The Midsumma Festival 2024 program is now live and tickets are on sale. From 21 January – 11 February 2024 expect over 250 events showcasing queer culture, featuring local, interstate, and international artists in spectacular performances, talks and social events, bringing a kaleidoscope of preeminent queer arts and cultural festivities. The full Midsumma Festival program for 2024 is available now at midsumma.org.au
Major Midsumma event days:
Midsumma Carnival – 21 January 2024 – Alexandra Gardens, Melbourne
Midsumma Pride March – 4 February 2024 – Fitzroy Street and Catani Gardens, St Kilda
Victoria’s Pride – 11 February 2024 – Smith St and Gertrude St, Fitzroy/Collingwood
The 2024 Festival features a range of Festival Hubs across Melbourne, dedicated to providing a diverse showcase of events to enrich the Midsumma Festival experience.
Karen Bryant, Midsumma CEO said: "Our Midsumma hubs stand as the beating heart of our festival, weaving a tapestry of inclusivity and artistic expression. These spaces, each a sanctuary for creativity, are a testament to the collaborative spirit of our LGBTQIA+ community and our dedicated partners. Together, we create a stage where every story is heard, every voice is amplified, and every heart finds its resonance."
THE BUTTERFLY CLUB
As always, this CBD gem has plenty of shows, award-winning foyer bars, and an enormous collection of kitsch. Highlights include:
The Search – Straight from a sell-out season in New York, Jess
McAvoy performs this one-person rock musical about finding
one's true voice. 'The Search' is a contagiously vulnerable, genrebending performance that asks the questions: Who do you thinkyou are? And, what do you want to become? 22 – 27 January.
Oh Yuck It's Me – Nominated for “Best Performer” and “Best
Production” in the 2023 Green Room Awards (Independent
Theatre category). Ever since she was a little girl, Jessie Ngaio
has fantasised about killing herself. When she came perilously
close to making fantasy reality, she knew something had to
change. This show is about finding a will to live even while the
world crumbles. 29 January – 3 February. (pictured below)
Image- Oh Yuck It's Me
THEATRE WORKS
This St Kilda institution be buzzing with eight ground-breaking shows across two performance spaces for a truly queer program that embraces and celebrates the whole rainbow community. Highlights include:
I Want it That Gay – This 90s and 00s throwback will have audiences reminiscing of watching Video Hits on Saturday mornings, wondering do I want to be Sporty Spice, or do I want to be with Sporty Spice? Expect an an irreverent look at the way popular culture shapes what we see and who we’re allowed to be. 30 January – 3 February.
The Sour Glitch Refusal – This pantomime non-binary escape room experience is created and performed by Audley Anderson and Haz Lugsdin. Wordplay is foreplay, sense is nonsense, clues are costumes, and the escape is in the doing. 23 – 25 & 27 January.
Image- Woman of SALT
GASWORKS ARTS PARK
For over a decade this has been the south side hub for the festival and in 2024 Gasworks will see a diverse and inclusive program spanning outdoor circus, cabaret, comedy, writing and visual arts. Highlights include:
Rouge – This circus for grown-ups is a decadent blend of sensational acrobatics, operatic cabaret and tonguein-cheek burlesque. 6 – 10 February.
Woman of SALT – A dangerously enticing story of onewoman's journey through Life, Love and Drag. Bella Nitrate bares ten years of scars in a production unlike any other. Experience the unmerciful cosmos of life as an AFAB girl in a man's world and how she learnt to embrace her rage and use it to stand a little taller. 25 January, 8- 10 February. (Pictured above )
VICTORIAN PRIDE CENTRE (VPC)
VPC presents a fabulous program of Midsumma events that connect, support, and amplify LBGTIQ+ voices. Highlights include:
Rainbow Families Extravaganza – Featuring DJ Gay Dad and Frock Hudson, expect dancing, dress ups and drag storytime for rainbow families of all different shapes and sizes.10 February.
Queer Social – A chance to speed-try four different hobbies and crafts per session. Learn the basics, get ideas, gain inspiration and find a new passion. No previous knowledge needed. 25 January, 1 & 8 February.
Image-Animalising; Becoming Animal / Intense / Imperceptible
ABBOTSFORD CONVENT
Australia’s largest arts and cultural precinct, the Convent is a place of arts, culture and learning. This year, the Convent invites audiences to join a creative journey with a joyful array of artists sharing their incredible work. Highlights include:
Animalising; Becoming Animal / Intense / Imperceptible – Tony Yap and Jack Riley (dancers), Agus Riyanto (supreme trance master) and Reuben Lewis (musician) showcase striking and intense aesthetics from Ancient Javanese bull-trance and queer sub-cultures. The work delves into the themes of sexlessness and nakedness, in a captivating becoming
of animals, intensity and imperceptibility. 8 – 10 February. (Pictured above)
Wise Words - Wise Words' features a line-up of some of Australia’s most prominent and talented LGBTIQ+ writers, performers and activists talkin gabout their experiences of what it is to be a queer woman (trans and non-binary inclusive). 8 February.
THE MOTLEY BAUHAUS
A newly renovated, proudly independent and inclusive multi- disciplinary arts space, with a focus on the weird, wonderful and Motley. This stunning large venue has two performance spaces and a visual arts gallery that are jammed packed with innovative queer art this Midsumma Festival. Highlights include:
Ruff Trade – Australia's longest running, award-winning LGBTQIA+ theatre company, Out Cast Theatre, returns to Melbourne. Steven Dawson presents a spankingly new, darkly comic tale of Elizabethan sex workers and their imagined part in the untimely death of famous writer Christopher Marlowe. Ribald, bloody and randy. 23 – 27, 30 January, 3, 6 – 10 February.
Thank God You're Queer – Following sell-out crowds, 'Thank God You're Queer' is back to throw our favourite LGBTQIA+ comics into the deep end of improv comedy. Two of Melbourne’s rising queer comedians perform a set of stand-up before squirming among the finest improv minds in the community. 4 – 11 February.
Image- YUMMY: Joy Machine
MIDSUMMA WESTSIDE
A collaboration of Melbourne’s western region Councils in partnership with Midsumma, highlights include:
Queer Comedy Gala – Featuring the fabulous Kirsty Webeck as emcee, enjoy eight of Australia's best queer stand-up comedians, together to bring a night of non-stop laughs at Pride of our Footscray.25 January.
YUMMY: Joy Machine – From its humble beginnings as an underground club cabaret, to sell out shows on the West End and 5 Star reviews in Edinburgh Fringe Festival, YUMMY has taken the world of drag cabaret by storm. Expect An outrageous and joyful drag variety show with world class performers. 3 February. (Pictured above)
CHAPEL OFF CHAPEL
Bombshell – In a flurry of feathers and sequins, Ziegfeld Boy reimagines the Hollywood Blonde for a new generation with some of the sauciest songs ever to appear on the silver screen. 9 – 10 February.
Tash York: Love that for you – Tash York is going through the crossroads moments of her life to see if she could have done life better. In this original comedy cabaret backed by The Red Red Wines (Peppy Smears and Vivian Fonteyn) find out why living life the hard way is almost always the fun way. 9–10 February.
Also new for 2024 is Queer PHOTO, a first of its kind collaboration – comprising artist commissions of largescale outdoor artworks, gallery exhibitions and an interactive public performance program by local and international artists taking place in Footscray, Newport and Werribee from 27 January – 24 March 2024, across both Midsumma Festival and PHOTO 2024 International Festival of Photography. Queer PHOTO is presented by Midsumma and PHOTO 2024,in association with Trocadero Projects and in partnership with Creative Victoria’s Go West program.
About Midsumma
Midsumma is Australia's premier LGBTQIA+ arts and cultural organisation. Sharing the lived experiences of voices at the margins, expressions of queer history, and the celebration of new ideas and stories that come to life through world-class art and performance.
