Brighton Festival announces its guest director for 2013
The organisers of the 2013 Brighton
Festival have announced that the former Children’s Laureate
Michal Rosen will be its guest director. Andrew Comben, chief
executive of Brighton’s Festival and the Dome theatre, comments that
this is the sixth year for which an invitation has been extended to a
well-known person in the arts.
and experience to this festival, which has helped us to nurture and
grow an extraordinary range of art and ideas, apealing to our local,
national and international audiences. For several decades Michael has
entertained, educated and moved audiences of all ages. He has the
infectious energy of a polymath and is curious about and interested
in everything – perfect for such an eclectic and wide-ranging
festival as ours”.
Rosen said, “It’s a wonderful
opportunity for me to be involved with Brighton Festival. It’s
exciting but it’s also going to be a challenge! I am a great
believer in festivals – they are an informal college of the arts
for everyone. There’s been a big change since I was a child when
the arts were tucked away in theatres and galleries and Brighton
Festival takes cultural activity and brings it to many different
audiences across a whole city”.
Some of the programme highlights have
already been revealed. They include the commissioned The
Great Enormo – a new work for narrator and full
orchestra written by Rosen and composed by James Morgan and
Juliette Pochin. Rosen will narrate the piece and will be joined by
the City of London Sinfonia for this world première.
Another world première,
celebrating the Benjamin Britten centenary year in collaboration
with Aldeburgh Music, is Britten: The Canticles.
Performers include Ian Bostridge, Iestyn Davies, Richard
Watkins, Julius Drake and Sally Pryce. The piece will be staged
by Neil Bartlett and Paule Constable. Britten’s five canticles
span most his composing life, distilling his opera-writing ability
into five individual concert pieces linked by musical drama and
theatre.
The British première
of My Life After will be presented by Lola
Arias, one of Argentina’s most successful playwrights and
performers. It tells the true stories of six actors whose real
parents lived unscathed through the dictatorship in Argentina in the
1980s – a period when thousands of people disappeared and are
presumed to have been killed. The work deals with a generation’s
need to process a collective trauma which is examined and ultimately
resolved creatively and playfully through stories, dreams, family
photos and live music.
For more than 25 years Brighton
Festival has opened with the Children’s Parade, which now includes
participants from local infant, junior and secondary schools,
nurseries and playgroups, community groups and bands across the city.
Big, bright, colourful and fun it is one of the most spectacular
community events in the UK with up to 4,000 participants from 75
groups and an audience of 10,000. This year the Children’s Parade,
devised and delivered by Same Sky, will be themed around the alphabet
in a response to Rosen’s interest and passion for language.
