• Festivalizing Down Under:Unsettling the Contact Zone
• Ric Knowles (bio)

Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand are key contact zones between the Global North and South. Geographically located in the Southern Hemisphere, their dominant, settler populations are culturally of the North, and their major theatre festivals have been struggling with this fact in Australia since the repeal of the terra nullius policy in 1992, and in Aotearoa since the Treaty of Waitingi Act in 1975.¹ Sarah Thomasson has argued that the Australian festival circuit has functioned as the country's de facto national theatre;² Aotearoa's major festival is titled "The New Zealand Festival of the Arts," and together with the Auckland Festival plays a similar role there. Festivals in both countries, then, can be understood to play a constitutive role in the ongoing redefinition of their national subjectivities in ways that both reflect and shape cultural negotiations between their First and subsequent peoples.

I visited festivals in both countries in 2020 as a white settler Canadian interested in how these negotiations are playing themselves out in the twenty-first century. I focused on the festivals as meta-performances and on the shows that constituted the circuit as a circuit. What follows is a consideration of how, and how well, Australasia's destination festival circuit is managing to reconcile the conflicting narratives of reconciliation [End Page 487] (a social good) and festivalization (an economic one) in 2020.³ The former calls for collaboration, restoration, and cultural sensitivity; the latter calls primarily for spectacle and display before a consumerist or touristic festival gaze.

The women of the MAU Wāhine opened the festival pouring buckets of blood onto the rock-strewn stage in Lemi Ponifasio's Chosen and Beloved.

(Photo: Courtesy of Sophie Spear, New Zealand Festival.)

The Indigenous populations of Australian and New Zealand have been represented at festivals through most of their histories, and it may be valuable to provide some context about the trajectory in which the 2020 festivals' grappling with issues of Indigenous representation, participation, and collaboration participated. Much of the early history of Indigenous representation consisted of exoticist spectacle, but Australia's 1997 Festival of the Dreaming, part of a series of festivals leading up to the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000, has been seen as a turning point in the relationship between Aboriginal and settler Australians. Helen Gilbert and Jacqueline Lo have noted that "Indigenous involvement in the Olympics was susceptible to being incorporated into a narrative of reconciliation that would redeem the nation's vexed self-image and enact a 'national catharsis' of sorts."⁴ Nevertheless, the organizers of the Festival of the Dreaming did collaborate. In fact, the festival was curated by Koori director Rhoda Roberts (Bundjalung), who agreed to serve as festival director on condition that the event would remain under Indigenous control. And "there is much evidence," according [End Page 488] to Gilbert and Lo, "to suggest that the Festival of the Dreaming managed to fulfil its brief as an Olympic event while also serving the interests of Indigenous peoples."⁵ Roberts consciously used the festival to address ignorance about Aboriginal cultures, redress stereotypes, promote Indigenous languages, and create opportunities for Aboriginal people in the arts. The festival featured Indigenous performances ranging from Shakespeare and opera to street theatre, addressed social issues directly, and focused on diversity among Indigenous cultures.

Elsewhere in Australia, festivals since 1997 have indeed struggled even to include acknowledgments that they take place on Indigenous lands and displace Indigenous peoples, and when they have functioned productively as contact zones, it has been as a result of some degree of ceding leadership to Indigenous artists. The now annual Adelaide Festival in South Australia, "the nation's premiere arts event,"⁶ might serve as an example. The first sustained effort to engage fully with the festival's location on the land of the Kaurna peoples was undertaken by American director Peter Sellars when he was appointed artistic director in 2002. Sellars's curation was contentious, but in attempting to address three key festival themes—the "Right to Cultural Diversity," "Truth and Reconciliation," and "Ecological Sustainability"—he introduced a new programming model...

• 在以下节日节庆：动荡的接触区
• 里克·诺尔斯（生物）

澳大利亚和奥特罗阿/新西兰是全球北部和南部之间的主要接触地区。自从地理上位于南半球以来，他们占主导地位的定居人口就来自北方文化，自1992年废除土地无效政策以来，其主要的戏剧节一直在为这一事实而苦苦挣扎；自从《怀特尼条约》生效之后，在奥特罗阿1975年颁布法案^。1莎拉·托马森（Sarah Thomasson）认为，澳大利亚节日巡回演出已成为该国事实上的国家大剧院。^2个奥特罗阿（Aotearoa）的主要节日被称为“新西兰艺术节”，在奥克兰艺术节上也扮演着类似的角色。因此，可以理解，两国的节日在不断重新定义其国家主观性方面起着构成性作用，既反映并影响了其第一民族与后来民族之间的文化谈判。

2020年，我以加拿大白人定居者的身份访问了两国的节日，他们对这些谈判在二十一世纪如何发挥作用感兴趣。我集中在节日作为元表演和上构成的电路的示出了作为一个电路。接下来是考虑到大洋洲的目的地节日巡回演出如何以及如何在2020年调和相互矛盾的和解叙事[End Page 487]（一种社会福利）和节日化（一种经济利益）^。3前者要求合作，恢复和文化敏感性；后者主要要求在消费主义者或游客节日目光凝视之前进行眼镜展示。

MAUWāhine的妇女们在Lemi Ponifasio的《选择与挚爱》中，在开满石头的舞台上打开了一桶鲜血的节日。

（照片：新西兰节日Sophie Spear提供。）

澳大利亚和新西兰的土著居民在大多数节日中都有代表参加节日活动，可能有必要提供一些有关2020年节日活动与土著人民代表，参与和合作问题相关的轨迹的背景信息。土著代表的早期历史大部分是异国情调的景象，但澳大利亚1997年的“做梦艺术节”是导致2000年悉尼奥运会的一系列艺术节的一部分，一直被视为土著民族与土著民族之间关系的转折点。移民澳大利亚人。海伦·吉尔伯特（Helen Gilbert）和杰奎琳·卢（Jacqueline Lo）指出：“土著人参与奥林匹克运动很容易被纳入和解叙事中，以挽救该国的人民。⁴尽管如此，梦之节的组织者还是合作了。实际上，该节日是由Koori导演Rhoda Roberts（Bundjalung）策划的，他同意担任节日总监，但条件是该活动将继续在原住民的控制下进行。吉尔伯特（Gilbert）和罗（Lo）的[完第488页]说：“有很多证据表明，梦之节成功地完成了作为奥林匹克运动会的简短活动，同时也为土著人民的利益服务。” ⁵罗伯茨有意识地利用这个节日来解决对土著文化的无知，纠正陈规定型观念，推广土著语言并为艺术界的土著人创造机会。该节日的特色是从莎士比亚，歌剧到街头戏剧的土著表演，直接解决社会问题，并着重于土著文化之间的多样性。

在澳大利亚的其他地方，自1997年以来的节日确实非常艰难，甚至包括承认他们在土著土地上发生的活动并流离失所土著人民，并且当他们发挥有效的联络区作用时，这是由于某种程度的将领导权移交给土著人民的结果艺术家。现在每年在南澳大利亚举行的阿德莱德音乐节，“全国首屈一指的艺术盛会” ⁶可以作为一个例子。美国导演彼得·塞拉斯（Peter Sellars）于2002年被任命为艺术总监时，为使电影节在Kaurna人民的土地上的位置充分参与而做出的首次持续努力。塞拉斯的策展是有争议的，但它试图解决三个关键的节日主题-即“文化多样性权”，“真相与和解”和“生态可持续性”-他介绍了一种新的编程模型...