Adelaide Festival Centre has announced that acclaimed cabaret and all-round performer, writer and social activist Alan Cumming will be the Artistic Director for the 2021 Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
Alan Cumming will be the first-ever international Artistic Director in the festival’s history when Adelaide Cabaret Festival celebrates its 21st anniversary next year. His appointment was announced on the final night of Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2020: Bite-Sized & Home Delivered, the online offering in place of the 2020 festival.
“I first came to Adelaide over thirty years ago and have always loved the welcome I’ve received there,” said Alan Cumming. “And of course cabaret, with a big and small c, has always been very close to my heart!
So to be asked to come and curate Adelaide Cabaret Festival after this missing year, to be able to bring together the most vibrant of the world’s cabaret performers, to ask them to entertain us, provoke us, make sense of the maelstrom we’re living through, and most of all remind us why cabaret is such a vital form of connection between performer and audience – well, it doesn’t get much better! “And apparently you have some nice wine too!”
The Scottish entertainer boasts an illustrious career as an actor, comedian, singer, writer, filmmaker, author and Broadway and cabaret performer. He has performed with Jay Z and Liza with a Z, hosted the Tony Awards and was nominated for an Emmy for doing so; and lives in New York where he owns cabaret bar, Club Cumming.
He won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for his performance as the emcee in Broadway show Cabaret and received multiple Golden Globe, Emmy and SAG nominations for his role as political spinmeister Eli Gold on seven seasons of The Good Wife. Alan has received over forty awards for his humanitarianism and social activism, including his contributions to the arts and LGBTQ equality.
He most recently performed at Adelaide Cabaret Festival in 2017 in two sold-out nights of Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs. Billboard said of the show, “he’s an icon to behold – he is unapologetically himself, and with a talent like that, he has no need to apologise”.
Time Magazine called him one of the three most fun people in show business, a title Alan will be sure to uphold when he returns to Adelaide next year with a stellar line-up of local and international artists at Adelaide Festival Centre.
“During her two years at the helm, Julia Zemiro has done a wonderful job of leading Adelaide Cabaret Festival through the successes and challenges presented this year,” said Adelaide Festival Centre CEO & Artistic Director Douglas Gautier AM. “She has been an outstanding advocate for South Australia’s much-loved winter festival, and we thank her for her dedication.
“I also want thank our loyal cabaret audiences for their encouragement and optimism throughout our online program as we eagerly await the return of live performances at our venues. We look forward to celebrating next year’s festival in person with the consummate entertainer Alan Cumming leading the way as Artistic Director of Adelaide Cabaret Festival 2021,” said Gautier.
For more information, visit: www.adelaidecabaretfestival.com.au for details.
Image: Alan Cumming – photo by Margarita Menard