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The Man Who Planted Trees
Puppet State Theatre, Scotland

This beautiful theatrical adaptation of Jean Giono’s environmental classic tells the inspiring story of a shepherd who plants a forest acorn by acorn, thereby transforming a barren wasteland. As much a touching tale as a hilarious puppet show, The Man Who Planted Trees shows us the difference that one man (and his dog!) can make to the world.

The Children’s Choir
James Rigby and Jane Thompson

Harnessing voices en masse through song is a powerful, joyful collaborative experience. The sense of being part of ‘one voice’ will stay with participating children for a long time. During the first term of 2013, children will explore their own voices and their collective voice, learning and rehearsing a specially written song for the final day of the Festival. James Rigby and Jane Thompson, local and highly respected song-makers and choir leaders, will be engaging their infectious enthusiastic style, and teaching songs to share as part of the Festival Finale in Victory Park on Sunday 24 March.

Concrete Poetry
Paul Allen

Concrete Poetry is a playful and powerful communication tool for expressing ideas. Combining words, images, shapes and typography, concrete poems are often humorous and always unexpected — a pleasure for the mind, heart and eye.

Children will be taken on an adventurous journey into the world of concrete poetry, to learn about this lesser-known artform, and make poems with respected local artist and teacher Paul Allen, and fellow artists. Workshops will involve creating concrete poems that respond to the festival theme ‘Elemental’ by exploring the four elements: earth, water, wind and fire. A preparation guide will be provided to teachers at the beginning of first term so that students can familiarise themselves with this imaginative artform and language.

Curated by Clayton Tremlett and created with Castlemaine Secondary College students it also features work by Anatol Knotek – Vienna based visual poet and Pat Thompson.

SNAP SHOTS
Workshops for primary schools at Castlemaine Library, with Lisa D’Onofrio
10.30am & 2pm, Thursday 7 March
Participants will use images from the Verey collection of historical local photographs as inspiration to write their own poetry potraits. These pieces, generated by a number of poem-making techniques, will be displayed as ‘transparencies’ on the Castlemaine Library windows during the CSF alongside the the photos that inspired them.

Enquiries: Castlemaine Library, ph. 5472 1458 or castlemaine@ncgrl.vic.gov.au

Bite is an exhibition of new work by higher Degree and Honours  students from the Bendigo and Mildura Campuses.

These five selected artists have responded to the Festival theme exploring public space, memory, text, excess, living materials, the animal human nexus and  notions of  uncertainty.

Geoffrey Brown
Michelle Day
Philipp Pahin
Catherine Shields
Candy Stevens

“I just don’t like being told what to do” . . . “I see myself in the future dreaming” . . . “It’s a place that I can’t fully explain. Its simple’’

Five young people from the Castlemaine district throw open the doors of their imagination to create video self-portraits which take us through the wild to the wonderful, from the intimate to the downright still and quiet.. Each participant has written their own text and chosen the location and visual framework for these short films about who they are and how they experience their worlds.

‘This is Me – Now’ is a collaboration between Ranters Theatre, Adriano Cortese, Paul Lum, Max Sharam, Andrew Sully, and Ruby Benedict, Bonnie Cook-Hain, Eamon Coulthard, Holly Mcnamara and Ruby Scott.

The music of Arrebato Ensemble excites audiences and critics alike with their dynamic presence and joyous sound, appealing to audiences from the flamenco aficionado, to jazz and world music fans, to lovers of fine chamber music. The instrumental line-up includes cello, double bass, oud, saxophone, harmonica and percussion, with a result that is arresting and hauntingly beautiful.

Performances at WOMADelaide, Sydney Festival, Sydney Opera House and at the International Australian Festival of Chamber Music, have established Arrebato Ensemble as an important arrival on the Australian music scene. Arrebato Ensemble’s second album Absolución was nominated for Best World Music Album at the 2011 Limelight Awards.

With original compositions and orchestral soundscape, Arrebato Ensemble will take Festival audiences on an unforgettable musical journey.

‘Certain music – far beyond mere styles – has roots so deep that to tap them is to uncork a pressurized well of truth…the Arrebato Ensemble grows ever closer to this truth’
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Both possess a passion for songs with heart, mind and soul; for lyrics that tell the story of life as it is; songs that are poignant, funny, wise, ironic and moving. They accompany their songs with a captivating combination of guitar, accordion, flute, tin whistle, ukulele and percussion, and yarn-spinning.

Fay and Jane bring a subtlety of interpretation to their songs, a singularly ‘womanly’ perspective and the kind of depth and heart that only comes with maturity. As such they are a rare and precious addition to the community of Australian musicians.

‘When Jane Thompson and Fay White blend their voices together in glorious harmony the experience is exhilarating! They stand tall in any musical company and I cannot recommend them too highly.’
Keith Mckenry, former President of the National Folk Festival, Australia

Come to THE CLUBROOMS where you can warm up for an evening of Festival performances or wind down when the performances are done and dusted. Kick off, kick back and have a ball backstage at the Castlemaine Town Hall.

Sporting a rub-a-dub bar and grub, The Clubrooms have a trophy winning atmosphere and A-grade performances backstage, on stage, and beyond – warm ups, coaching, coaxing, crazy dance, cool tunes and hip moves, The Clubrooms combine live art with Allstar attitude, cabaret with locker room cheek, deep heat and Dencorub.

Featuring the Allstars, The Black Diamonds, Tuba, Flap! and guest players from the festival “bench”.

Come celebrate with the team ‘til the stars go home.

Twig explores and develops the geometry of the pentagon in two and three-dimensional structures, where mathematical perfection and the imperatives of tessellation balance against natural variation and bush-litter chaos. We begin with some basic materials and some rules of combination, but where do we end up? Twig alludes to both the biological and cellular, and to the social and societal, to the connections that exist between our molecules and cells, and to those we have with each other, in networks of family and friends.

Do you twig?

Twig has been created as an integrated artwork within the Festival’s Literature Program and will be fully experienced during these special events (see Collective DNA: We Are Made of Stories, Poetry and Song for details).

Elements of the artwork can be viewed at other times during the Festival, prior to performances, during the Castlemaine Market Building opening hours 10am to 5pm.

‘…the everyday transformed into something magical and enigmatic…’
Gina Fairley, Asian Art News Nov/Dec 2008

‘This is not art… I’ve got a 7-year old daughter and she could have done this for free and done a better job…’
Oscar Yildiz, Mayor of Moreland City Council, June 2011

Fourteen local and national artists!

Twelve premiere Festival works!

Exhibited across a range of extraordinary sites, including an abandoned car salesroom, a former police lock-up and an original miner’s cottage, Periscope explores: ruin, kitsch, abundance, alchemy, peepshows, history, projection and place.

Curated by Deborah Ratliff, the exhibition offers immersive engagement with some of the most creative individuals from the central goldfields region. Sugar from one, salt from another, mounds of spice, the artist’s mother, distilled concoctions, water, platinum, sound recordings, double adaptors, Chinese Hong Bao, plants, stoneware, discarded homewares, a reconfigured 1972 Holden Kingswood…

Compelling, complex and sometimes strange, the third Castlemaine Festival Visual Arts Biennial presents artists’ individual and collective responses to the Festival theme, Elemental.

Hunt & Lobb Building

Daniel Armstrong
Julie Collins and Derek John
Rhett D’Costa
Pia Johnson
Ben Laycock
Jessica Ledwich
Tanya Schultz
Dean Smith
Leslie Thornton
Frank Veldze
Jason Waterhouse

Tutes Cottage
Tara Gilbee

Old Police Lock-up
Clayton Tremlett

Periscope will include a Floor Talk Series and the following free participatory events:

Floor Talk Series
Enjoy a series of 30-minute artists’ talks on the Sunday of the opening weekend:
11am — Jessica Ledwich
12pm — Daniel Armstrong
1pm – Bindi Cole
2pm — Pia Johnson
3pm — Rhett D’Costa
Venue: Hunt & Lobb Building
Date: Sunday 17 March
Cost: Free

Eat! My Son
On the Saturday of the opening weekend, Rhett D’Costa and his octogenarian mum will prepare and serve a staple Anglo-Indian meal, extending the sensory and interactive experience of Rhett’s installation titled, Trade.
Venue: Hunt & Lobb Building
Date: Saturday 16 March
Time: 12.30pm to 1.30pm

The Elaboratory and the elixir of life: An apothecary’s wonderment.
Join artist Tara Gilbee at Tutes Cottage to examine the esoteric aspects of alchemy in her metaphorical laboratory.
Venue: Tutes Cottage, Greenhill Avenue, Castlemaine
Date: Saturday 16 March
Time: 2:30pm to 3:30pm

Hong Bao
Festival goers will actively contribute to Pia Johnson’s installation, Hong Bao. By adding Chinese red packets, audiences will be engaged in the traditional Chinese custom of gift giving and ancestor worship.
Venue: Hunt & Lobb Building
During hours of opening

Stanton is a highly esteemed veteran of Australian stage, film and television. Hetreads the boards regularly with ‘The Bard’ for the Melbourne and Sydney Theatre Companies, in productions such as Macbeth, Richard III and King Lear. Stanton was lauded for his virtuoso performance as Julius Caesar in the now-famous MTC production and was nominated for a Helpmann Award for his Prospero in The Tempest for the MTC.

Pianist and composer Tony Gould AM is one of Australia’s most highly respected musicians. For three decades he has been involved in an extraordinary number of recording projects, both as pianist and composer, and has been at the forefront of music education in Australia.

Director Jill Forster starred in The Box – as twins! However, to modern audiences she is best known for her long-running role as Meredith Monahan in ABC TV’s Seachange, for which she won an AFI Award. Her most recent stage role was with the MTC in their production of Hannie Rayson’s Life After George. And When He Falls is her entree into stage directing.

Performed and adapted from Shakespeare and Marlowe by John Stanton
Original music composed and performed by Tony Gould
Sound Design by Matt Nicholson
Audio visuals designed by Polly Stanton
Photography by Matt Stanton
Directed by Jill Forster

‘Stanton is the real Shakespearean thing in a country that scarcely dreams of doing justice to the majesty or the sinuousness of Shakespeare’s language … his burnished and stony tones, the most famous voice in Australia’
THE SPECTATOR (UK)