The Adelaide Festival is launching its line-up for its 2026 instalment, and the program will feature both fresh and returning faces, including British rock band Pulp, French actor Isabelle Huppert and American theatre director Peter Sellars.
Peter Sellars will direct Perle Noire: Meditations for Josephine at the Adelaide Festival in 2026.American theatre director Peter Sellars will return to the Adelaide Festival for the first time since his controversial departure as artistic director more than two decades ago.
Sellars will bring the production Perle Noire: Meditations for Josephine to the 2026 event, whose program is being launched today.The 2026 festival will feature legendary British rock band Pulp, who will perform a free opening night concert, as well as a Chekhov adaptation, a play starring French actor Isabelle Huppert and Hofesh Schechter's dance production Theatre of Dreams.Share article More than two decades after his controversial departure from the role of artistic director of the Adelaide Festival, acclaimed American theatre director Peter Sellars is plotting a memorable return. At the event's 2026 instalment, Sellars will direct Perle Noire: Meditations for Josephine, a show featuring soprano Julia Bullock that shines a light on the legacy of American singer and dancer Josephine Baker, whose worldwide renown was achieved against a backdrop of racial segregation in her homeland.In France's hour of need, during World War II, she was determined to do what she could. It is among the highlights of next year's festival program, which is being launched today and features famed British rock band Pulp, who will open the event with a free concert, as well as a Chekhov adaptation and a one-woman show starring renowned French actor Isabelle Huppert. For Sellars, who was appointed artistic director of the 2002 festival but whose tenure concluded weeks before opening night, Adelaide holds happy memories despite the way events unfolded."Adelaide was a great, great, great time in my life — I mean, one of the most exhilarating and inspiring times of my whole life. I was meeting the most fantastic artists." This time round, the artists have changed but the focus on the art itself remains as intense as ever. Soprano Julia Bullock will take centre stage in the Adelaide Festival show Perle Noire: Meditations for Josephine.He is very much looking forward to staging Perle Noire and telling the story of Baker, who died in 1975 but was during her life among the world's highest-paid female entertainers.'I certainly did not quit' When the extroverted Sellars became the first American to take on the role of Adelaide Festival artistic director, the appointment was lauded for its boldness and vision. He wowed Australian audiences early in his tenure with his outspokenness on social issues and challenges he felt were urgently in need of addressing. But amid budgetary concerns, his program for the 2002 festival came under fire for lacking broad-based appeal. It featured strong multicultural and Indigenous themes but was considered a departure from the Adelaide Festival's traditional mix of music, theatre and dance. Sellars in an interview from the early 2000s, around the time of his work with the Adelaide Festival.But that wasn't the only source of controversy — the event reportedly planned to release a TV commercial that showed a likeness of Hitler, with a voice-over suggesting that had he become an artist, the Holocaust might not have happened. Sponsor Telstra reportedly temporarily withdrew its substantial funding over the campaign, which was pulled. As anti-Sellars sentiment grew, he was said to have "quit" after concluding that it "appears that my presence is an impediment to the realisation of the 2002 Adelaide Festival"."I certainly did not quit," he said with a laugh."I think some people in the government of South Australia thought this was a little much, as the program started to unfold.""I've been fired so many times I'm not very bitter about that kind of thing. "My life is very beautiful, I'm doing work with amazing people all over the world, all the time, so no bitterness."Today, Sellars is frequently in demand as a producer and artistic director, and he has always pushed the envelope."So many things in the history of humanity have entered the world with a lot of controversy, a lot of stress and a lot of misunderstanding," he said. "Like most things that enter the world, they enter the world powerfully and usually there's got to be blood on the altar.Alongside Sellars's contribution to the 2026 festival are shows such as Simon Stone's version of the Chekhov classic The Cherry Orchard, Hofesh Schechter's dance production Theatre of Dreams, and the stage play Mary Said What She Said, inspired by Mary Queen of Scots and starring Huppert. The show Perle Noire: Meditations for Josephine celebrates the life and legacy of American singer and dancer Josephine Baker.For Sellars, while Perle Noire is a show about an historical figure, its themes are perhaps more relevant now than ever. "This is a particularly heartbreaking time in the world because there's lots of gratuitous, unnecessary suffering and violence and mean-spirited cruelty that we're seeing directed towards people of colour in particular," he said. "In my country it's truly shocking and it's going to take every cell in our body, every bit of strength everyone has, to move forward and not give in."
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