2013 AWESOME Festival

The 2013 AWESOME Festival will delight Perth families during the October School Holidays with a spectacular array of theatre, dance, music, film and lots of free hands-on activities for the whole family to enjoy. 

The AWESOME International Arts Festival for Bright Young Things is a showcase of amazing and exciting contemporary art from all over the world. Each October, young people and their grown ups are invited to enjoy an extraordinary array of both free and ticketed film, animation, theatre, contemporary dance & music, sculpture, installation and new media in the Perth Cultural Centre.

Running 5-18 October in the Perth Cultural Centre, start planning your AWESOME adventure, visit awesomearts.com.

The Empty City
Queensland10–12 OctState Theatre Centre of Western Australia
What if for one day only, everyone disappeared and the city was yours?
Tom and his Mum are shopping in the city. Dragged past anything interesting, Tom is bored, stuck between crockery and a hard place. Things escalate when everyone disappears, leaving only their shoes…

Dinosaur Island
30 Sep–11 OctWestern Australia Museum – Perth
Come along and help us create a dinosaur-themed artwork to add to the growing Dinosaur Island installation at the Western Australian Museum – Perth.
Bring your clean, recyclable household materials to the workshop to create your dinosaur masterpiece!
– Empty milk bottles and cartons (washed) – Cardboard toilet roll inserts – Empty egg cartons – Small cardboard boxes – Old plastic drink containers (washed)
Workshop times are below…

Bear With Me
Queensland5–11 OctState Theatre Centre of Western Australia
An intimate concert especially for younger bears, their children (and their grown-ups)

Boats
Tasmania5–9 OctThe Seagull Tent, Perth Cultural Centre (behind the Western Australian Museum)
Written by Finegan Kruckemeyer and directed by Frank Newman, Boats is a story of two mariners fleeing their past and embracing adventure.
They meet through bizarre circumstances involving a chicken, a deserted island and a sombrero. Boats is classic storytelling where the magic unfolds in front the audience…

Dear Hope Street
Victoria5–14 OctState Library of Western Australia
Have you ever looked up your address on the internet? Or a friend’s? Or maybe a stranger’s and wondered who lived there?
This workshop sits in the blurry edge of what is privacy and public information, and what is connection and community. Using Google Street View, children will look up a Hope Street somewhere in the world and choose a house that intrigues them somehow…

Dreamstore
Western Australia5–14 Oct
“Dreams are more common than supermarkets but they do less business.”
Dreamstore is a shop of dreams. But inside this store you don’t buy… you dream, you design, and you create your very own ‘Dreamproduct’.
Can you think of dream that can’t be bought anywhere in the world? At Dreamstore you get to choose, design and label a bottle to hold your dream, and plan the steps to making it happen…

Like It Or Loop It
New Zealand5–8 Oct7 Perth Tent
Did you ever know that your name alone has enough rhythm to create the sounds of a drum kit? Have you ever considered the sound of a passing bus to be the same as an opera singers’ voice?
In Like it or Loop it, award winning multi-instrumentalist Adam Page takes you on a journey through a normal day – exploring it’s sounds and finding the music in everything from brushing your teeth in the morning to doing your homework at night…

White Top Mountains
Western Australia5–14 OctPerth Cultural Centre
White Top Mountains is an interactive musical-mapping installation, in which landscapes are created in a sandpit by children.
The creative sand-constructors are invited to play as giants and build islands, mountains and sea. The sand pit is surrounded by sensors that assist the mountains’ colourful augmented-reality projections…

Jeu Play
New Zealand5–14 OctPerth Cultural Centre
Jeu Play is an interactive digital art and music installation. Explore, perform and interact with surprising instruments and discover a colourful universe of immersive sound.
The installation inhabits a shipping container where the five instruments made from hacked game controllers are suspended by fluorescent strapping to look like something from a futuristic fitness gym…

Kep Kaatijin
Western Australia5–14 Oct7 Perth Tent
Now that the fire has brought warmth to Noongar Boodjar (land/earth), the rivers and oceans are beginning to be created. However, not before that cheeky Djitty Djitty (Willy Wag Tail) has more to say!
Drawing from Yirra Yaakin’s rich history of creating performances for young people, Kep Kaatijin is a collection of stories based on the traditional Noongar knowledge and storytelling…

Better Beginnings Books-To-Go
Western Australia5–18 OctUrban Orchard, Perth Cultural Centre
Visit Better Beginnings Books- To- Go and create your very own book to take home. You can even publish your work for others to enjoy, adding to the growing library of books made by families from all over Australia. Better Beginnings Books-To-Go is brought to the AWESOME Festival by the State Library of Western Australia’s Better Beginnings Family Literacy Program and Kids Own Publishing.

Reimagine
Western Australia30 Sep–11 OctArt Gallery of Western Australia
Perth Faces Reimagined
In celebration of the MoMA Series exhibition Van Gogh, Dalí and Beyond: The World Reimagined at the Art Gallery of WA, get inspired and create a cubist jigsaw image of some of Perth’s best-known faces.
Family Fun Day at AGWA – Self Portraits Reimagined
The Art Gallery of WA will host a special First Sunday Funday, on Sunday 6 October where you can alter your self portrait at the free Reimagine Workshop…

IVY, Saviour of the Dinosaur!
7–14 OctWestern Australia Museum – Perth
From her hideaway in a museum basement comes Ivy, a cleaning lady with a difference.
Her humble set of wheels may look like a cleaning cart, but just wait and see where – and when! – that time-travelling trolley is about to take you. Join our heroine…

Cirque Disarray
Victoria9–13 Oct7 Perth Tent
The audience have arrived…the show is about to begin… but WHERE ARE THE PERFORMERS? Three stage hands run around nervously, looking for the stars of the show and the wild animals that have vanished. There’s only one thing left to do. Everybody stand up! Obviously no one told them there has been a change of cast. After some confusion over who is who, some on the spot training and last minute costume changes, the curtain is finally drawn and the music begins. There’s no business like show business!

Robot Road Trip
5–11 OctPerth Cultural Centre
Get ready to rumble with Robot Road Trip, a mobile arts technology experience that travels across Australia to connect participants to the world of creative robotics and new media arts.
Robot Soccer: This is definitely soccer with a twist! Control your giant robot car to kick goals for your team in the Perth Cultural Centre Amphitheatre…

Big Picture, Small People: Free Films!
Various5–14 OctState Library of Western Australia Theatre
The 2013 AWESOME Festival is set to showcase some of the best short films from a variety of talented international filmmakers. This year’s selection is funny, thought provoking, heart felt, visually stunning and presents a variety of cinematic styles, which will be sure to captivate audiences both young and old.

The AWESOME Kids Book Club
Australia8–10 OctState Library of Western Australia
Ten Tiny Things
Tessa and Zachary have a machine that is swift and splendiferous. Every day it carries them from here to there and back again in cool, calm comfort. But one morning, the machine breaks down. Tessa and Zachary are forced to venture into the world beyond its metal walls – a place of secret somethings and hidden happenings. Getting from here to there may never be the same.

Fluid Switchboard
South Australia5–18 OctState Library Pond
A sculptural water feature by the brilliant Obie O’Brien will be positioned in the pond adjacent to the State Library of Western Australia during this year’s AWESOME Festival. Fluid Switchboard was created from everyday objects including hoses, sprinklers, buckets, fishing tackle and the ubiquitous milk crate. The sculpture begs interaction from bright young things to control a variety of intricate, water driven components, positioned on and within the main structure. Warning: You might get wet!

Marine Snow
Western Australia6–20 OctPaper Mountain
In Marine Snow Amber Harries explores the life cycle of ocean debris: organic and artificial matter that drifts and floats through the layers of the oceans, eventually settling on the sea floor. The exhibition simulates environmental balance, using crystals, plant life, suspended sculptures and pools of shallow waters to create an artificial ecology.

Swamp Juice
Canada5–14 Oct7 Perth Tent
Welcome to a swamp like no other. Bickering snails, opera singing mice and a rather spineless swamp monster.
From the company behind Sticks Stones Broken Bones and Slapdash Galaxy comes a brand new feast for the imagination, Swamp Juice.
Using…

The Whale's Tale
Victoria10–14 OctThe Seagull Tent, Perth Cultural Centre (behind the Western Australian Museum)
Life for a whale is not all plain swimming. There may be lots of small creatures to eat and plenty of room in the sea but for a whale in modern times, life can be precarious.
Immerse yourself in The Whale’s Tale as you watch from the shore, or submerge yourself in this underwater playground full of surprises and become a part of this larger than life performance…

This Little Light
5–14 OctState Theatre Centre of Western Australia
AWESOME’s Creative Challenge program visits regional and remote Western Australian communities each year, engaging young people in story-telling and creative play with artists-in-residence.
In 2013, young participants worked to the theme of ‘This Little Light’ and explored all the ways light can be explored in art – silhouettes, shadow-puppetry, LEDs, lanterns and light as metaphor…

Trolleys
Australia12–14 OctPerth Cultural Centre Amphitheatre
AWESOME Festival and Buzz Dance Theatre present award winning Australian choreographer Shaun Parker’s new outdoor work… Trolleys – the ballet.
Part dance. Part ballet. Part outdoor spectacle. Trolleys is a new ballet for five supermarket trolleys…

Newspaper City
5–18 OctPerth Cultural Centre
Create a piece of our City of Newspaper which will be exhibited throughout the festival. Running daily from 11am – 4pm in the Perth Cultural Centre.
Your bright young things will love this FREE interactive activity.