Perth Festival
Perth Festival — Australia’s oldest international arts festival
Perth Festival was founded in 1953 by the University of Western Australia, making it Australia’s oldest international arts festival and one of the oldest continuously running arts festivals in the southern hemisphere. The festival runs for three weeks each year from late February into mid-March, with productions across opera, theatre, dance, classical and contemporary music, visual art, film and the substantial Lotterywest Films open-air cinema programme. It has — through a sequence of artistic directors over seventy years — built a reputation as the most consistently strong contemporary international programming festival in Australia, particularly for European mainstage theatre and dance.
What it’s known for
Perth Festival’s curatorial identity is the strongest international mainstage theatre programming of any Australian festival. The festival’s geographical isolation — Perth is the most isolated capital city in the world — has the paradoxical effect of producing one of the highest hit-rates on international mainstage selections, because the festival can offer companies a single substantial residency on an annual circuit that includes Adelaide Festival (running concurrently) and the Asia-Pacific festival circuit. Recent editions have included substantial residencies from Theatre de la Ville Paris, Toneelgroep Amsterdam (now Internationaal Theater Amsterdam), the Berlin Schaubühne, and the Akram Khan Company.
The festival also runs the Lotterywest Films open-air cinema programme — a six-week programme of international art-house cinema at the Somerville Auditorium on the UWA campus and the Joondalup Pines outdoor cinema. The programme is unusually substantial for a festival film component (typically thirty to forty international features) and runs longer than the mainstage festival itself.
The programme pattern
A typical Perth Festival programme runs approximately twenty ticketed mainstage productions, the Lotterywest Films programme, a substantial contemporary classical music programme curated in collaboration with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra, a Writers Week programme, and the festival’s free public-realm component including the traditional opening event at the Perth Concert Hall forecourt or the Supreme Court Gardens. The mainstage productions tend to be more international-focused than Sydney Festival but more theatre-centric than Adelaide Festival’s broader curatorial spread.
Key venues
- His Majesty’s Theatre — used for the mainstage opera and ballet productions and selected international touring theatre.
- Perth Concert Hall — concert and chamber music programming.
- State Theatre Centre of WA — the Heath Ledger Theatre and Studio Underground — for the contemporary theatre programming.
- Subiaco Arts Centre and the Regal Theatre — secondary mainstage venues.
- UWA Somerville Auditorium and Joondalup Pines — the Lotterywest Films open-air cinema programme.
- Fremantle venues including the Fremantle Arts Centre and the new Fremantle Prison events — the festival’s Fremantle programming each year.
How to plan a trip
Perth Festival’s programme launches in late October each year, the same week as Adelaide Festival’s launch — the two festivals run concurrently in the early March fortnight, and the curatorial overlap with Adelaide is real (productions on the international circuit often pair an Adelaide and Perth residency in the same fortnight). For Australian audiences flying interstate, a paired Adelaide-Perth fortnight is feasible and rewarded — different productions, different curatorial framings, a week in each city.
If you’re flying to Perth for the festival, the Perth weather in late February-early March is the most pleasant of the year — warm without humidity. Accommodation in Perth in March is more available than Adelaide in March, and the city’s compact CBD means most accommodation is within walking distance of the major venues. The Lotterywest Films programme is the festival’s stand-out value proposition — open-air cinema at the Somerville Auditorium on the UWA campus is one of the most pleasant cinema experiences available anywhere.
Recent highlights
The 2018 Theatre de la Ville Paris Ionesco Suite. The 2019 Akram Khan Outwitting the Devil. The 2020 Toneelgroep Amsterdam Roman Tragedies (the six-hour Shakespeare three-play cycle that toured globally). The 2022 Romeo Castellucci collaboration. The 2024 contemporary First Nations programming with Marrugeku.
Useful links
- Official: perthfestival.com.au
- Where we cover the festival: Festivals
- Hub venue: His Majesty’s Theatre