An Exciting New Event Is Replacing The Sydney Opera House’s Festival Of Dangerous Ideas
This new festival features Janet Mock, The Onion and more.
The time for dangerous ideas is done; now it’s time for action. The Sydney Opera House’s most controversial annual engagement, The Festival Of Dangerous Ideas, has been bumped from this year’s festival line up in favour of a new woke festival that focuses on “courageous ideas”, performance art and action.
Antidote: A Festival Of Ideas, Art & Action, is here to bring us the people who have “spearheaded change in a time of uncertainty”. The Opera House is calling Antidote an evolution of the ideas introduced by The Festival Of Dangerous Ideas — and it certainly seems to be a graduation of sorts to more positivity and problem-solving.
The biggest news, imho, is that Antidote will bring out celebrated American activist and author Janet Mock. Mock is famous for her groundbreaking work in trans rights, and she’ll be at the festival discussing the success of her brilliant first book Redefining Realness, and “writing herself into existence”.
There’s also a pretty exciting session on “Real Fake News” with the masters of news satire online, The Onion. The talk will feature Managing Editor Marnie Shure, Video Director Katy Yeiser, and Staff Writer Dan McGraw, talking through some of their favourite headlines, and the challenges of creating news satire at a time when #FakeNews reigns supreme.
Other highlights include the wonderful Reni Eddo-Lodge, the British journalist who wrote viral hit ‘Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race’; Julie McCrossin discussing Australia’s LGBTQI+ movement; an evening with the funny and poignant Nigerian poet Inua Ellams, who tells his story of emigrating to England through hip hop inflected poetry; and a fascinating performance art piece called Cherophobia (the fear of happiness), created by artist Noëmi Lakmaier, about mobility and positivity.
Tickets to Antidote Festival sessions are on July 6 from the festival website, but you can sign up for pre-sale and check out the full program now. The festival will run over two days, from September 2-3 2017, so get in quick to avoid disappointment.