festival

Summer is over, as is our Summer of Directors – and this also means that the main festival period of 2022 has come to an end. The last few years, festivals have been greatly affected by the pandemic, and especially in 2020 and 2021 many of the big festivals were vastly reduced or didn’t happen at all. But this year they came back – and after our five big courses focusing on directors, from Jane Campion via Ida Lupino to Martin Scorsese, here’s a palate cleanser in which Alan, Julie and Matt talk about their own festival memories and experiences. Whether it’s the classic open-air music festivals of our youth, contemporary arts or local film festivals: what are our thoughts on the format? Do festivals change how we enjoy culture? What are our favourite memories? How essential are schedules and spreadsheets to the perfect festival experience… and just how damn middle-aged have we become while we weren’t watching?

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These are bad times for theatres, theatregoers, companies and performers. Playhouses are closed, festivals are cancelled, productions are postponed to 2021 – provided that the venues and companies survive until then. While some countries have made money available for the arts, to cover loss of income, it’s clearly not on top of any list of priorities, and likely it isn’t even on most people’s radar. Certainly it doesn’t help that artists, actors, directors, musicians, writers, and so on, are rarely sitting on a big, comfortable pile of money for a rainy day, and they know as much as the essential workers that applause has never fed a hungry mouth or paid for the rent.