Newcastle locals complement New Annual festival with creative works

With the festival organisers aiming for 50 per cent of the content of the 10-day festival to be locally made, it provides the opportunity for Newcastle creatives to produce new dance, theatre, music and art that will debut locally and stand a better chance of finding a wider national audience.

"Even though we've had a couple of years of COVID, what we've been able to see is some of the performances that have been developed for New Annual have been able to go and tour other festivals," Newcastle councillor Carol Duncan said at the festival's launch on Friday. "Adelaide for example. And that's really exciting. We want that.

"We want for the events not just to be local, and to support our artists and visitor economy, but to support artists and creatives so that they can grow what they do, and take it around Australia if not internationally."

The festival's senior producer and curator Adrian Burnett echoed the same thoughts. "We've really tried to nail it with our expression of interest with our 'Made New' program, so there's quite a lot of [local] theatre in this program."

Local theatre-makers supported in the 2023 festival include playwright Ang Collins, with her comedy play Spewy premiering in four shows at Earp Distilling Company; Janie Gibson, presenting a new solo work, Voices of Joan, an irreverent show unravelling the history of misogyny through a radical retelling of the story of Joan of Arc; Tantrum Youth Arts, which will present the first local season of Good Mourning, a play developed by Hannah Armstrong and Sonia Dodd when they were uni students.

Fellow Novocastrian Daz Chandler from The Parallel Effect will deliver the NSW premiere of ground-breaking interactive theatre experience Message From Another You during the festival.

Local input - to the tune of 100 volunteer drummers, is an integral part of Townsville-based dance company Dancenorth's presentation, Noise. The 18-minute dance ensemble, which has been performed by the troupe at WOMADelaide, feeds on the sound of the drums.

"The appetite for collective drumming is growing," said Kyle Page, artistic director of Dancenorth, who created the piece with Amber Haines, the associate artistic director of the company.

"We are delighted to show down here, and connect to the community," Page said.

The festival will issue a call out for drummers, including drumming groups, professional musicians and volunteers who want to participate, and they go through six weeks of rehearsals under a drum leader before performance.

"It's not necessary to have experience," Page said. "It's really about getting together with primal sense of energy within all of us."

For Ang Collins, being able to bring alive her long-standing idea of Spewy, is a dream come true.

"One of my passions is centring regional stories, and stories that are explicitly about Newcastle," she said. "I think it's like such a rich city, with so many stories, that are so funny and so moving, and beautiful. Why not throw them up on stage, why not tour them around Australia. Why not put them on a bigger stage.

"I want to write for Newcastle audiences, but I also want to showcase Newcastle to a wider audience as well because I love it."