The City of Sydney and its world-class venues will help bring Sydney Festival to life this summer with plays, performance, song, dance and entertainment across the city.
Sydney’s Hyde Park in the heart of the city will again host the Famous Spiegeltent and Honda Festival Garden, while talks, dance and comedy shows will also take place in the City Recital Hall Angel Place and Sydney Town Hall.
- Sydney Festival Garden in Hyde Park
“Sydney Festival is an event like no other, attracting up to a million people to our city each summer and shining the creative spotlight on our city venues,” Lord Mayor Clover Moore MP, Chair of Sydney Festival, said.
“More than 1,500 local and international performers will take part in almost 100 events at 25 different venues across Sydney. There’s no greater festival showcasing talented local performers, our spectacular summer weather and spirit of celebration.”
The City of Sydney is a long-term supporter of the festival with $2 million in cash and value-in-kind support for 2012.
The Lord Mayor said last year’s three-week festival injected $50.2 million into the NSW economy and attracted tens of thousands of visitors – including 23,000 from interstate and overseas to wine, dine, shop and buy tickets to festival shows.
“Sydney Festival makes an important financial contribution to our local economy, generating customers for our 1,500 cafes and restaurants which employ almost 19,000 workers across Sydney, and developing new opportunities for 120,000 creative industry workers across the metropolitan area,” the Lord Mayor said.
“We’re investing in Sydney Festival to ensure our city remains an engaging place for our residents while promoting Sydney on the global stage and boosting our reputation.”
Several Sydney Festival events are held at City of Sydney venues, as well as parks, laneways and city streets. These include:
- Festival First Night: a free event from 3pm-11pm on 7 January that transformed the heart of the city and encouraged people to experience Sydney in new and surprising ways. The festival garden featured entertainment for kids, while a double-decker bus rolled into Hyde Park where British DJ Norman Jay performed an eight-hour set. Hyde Park Barracks and St Mary’s Cathedral also featured massive projections and street performances.
- The Famous Spiegeltent and Honda Festival Garden: for the sixth year running, Hyde Park will host music in the early evening each night, a scintillating new house show and free music late into the night.
- On Wednesday nights, laugh as you learn something new in Hyde Park with the brainy wits of Bright Club in The Famous Spiegeltent. A dozen academics have been selected from the University of Sydney to present their study as an eight-minute comedy routine. Comedian James O’Loghlin will be on hand to keep it all together with some cabaret at the end of the night.
- Assembly made its awe-inspiring world premiere season at the City Recital Hall, Angel Place during 11-14 January. Integrating dance with theatrical and operatic performance, this mixture of movement and voice involves more than 60 performers on stage, including exceptional dancers and contemporary music from six principal singers and Sydney Philharmonia Choirs.
- Reinventing radio, an evening with Ira Glass: for the first time in Australia, the charismatic creator and host of This American Life shared the secrets of his compelling storytelling at Sydney Town Hall on 11 January. Ira Glass’s multi-award-winning public radio program is heard weekly on more than 500 stations across America and in Australia on ABC Radio National.
- ANZ Tix for next to nix: queue up early in Martin Place at the bargain ticket booth for $25 tickets for shows on that day. It’s first in best dressed and there’s a limit of two tickets per person per day.