival also features poignant explorations of societal norms and queer identity, with The Bloom by Jessie McCall, which examines the generative glitches of queer propagation and motherhood, and PinWen Su’s Leftover Market, which examines the people, ideas and materials that our culture undervalues. The immersive art party Brolga: A Queer Koori Wonderland curated by Joel Bray celebrates queer performance and First Nations stories with a psychedelic wonderland of light and dance. Additional standout works include Marcus Ian McKenzie’s deeply personal The Crying Room: Exhumed and Oli Mathiesen’s endurance-based dance work The Butterfly Who Flew Into The Rave, both of which push the limits of emotional and physical expression.

On this year’s epic line-up, Performance Space’s Artistic Director Kate Britton said “The last year has been profoundly challenging. This year’s Liveworks Festival and the incredible artists in the program offer us a chance to come together, share space, and imagine a kinder and more generative world. I couldn’t be happier to have worked with this cohort for my first festival as Artistic Director. It’s been a joy to bring together and I can’t wait to share it with friends old and new in October.”