The arts depict extremes of emotional life, overtly and with clarity. This was in much evidence at the 2026 Perth Festival.
Articles on Perth festival
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The highlights of the 2025 Perth Festival embraced Australian First Nations and contemporary Southeast Asian storytelling.
Across the program, I was struck by how it was often more in the act of putting on and performing the work, rather than their spoken content, that expressed political responses to our times.
Writers festivals navigate the fraught frontier between social media’s echo chambers of outrage and the civilised public debate of the public square. What’s the way forward in this heated atmosphere?
In Black Swan State Theatre Company’s new production The Pool, playwright Steve Rodgers’ love of swimming is the play’s genesis
The sensitivity of the exhibition’s themes, coupled with low lighting, seems to demand quiet in the space. In this silence, you hear the gentle chiming of hand-blown glass.
Iain Grandage’s fourth Perth Festival continued his focus on First Nations performance, together with an exhilarating dose of Black Futurism as well as demanding post-classical music.
Seeing these performances was an empowering reminder that women in their 50s are still out there, oozing with vibrant creativity, worthiness and relevance.
While spending two years in Dartmoor prison, Kim Crotty wrote and illustrated 47 stories for his sons, desperately seeking to maintain his connection with his family.
Rachel Arianne Ogle’s new chorography is an exploration of mortality and death.
David Milroy’s Panawathi Girl is a rocking, vaudevillian, politically sharp and engaging piece of Australian First Nations’ music theatre.
Artists Ian Wilkes and Poppy van Oorde-Grainger invite audiences to walk where the first contact between Noongar and white settlers at Lake Monger took place.
From choreographer Emma Fishwick, this slow, dreamy performance and its cast of 15 dancers, speaks especially loudly to Australia of today.
Mararo Wangai is captivating in his play, which captures the truth of being Black African in Australia.
Produced by Perth’s wunderkinder ensemble The Last Great Hunt, Whistleblower is about the thrill of the risk when you throw the audience into the spotlight.
In this brilliant new adaptation, Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard is transported to Manjimup, 300 km south of Perth, and the Australia of the 1980s.
What if an ‘install crew’ was given carte blanche to take over the walls and floor of a gallery? At this year’s Perth Festival, this is exactly what happened.
Through the whale’s journey from life to death, Caleb escapes the emotional toll of his situation, and finds his path forward.
A new narration written by Alison Croggon and performed by Eryn Jean Norvill comes together in triumph.
Leading Australian circus company Circa joins with three West Australian companies to create a complex, shifting work that casts a trance over the audience.
Top contributors
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Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, Curtin University
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Associate Professor & Postgraduate Research Coordinator, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University
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Senior Honorary Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia
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Hon Research Fellow in Poetry and Theatre studies, The University of Western Australia
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Honorary Professor, Edith Cowan University
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Associate Professor, School of Science, Edith Cowan University
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Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne
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Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance, UNSW
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Senior Lecturer, Edith Cowan University
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Lecturer (Theatre & Creative Arts), Curtin University
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Senior Lecturer in Journalism, Monash University
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Assistant Professor, Nanyang Technological University
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Professor in Art, Curtin University