Music pioneers and beatbox horror: RCC's 2020 line-up
Adelaide Fringe
The RCC’s 2020 Adelaide Fringe line-up promises “strong themes of the New York underground, punk rock, feminist icons and contemporary queerness”, with shows by Laurie Anderson and Amanda Palmer and a beatbox take on Frankenstein.
The RCC – which was known last year as RCC Fringe – returns to the University of Adelaide campus next year, with the program once again curated by former Adelaide Festival artistic director David Sefton.
Sefton says music is the thing that links the hub’s 2020 line-up, highlights of which have been revealed today ahead of the full 2020 Adelaide Fringe program launch this Thursday.
“After storming Adelaide last year, we head into year two playing to our strengths and maintaining the pace,” says Sefton.
“I’m delighted that RCC will play host to Laurie Anderson, Amanda Palmer, [and punk-rock performer] Lydia Lunch – globally important artists all at the peak of their powers.”
Anderson, a multi-media artist and pioneer of the 1970s downtown New York art scene, was also brought to Adelaide by Sefton in 2013 as part of his Adelaide Festival program. Her 2020 Adelaide Fringe show, All the Things I Lost in the Flood, is a career retrospective that takes its name from her recent book of essays exploring how language relates to image.
Palmer, who is also the 2020 Adelaide Fringe ambassador, will present There Will be No Intermission (the title of her third solo album).
2020 RCC performer and Adelaide Fringe ambassador Amanda Palmer.
The RCC program also includes English-French art-pop band Stereolab; theatre-music show Frankenstein: How to Make A Monster, in which a cast of UK beatboxers reimagine Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; and a large inflatable art structure on the Barr Smith Lawns by Architects of Air, who have previously presented their colourful immersive installations at WOMADelaide.
There will once again be a program of music acts each Friday and Saturday night, which will feature the likes of Cut Copy, Sampa The Great and Baker Boy.
While there were some complaints from students regarding the University of Adelaide’s partnership with the RCC for the 2019 Adelaide Fringe, the university hailed it as a success, saying the RCC drew an estimated 220,000 people to the North Terrace campus.
In announcing in September that the university would host the hub again in 2020, Inga Davis, chief executive of external relations, said it had undertaken a review that included consultation with students, staff and visitors.
“The enthusiastic response to RCC at the University of Adelaide reinforced our decision to activate and invigorate the campus through events,” she said.
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“Our first year with RCC enabled us to learn much that will help to ensure next year’s event will be even better – more exciting and engaging, but also more inclusive.”
In 2020, the RCC will transform the Cloisters area of the university into an outdoor food hub, Chow Town, which will include the return of the Roberta’s Italian pop-up restaurant.
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