The 2021 Adelaide Festival Opens Today

The 2021 Adelaide Festival officially opens today having already hit its box office target! With a whole host of events over the next 17 days, 2021 marks the 61st Adelaide Festival and the fifth under Artistic Directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy.

Joint Artistic Directors Neil Armfield and Rachel Healy said: "This has easily been our most challenging Festival to plan - and we are not alone in learning how to adapt to last minute changes. But the Festival is here! COVID-safe and just as inspirational, nourishing and energetic as its previous years 60 years. We're so thrilled to welcome the Adelaide community and audiences from around Australia to celebrate the amazing artists of the 61st Adelaide Festival over the next seventeen days."

Friday 26 February is opening night for the highly anticipated A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Adelaide Festival Theatre. The opera by Benjamin Britten and directed by Neil Armfield, plays 4 shows across the opening week.

Opening Event Concert with Jessica Mauboy on Saturday 27 February, starts at 8pm at Adelaide Oval. The concert is FREE!

New York based artists Robin Frohardt brings The Plastic Bag Store to Rundle Place in Rundle Mall, an installation where visual art and performance intersect. Designed to simultaneously confront, entertain, amuse, challenge, surprise and instruct, the FREE installation launched on Tuesday 23 February and runs until the end of the festival.

The Summerhouse, a new home and hub for Adelaide Festival will feature 40 free and ticketed events involving more than 130 artists and special guests from Thursday 25 February. Transforming its look and feel from early morning breakfast sanctuary, a go-to meeting place before a show, to live music hotspot; it is set to become the new beating heart of the Adelaide Festival.

Opening weekend will feature San Cisco (SOLD OUT) on Friday night, Prince: A Tribute by Late Night Tuff Guy (SOLD OUT) on Saturday night and A Midsummer Night's Dream on the Big Screen (SOLD OUT) on Sunday night. Breakfast with Papers kicks off on Saturday 27 February with Tom Wright and a panel of informed guests at 8am daily.

The Australian premiere of A German Life, staring Australian stage and screen legend Robyn Nevin in a demanding ninety-minute solo performance, has already opened at Dunstan Playhouse and will run until the end of the Adelaide Festival.

South Australia's best of the best take to the stage over opening weekend, with three world premieres in the Adelaide Festival. Gravity & Other Myths returns home with The Pulse, a heart stopping show where audience, acrobat and choir fuse together at Her Majesty's Theatre for 6 performances from Thursday 25 February. Slingsby and State Theatre Company South Australia come together in a major new co-production at the Adelaide Showgrounds from Thursday 25 February, The Boy Who Talked to Dogs is a true story of a homeless teenager adopted by a pack of stray dogs. The accomplishments of Restless Dance Theatre continue under the direction of Michelle Ryan as the company take over a bowling alley in Norwood from Friday 26 February. Guttered is an intelligent and witty performance about denial of the dignity of risk and well-intentioned 'help' that smothers potential growth.

FANGIRLS, with its stand out cast (including Aydan from The Voice), inexhaustibly funny dialogue, and heart-pumping, infectious songs opens on Saturday 27 February at the Ridley Centre at the Adelaide Showgrounds.

Race Cards, the interactive installation premiering in Australia exclusively at the 2021 Adelaide Festival opens on Friday 26 February in the Institute Building, State Library of South Australia. This brilliantly thought-through antidote to subliminally race-based attitudes invites you into a global conversation, five years in the making.

BOOKINGS: adelaidefestival.com.au or BASS 131 246

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