Perth Festival 2027 will mark a return to major international touring, with a programme led by European productions after years in which the pandemic disrupted the global arts circuit.
The festival’s artistic director, Anna Reece, said the renewed international focus would restore a central part of Perth’s cultural identity while continuing to support artists from Western Australia.
Among the headline works will be ROTHKO, a four-hour production by Polish director Łukasz Twarkowski, arriving from Latvia. Inspired by a famous art forgery, it combines cinema and theatre across shifting timeframes.
Denmark’s Operation: Orfeo will offer a new interpretation of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice through voices, light, architecture and illusion. Greece will be represented by Mario Banushi’s wordless work Taverna Miresia – Mario, Bella, Anastasia, an evocation of his Albanian childhood that recently won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale.
The international programme recalls earlier Perth Festival landmarks, including Peter Brook’s nine-hour Mahabharata at Boya Quarry in 1988 and Robert Lepage’s Seven Streams of the River Ota in 1998.
“We are an international arts festival, and we should be proud of that. It is also our point of difference within the local scene,” Reece said.
She said the festival had spent the past two years developing new places for audiences to gather, including the East Perth Power Station and The Embassy Ballroom in Perth Town Hall. Those venues, she added, had created the foundations for a wider international ambition.
“Perth deserves to experience some of the best, most exciting artists and ideas from around the world,” Reece said.
The return of overseas productions follows a prolonged collapse in international arts touring caused by Covid-19. Reece said companies had been unable to tour and, in some cases, had to reunite and rehearse productions before they could travel again.
“The global pipeline dried up,” she said, adding that Perth Festival had previously been forced to rely more heavily on local companies and artists to fill its programme. That created opportunities for Western Australian practitioners but also prompted criticism from patrons who felt the festival was not fulfilling its traditional role.
Reece said the international focus would not come at the expense of local work. “A great international arts festival should expand our sense of what’s possible at the same time as strengthening our commitment to WA artists,” she said.
She said several local commissions had been presented the previous year, with another wave planned for 2028. International productions, she added, could challenge local artists while connecting Perth with artistic conversations beyond Australia.
Perth Festival will run from February 5 to 28, with tickets for the shows going on sale on November 2. Lotterywest Films will begin on November 23 with Jesse Eisenberg’s The Debut.
