Here is everything you need to know about this year’s Brighton Festival following its launch today.
The major arts festival will return to the city this May with a plethora of music, dance and theatre performances, along with an array of art installations.
Big names include Nish Kumar, Munroe Bergdorf, Rory Kinnear, Russell Tovey and Jacqueline Wilson.
And Brighton Dome’s historic Corn Exchange will be unveiled following its major refurbishment with an immersive Van Gogh experience.
Last year’s event saw 150 events enjoyed by more than 100,000 people.
What is Brighton Festival?
Brighton Festival was established in 1967 and is the largest annual curated multi-arts festival in England.
The festival includes a host of music, theatre, dance, art, film, literature, debate, outdoor and community events in venues and locations across Brighton, Hove and Sussex.
When is it happening?
A wide range of events will take place throughout the majority of May from May 6 to 28 across the county.
What is this year’s theme?
This year’s theme is Gather Round as the festival focuses on celebrating community, collaboration and shared experiences.
Meet the director
This year’s director will be the critically acclaimed musician, producer, DJ and broadcaster Nabihah Iqbal.
Following a background in law and ethnomusicology, Nabihah's debut as a recording artist came in 2017 with the release of her album Weighing of the Heart on the UK’s Ninja Tune label.
She is currently a resident artist at London’s Somerset House Studios, where she is writing and recording her second album due for release this year.
Nabihah will be Brighton Festival’s 14th guest director, following in the footsteps of Anish Kapoor, Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, Kae Tempest, Lemn Sissay OBE and, in 2022, architect Marwa Al-Sabouni and theatre-maker Tristan Sharps.
“It is an absolute honour to take on the role of guest director for Brighton Festival 2023,” she said.
“I’m so grateful for the opportunity to bring together artists and thinkers whose work I truly admire, to culminate in a celebration of creativity, ideas and community.
“It’s so important to support each other, to nurture the spaces and scenes in which we operate and to work together and be open minded these are the things which have inspired my vision for the festival.
“I’m looking forward to putting together a festival that is beautiful, memorable and inspiring.”
Highlights
The Children’s Parade will return on May 7 and will interpret the Gather Round theme with One World, learning and growing from each other.
With 5,000 children moving through the streets of Brighton, the colourful celebration will reflect the importance of collaboration in inventions, culture, cooking, fashion and the environment.
Nabihah Iqbal will present her latest experimental musical project Suroor, with artists Raheel Khan, Paul Purgas and Imran Peretta; and champions UK bass culture with DJs Aba Shanti – I and Dennis Bovell.
She will also be in conversation with inspiring artists and thinkers across the programme, including exploring the history of Brighton and East Sussex with historian David Olusoga, and an evening of music and discussion with BBC broadcaster Anita Rani.
Brighton Festival commissions include the world premiere of a new production of John Lyly’s Galatea-first performed over 400 years ago and the inspiration behind Shakespeare’s As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Award-winning theatre maker Emma Frankland, in collaboration with Cornwall’s outdoor theatre specialists Wildworks and Brighton’s own Marlborough Productions, will stage the tale in spoken English and British Sign Language outdoors in Shoreham.
In a Brighton Festival exclusive, the world premiere of The Sleeping Tree, from award-winning interactive arts collective Invisible Flock, will use an immersive soundscape to transport audiences from Brighton Dome’s Concert Hall to the distant and fragile ecosystem of the Sumatran rainforest.
Nabihah Iqbal and Invisible Flock will also collaborate within the installation, to create an unforgettable live performance.
Other highlights include the UK premiere of Groundswell-a large-scale immersive installation, a free event for all ages, by award-winning Australian artist Matthias Schack-Arnott.
Groundswell explores the ground beneath our feet and is presented in partnership with Brighton Fringe.
Actor Russell Tovey, writer and performance artist Travis Alabanza and poet Joelle Taylor appear in Blue Now, a special mixed-media performance of Derek Jarman’s last film, Blue.
Directed by Neil Bartlett, following his recent critically acclaimed adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, the screening will also feature a new live score from original composer Simon Fisher Turner.
Following a major refurbishment, Brighton Dome’s historic Corn Exchange and Studio Theatre will reopen with the Van Gogh Alive immersive experience.
Following sell-out runs in Edinburgh, Manchester and London, Brighton audiences will be the first to experience its brand-new Starry Night installation.
Music
This year’s music programme spans a huge range of artists from classical to experimental.
The festival will welcome sitar musician Anoushka Shankar, as well as Mercury-Prize winning percussionist Talvin Singh.
And Goldie will perform a celebration of timeless breakbeat.
There will also be another exclusive with a performance from vocalist and composer Bishi and the Trans Voices choir.
A weekend exploring folk music in all its forms, Different Folks, will be led by Shirley Collins and Martin and Eliza Carthy, alongside contemporary psych-folk duo Stick in the Wheel and multi-instrumentalists Laura Groves and Angeline Morrison.
Elsewhere, Public Image Ltd’s Jah Wobble reimagines their classic album Metal Box in dub, UK jazz auteur and Mercury Prize-nominee Shabaka Hutchings swaps his saxophone for a Japanese shakuhachi flute and musician and actor Nadine Shah collaborates with writer Jackie Thompson on To Be A Young Man.
Classical highlights for 2023 include François-Xavier Roth conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in Lindberg and Beethoven, with Yuja Wan at the piano.
Actors Rory Kinnear and Pandora Colin join singers Mark Padmore and Roderick Williams and pianist Julius Drake for a programme of words and music inspired by Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man.
Takács Quartet makes a return to the festival, performing Arvo Pärt and Schubert at Glyndebourne.
Brighton and East Sussex Youth Orchestra will perform pieces by Aaron Copland, Edward Elgar and Doreen Carwithen.
Theatre
Theatre highlights include the National Theatre of Scotland’s swashbuckling rom-com Kidnapped, from Olivier award-winning Isobel McArthur and Michael John McCarthy, based on the Robert Louis-Stevenson classic.
The festival will also host the UK Premiere of French-Norwegian puppetry masters Plexus Polaire’s Moby Dick.
Irish theatre-maker Brokentalker’s smash-hit Masterclass and Conor Mitchell and the Belfast
Ensemble’s critically acclaimed form-bending production of Abomination: A DUP Opera.
Dance
Dance and circus performances include the world premiere of Kizlar from Brighton-based Choreographer Ceyda Tanc.
Australia’s contemporary circus troupe Gravity and Other Myths will bring Out of Chaos, an explosive acrobatic performance referencing birth, death, and primordial physics, alongside a free nighttime outdoor performance of Playbook.
And Aakash Odedra will perform a dance portrait of dyslexia, Little Murmur.
A partnership with South East Dance at Brighton’s own The Dance Space will include new commission, Queer Collision by dance-maker Stewart Waters.
A short season of contemporary Korean dance, Kontemporary Korea and Second Hand Dance will welcome babies and young children.
Visual arts
The visual arts programme features two world premieres, Parachute which is the first solo exhibition from photographer Reuben Bastienne-Lewis who will bring an intimate portrait of friendship, family and community, documenting the journey from adolescence into adulthood.
Painter Mohammed Adel will also offer a window into British Bengali identity.
Books and debate
Poet and recording artist Linton Kwesi Johnson will enjoy an evening of music and words with Nabihah Iqbal, to mark his new prose selection, Time Come.
Journalist Polly Toynbee will examine class in modern Britain and model and activist Munroe Bergdorf will explore what binds us, not what separates us.
Young readers are encouraged to Gather Round to hear an irresistible new story from former Children’s Laureate Jacqueline Wilson.
Guests can also join illustrator Martin Brown to celebrate 30 years of Horrible Histories and celebrate hair as a superpower with author Tolá Okogwu and her epic adventure Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun.
Comedy
For fans of comedy, Nish Kumar leads the big-name line-up in Live at Brighton Festival, alongside award-winner Thanyia Moore and Chloe Petts and triple Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee Josie Long will present a brand-new show Re-enchantment, which muses on how to love the world under “difficult circumstances”.
Community
The festival will maintain its strong connections with communities across the region.
A Weekend Without Walls, the free programme of outdoor performances of thought-provoking work in public spaces both in Brighton and Hove and in Crawley.
In a Brighton Festival Commission, Ceyda Tanc will also collaborate with Third Space on a bold new reimagining of the ancient Greek tragedy, Bhakkhai, pe rformed against the backdrop of the South Downs with a cast aged eight to 60.
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