Performed more than 75 times in 12 countries, this show has received multiple awards and accolades.

entomo is a collaboration between EA&AE, the Consulate General of Spain in Melbourne and Spanish Cultural Action (AC/E) who work to promote Spanish culture internationally.

EA&AE features, Elias Aguirre and Alvaro Esteban, two contemporary Spanish dancers based in Madrid.

Including EH5452 and Ab Blaster 40,000, these contemporary and innovative videos provide a compelling glimpse into the politics, personality, playfulness and heart being voiced by Bindi today.

Be prepared to have your heart and mind enlarged and your worldview transformed For Such a Time as This.

Download the full list of Open Studios and Exhibitions here:

Open Studios and Exhibitions Full 5.1 Mb PDF

Open Studios and Exhibitions Small Booklet 1.6 Mb PDF

The pivotal feature of Video Architecture is that it is live, immediate and organic; thus it responds directly to place and community. The Trace project has responded specifically to young people in the region through a summer creative development program at PRIME ART, Castlemaine’s new Youth Arts Hub.

Video Architecture is a collaboration between Jim Coad, Gabrielle Brauer, Mandy Field and local young artists.

You may already know them as creators of YouTube sensations ‘Facebook in Real Life’ and ‘Wii Breakfast’, and now the sketch comedy stars of Edinburgh and Montreal Comedy Festivals – Idiots of Ants (aka. Andrew Spiers, James Wrighton, Elliott Tiney and Benjamin Wilson) – are coming to Melbourne (and Castlemaine!) for the very first time.

Prepare to witness the most bizarre revelation of World War 2, the launch of the new Idiots of Ants computer game (‘Urban Sword Fighter 3’) and find out what really happens in the male toilet. There’ll be some jokes your Dad might like, a hen night prank gone horribly horribly wrong, and find out the answer to the immortal question… ‘if an air guitar falls over in a forest does it make a sound?’.

“It’s simply sketch comedy how it should be done.****”
Chortle, UK

“Rock ‘n’ roll hysteria meets sharp and brilliant comedy.*****”
Time Out, UK

“I laughed so hard that I had to make an emergency dash to the loo.”
The Telegraph, UK

“Great, original, focused comedy writing, performed by a consummately talented foursome.*****”
The Scotsman, UK

“A joy to watch…… at the top of their game.”
The Independent, UK

Tamil will focus on improvisational string techniques from some of his own compositions, while Australian National Academy of Music players will work with the students on traditional classical pieces that require concentrated manuscript reading. Altogether they will prepare a special Castlemaine Town Hall concert to be presented on the afternoon of our Generating Y youth day.

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.

MIA DYSON, SWEET JEAN, THE RECHORDS, THE MAE TRIO and more to be announced.

Tickets $45 presale through www.lot19art.com Don’t miss out.

Food and drinks available at Mama’s Kitchen and Papa’s Bar. Gates open at 2pm.

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

Lost in Tranzit was first exhibited in a specially designed “transit lounge”, constructed in three different spaces at the Substation, Newport.

“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 day will feature singing and dance workshops, performances from young musicians, including the new XtremeInc Youth Choir, and a specially choreographed dance piece responding to the festival theme ‘Elemental’. And to top it off, the young foodies in our midst will take part in the provision of delectable dishes.

When young Alex is sent to her room to tidy up her mess, she discovers the land of Curiosity — a magical place that can be reached only through a tunnel in the bottom of her toy box. The characters Alex meets in Curiosity seem to defy logic with their outrageous gravity-defying feats, including handstanding on stacks of chairs, cantilevered ladder balancing and frolicking on giant stilts!

Performed by three of Australia’s most brilliant circus theatre performers, Curiosity is a truly rare theatrical treat.

The Raah Project embraces both traditional and new principles of jazz improvisation and arrangement, 20th century composition, song, verse and flow.

With musical influences as diverse as Kanye West, Charlie Parker, Igor Stravinsky and King Tubby, musical directors Ryan Ritchie and Tamil Rogeon’s compelling new vision will be delivered by a 26-piece ensemble comprising a horn section, jazz rhythm section and string section including players from the Australian National Academy of Music.

Following the release of their debut album Score (2010), The Raah Project sold out a national tour and received sparkling reviews across Europe and the UK (Rolling Stone; #6 Jazz Album of the Year on iTunes). The Raah Project are thrilled to be featuring new musical works for their performance at the 2013 Castlemaine State Festival.

‘I couldn’t believe how good it was — it was definitely up there and beyond. It was a bit of Matthew Herbert, a little bit of Sa-Ra Creative Partners, but with its own melodic Australian vibe going on.’
GILLES PETERSON, THE INDEPENDENT (UK)

‘Ritchie is as persuasive a rapper as he is a singer, equipped with the rhythmic instincts of a jazz vocalist or beat poet. And Rogeon’s solo violin fuels the ensemble’s dynamic fire.’
THE AGE

Following a brief residency at the Old Fryerstown School, these artists have prepared a special performance responding to the distinctive characteristics of this historic gold rush town and its recently restored School.

Joined by her two-man band The System (named after the system which transported convicts to Australian penal colonies), exemplary musicians Dan Witton (double bass and vocals) and Chris Lewis (drums and vocals), Jenny M. will change everything you thought you knew about Australian bush music.

‘Bold, inspired and beautiful in its intensity, Bush Gothic takes your breath away’
NATIONAL TIMES

The story of the Fryerstown School

Flap! is a blistering yet charming five-piece band of brass, guts, words and skins who crank out up-tempo songs, turning street shoes into dancing shoes. They play original music that is both old and new, inspired by the entire human diaspora. Influences from 1920s jazz, Gypsy Brass, English Folk and Trinidadian Calypso can be heard peeping through their antipodean veneer.

Formed during an informal jam at the 2007 Port Fairy Folk Festival and playing their first gig at the Woodstock Cafe at Christiania, Copenhagen, that same year, Flap! have since become Festival favourites across Australia. Flap! are definitely an ‘up’ band, now veterans of the best of Australia’s music Festival circuit.

Fresh from their A Great Day For The Race two-month European tour in late 2012, Flap! are in Castlemaine pumped and hot-to-trot.

Inspired by the music of Astor Piazzolla, the vocal ensemble 37° South shares a line of latitude with his birthplace in Mar del Plata, Argentina.

37° South will perform a colourful program of music composed in the European classical tradition, then taken from its birthplace and integrated into the local and indigenous culture and landscapes of European colonial settlements in the Americas and Australia.

The program highlights will include lesser-known works by familiar contemporary composers across a broad range, including Philip Glass, Heitor Villa-Lobos, Astor Piazzolla, Peter Sculthorpe and Ross Edwards.

Sopranos
Elisabeth Anderson
Andrée Cozens

Mezzo-sopranos
Kirsten Boerema
Trish Timmins

Tenors
Peter Butler
Scott Sanders

Bass / baritones
Pip Avent
Peter Hunt

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

Co-written, directed and performed by Mark Penzak and Eliza-Jane Gilchrist

Each artist will interpret a song using various forms of puppetry — shadows, objects, rod puppets, hands, and maybe a glove or two. Lit only by torches held by the audience and accompanied by live music, moving from tabletops to walls around the space, the artists will explore songs as story, poem, metaphor, emotion, and memory. Light up your night and expect the extraordinary.

Continuing its series of Slam Noir events, Black Hole Theatre has assembled an outstanding group of artists for this evening, including Stéphane Georis (Belgium), Michelle Heaven, Annie Forbes, Tim Denton, Rachael Winona Guy, Ken Evans, Rebecca Russell, Beth McMahon, Mike Bevitt, Eliza-Jane Gilchrist, Mark Penzak and more.

Professor Adam explores Galileo’s theory of evolution, Pasteur’s ballistics and Newton’s theory of love. Harnessing science as the springboard for a layered and richly comic work that explores human dreams, ambition, and foibles in the context of the reality we know (or presume) to be ‘true’, it will be conclusively proven that the human brain is a cauliflower, that earth looks like a pizza and that life really is as fragile as an egg.

Performed by Stéphane Georis
Written by Stéphane Georis and Francy Begasse
Directed by Francy Begasse
Presented in Association with Black Hole Theatre

Jordie Albiston
Nathan Curnow
Elisabeth Campbell
Ross Donlon

‘Do you remember, sitting up there as a child, looking down on the world below…? And didn’t all those grown-ups and all their grown-up cares look so petty and small? You could squash them with your fingers. If only people could see things from up here, even if just for a day, how different our lives would be..!’

It is a pleasure to present the 2012 George Fairfax New Theatre Award winning play The Republic of Trees: a Tale Between Earth and Sky, a multi-artform promenade theatre adaptation of Italo Calvino’s Il Barone Rampante (Baron in the Trees).

Presented amidst the tree-scape of the historic Vaughan Springs Reserve, an intriguing story unfolds: one fine evening, Cosimo Piovasco di Rondò, the son of a wealthy Baron, climbs a tree in his backyard and swears never to come down.

Not ever.

And the funny thing is, he doesn’t…

Ranging from the swashbuckling to the intellectual and the amorous, The Republic of Trees is unique arboreal theatre — perhaps ‘the ultimate tree change’. A promenade twilight performance will take the audience on a travelling theatre experience through the dramatically beautiful Vaughan Springs Reserve. The action takes place as much in the trees above the audience as on the ground.

This exceptional work — 9 years in the making — is unmissable theatre.

Adapted from the original Calvino by multi-award-winning Australian author Wayne Macauley, and featuring a stellar cast of some of Australia’s circus and physical theatre glitterati, The Republic of Trees will resonate well beyond the performance itself.

Produced by Quarteracreblock
Written by Wayne Macauley
Directed and Designed by Dan Mitchell
Assistant Director – Susie Dee
Design collaborators – Rod Primrose, Matt Wilson, Geoff Dunstan, Francesca Bussey
Lighting – Gina Gascoigne
Rigging – Geoff Dunstan and Nicholas Dansin
Production Manager – Monique Harvey
Costume – Val Victor Gordon
Live music composed and performed by Chris Lewis and Jenny Thomas.
Performed by Matthew Wilson, Kareena Hodgson, Ian Scott, Nicci Wilks, David Joseph, Tony Morton, Geoff Dunstan, Kate Sherman, Freda Paten, Carl Kurrajong
Special Guests – Thompson’s Foundry Brass Band

‘How fitting that the world of wonder created by Italo Calvino, told with such charm and poignancy, should become the first recipient of this New Theatre Award. Republic of Trees, in making us look up at what floats above us, turns Calvino’s mysterious allegorical story into a living, breathing thing.’
Cate Kennedy, Author and Judge: George Fairfax New Theatre Award

Quarteracreblock acknowledges the indigenous traditional owners in all areas of Australia in which we work. We recognise their continuing connection to land, waterways and community. We pay our respect to them and their culture, and to their Elders past, present and future.

three murdered women
three untold stories
wandering the underground for the rest of time

The Old Castlemaine Gaol could not be a more perfect venue for Chants des Catacombes, a gripping story about three forgotten murder victims — a showgirl, a courtesan and a surgeon. In this macabre musical theatre performance, the innocence of each woman has been stripped away, leaving them as entombed creatures from a strange time. History has turned the page yet these women continue to restlessly walk up and down the dark corridors of the catacombs, intermittently remembering and forgetting.

Poignant and eerie, Chants des Catacombes is an immersive and multi-sensory, promenade theatre experience. The audience is led through the gaol by an unfolding narrative. Lyrics are like bent fairytales, whispered, commanded, serenaded, shouted. Contemporary songs by artists such as Portishead, Nirvana and Laura Marling are adapted and given enchanting or horrific twists, transformed into the unique and the timeless.

Brought to us by Present Tense Collective, the historic Old Castlemaine Gaol will once again breathe and heave to a strangely familiar theme.

Chants des Catacombescomes to Castlemaine in 2013 after winning the 2010 Short+Sweet Cabaret Festival and sell-out seasons in Melbourne, and at the 2012 Adelaide Fringe.

Directed by Bryce Ives and Nathan Gilkes
Performed by Anna Boulic, Laura Burzacott and Zoe McDonald
Music performed by Nate Gilkes, with collaborating artists Xani Kolac of The Twoks and Mark Leahy
Choreography by David Harford
Design team led by lighting and space designer Nicola Andrews

‘…a powerful emotional catharsis. This highly original and dramatic production is not for the faint-hearted, but it promises a truly memorable theatrical experience’
ADELAIDE ADVERTISER, 5 stars

In 1957 the author Jean Giono said: ‘I wrote this story to make people love trees, or more precisely to make people love planting trees. Of all my stories it is one of the ones of which I am most proud. It has never earned me a penny and for that reason it has accomplished the very purpose for which it was written.’

Much more than a story about planting trees, The Man Who Planted Trees is a wonderful parable of life, the tale of a human being who saw a need and decided not to ignore it, but to ‘put things right’. The story is also known as The Man Who Planted Hope and Reaped Happiness and it holds a vital message for our time. Perhaps we all have a supply of special seeds hidden away for a better future …

This exceptional performance is brought to us by Scotland’s renowned Puppet State Theatre Company and is destined to be a sell-out highlight of the 2013 Castlemaine State Festival.

Adapted from Jean Giono’s story by Ailie Cohen, Richard Medrington and Rick Conte
Directed by Ailie Cohen
Performed by Richard Medrington (Jean) and Rick Conte (Jean’s colleague)
Set and Puppet Design by Ailie Cohen
Lighting Design by Elspeth Murray
Sound Design by Barney Strachan

Music
Canarios by Johannes Kapsberger, performed by Orphénica Lyra, directed by José Miguel Moreno
From Música en el Quijote on the Glossa label
Terre by Charles Trénet
From A Portrait of Charles Trénet
Music Collection International

Best Children’s Show 2009 Brighton Fringe Festival (UK)
Victor Award Winner at the 2009 IPAY Showcase, Cleveland, Ohio (USA)
Highest rated and reviewed show of the 2012 Edinburgh Festivals at Tickit.me (UK)
Winner of the 2012 CSPA Sustainable Production at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (UK)

‘It is very, very rare to find something that appeals as effortlessly to children and adults as this magical show…’
THE SCOTSMAN, 5 stars