"We've had to say, 'worst-case scenario, you'll have 14 days of quarantine in a medi-hotel'.
They've got real invitations, so they're unwilling to experiment with digital live-streaming." In terms of enticing international companies to actually come to Adelaide, Healy and Armfield very much hope hotel quarantine will have been scrapped in South Australia by early 2022. "Europe and America have got back to work, which means companies and performers are busy. Looking overseas, the situation has also changed. "People are just dead behind the eyes," she says. "We were wrong." Not only has there been no JobKeeper this time round, she points out, but the "crisis energy" of last year has been replaced by an "emotional flatlining" among many arts and culture workers. "We all came into 2021 thinking nothing could be as hard as last year. "And because no overseas artists or companies were working back in March, many were willing to engage in our digital live-streaming series," Healy says. "That meant a company like Adelaide-based Gravity and Other Myths, which is a contemporary circus and physical theatre troupe, could get together and create a major new work because they chose to spend their JobKeeper on future development." That major new work, The Pulse, sold out and became a talking point of the 2021festival. "Last year was incredibly tough, but a huge number of local artists - not all - could access JobKeeper," Healy says.
For Adelaide Festival's co-artistic directors Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield, compiling their penultimate program for next March has been uniquely challenging. Add the myriad uncertainties and complexities so bountifully gifted by COVID-19, and things really start to get tricky. Programming a top-line Australian festival with a judicious selection of highly-sought international and local acts isn't for the faint of heart, even when the going is good.
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