Adelaide in the festival broiler - no.1

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well to those who did not know, yes I am in Adelaide broadly for Womad music at end of week, but also bookended by Festival events. Despite the technical problems of no wifi at hostel, but can do from data on mobile, I am managing - thx in this case to free wifi in Rundle Mall.

I flew over yesterday Monday and had a couple of hrs nap when I got to the Shakespeare hostel as v little sleep afore. Only just got to Itoseng, a solo piece by a black Sth AFrican guy about the death of the township community after they burnt down their shopping ctr in 1994. 18 years later they were still waiting despite the promises of the new ANC govt that they would all be rich etc. Alongside this was the story that his child hood love Doli had also grown up and with the assistance of her girlfriend, who always stood between them, also became a prostitute and had 2 kids. But she finally got terminally ill (no mention of AIDS however but did we presume?) and did admit that she was in love with him. Bit late tho and she was carried off in the body bag before anything else could happen. The solo performance was wonderful. This show was exclusive to Adelaide I think.

Within an hour after that it was Doku Rai, which was an Australian/Timor Leste copro. which rather rocked out at times with a band of electric guitar and drums on stage. This essentially related to the use of a charm to black magic kill someone. The charm ended up being a very fine rooster who got his own curtain call. The killing was filmed about 77 times by this stupid guy and there was also a spiritual guru involved who spent a lot of time in a golden bath.

Tonight was the Kreutzer Sonata which was based on some Tolstoy novella. This was most famous as the advertisedwas Barry Otto pulled out asafter 2 performances. The guy who suddenly had to stand in, at VERYshort notice was Renato Musolino, did it with script in hand. Can hardly blame him for that.

Adelaide is rather hot - predicted to be 32-33C for the next week. So staying inside is not that bad an idea. I spent half the afternoon at the wonderful Central Market having a coffee etc. But eating at 9.15pm in Adelaide on a Tues. when kitchens close @9 is a challenge - ended up with Assam laksa in a Malaysian resto - noodles after the same at lunch was not my ideal.

Sorry no pix as it is not really possible with the available technology (edit: took one of the brass piggies = now att.). So you will just have to put up with event blog actual word content.

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Photos

the brass pigs
in Rundle Mall on the hunt for scraps

Comments

[John J]

Sounds as if you are working hard at your culturfication there in Adelaide. John