Artistic Director 2009 - 2012
Brett Sheehy is one of Australia’s most accomplished and acclaimed artistic directors, producers and curators. He is currently Artistic Director of the Melbourne Festival, making him the first person ever to be appointed to direct three of the five international arts festivals in Australia’s State capital cities, and he is Artistic Director/CEO-Designate of the Melbourne Theatre Company (from 2013).
Brett is also Australia’s most experienced international arts festival director, having been artistic director of nine festivals to date, CEO of four, co-CEO of three, and deputy director of a further six.
Prior to joining Melbourne Festival, Brett was Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival (from 2005 to 2008), and Festival Director & Chief Executive of Sydney Festival (2002-2005) where he was also the Festival's Deputy Director (1995-2001).
Brett’s festivals are best known for commissioning and co-commissioning scores of new Australian works across every artform, for having debuted for Australia many of the world’s finest companies and artists, and for their dedication to performance programs enhanced by substantial visual arts programs.
In Melbourne, his festivals’ commissioning and presentation of the premiere productions of DIRTSONG and SEVEN SONGS TO LEAVE BEHIND by the Indigenous ensemble The Black Arm Band were landmark events - the first a celebration of preservation of Indigenous languages with Miles Franklin Award-winner Alexis Wright, and the second has been described by critics as the most significant international collaboration yet undertaken by contemporary Indigenous singers and musicians, who were joined by Sinead O’Connor, John Cale, Rickie Lee Jones and Meshell Ndegeocello.
Many other Australian works developed or premiered at Brett’s festivals have since toured extensively, nationally and internationally, including works by the eminent dance ensemble Force Majeure, William Yang’s SHADOWS, Sewell and Hogios’s THREE FURIES: SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF FRANCIS BACON, Andrew Bovell’s WHEN THE RAIN STOPS FALLING, Ranters Theatre’s INTIMACY, Chunky Move’s TENSE DAVE, Australian Dance Theatre’s DEVOLUTION, Jonathan Mills’ opera THE ETERNITY MAN, the epic Indigenous music-theatre work CRYING BABY, and Romeril and Charles’ JACK CHARLES VS THE CROWN.
Artistically, Brett has consistently broken new ground for Australia, with maverick presentations for the first time on the Australian stage of the work of Theatre du Soleil; Amsterdam Sinfonietta; the Schaubühne theatre of Berlin and Thomas Ostermeier; the Forsythe Company; Shen Wei Dance Arts; the Ballet Boyz; Sir Ian McKellen; Osvaldo Golijov; Glyndebourne Festival Opera; Talvin Singh; James Thiérrée; DJ Spooky; Amsterdam Sinfonietta; the music-theatre works of Tom Waits, David Byrne and Fat Boy Slim; and singing sensations Rufus Wainwright and Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons); to name but a few.
He has also presented the Australian debuts of many international visual artists, among them Elisa Sighicelli, Francesco Vezzoli, Ivan Navarro, Zhang Ga and Guy Ben-Ner, and his international co-commissions have included such works as the production of Robert Wilson and Tom Waits’ THE BLACK RIDER (starring Marianne Faithfull and Nigel Richards) and Philip Glass and Leonard Cohen’s BOOK OF LONGING.
Brett’s 2010 Melbourne Festival broke box office records for the Festival’s 25-year history, a record his 2009 Festival had set the year before. The 2010 and 2009 Festivals also set attendance records for outdoors events, and saw yet more Australian debuts with Ivo van Hove and Toneelgroep Amsterdam, Sasha Waltz, Deutsche Schauspielhaus Hamburg, Calder Quartet, Fischerspooner, Sebastian Nubling, Brain Failure, Caroline Stein, Stigmata, Hofesh Shechter Company, Beans, Peeping Tom Collective, and Ramallah Underground.
The 2009 Melbourne Festival saw a staggering 55% increase in the Festival’s economic impact on the city of Melbourne, with his 2010 Festival growing that figure by another 41% to $39.5 million, resulting in an overall increase in just two years of 120% (independent figures by Roy Morgan Research and Sweeney Research).
Brett’s 2008 Adelaide Festival broke box office and attendance records for that festival’s 48-year history, records he had previously set with his 2006 Adelaide Festival. His 2008 Festival is also believed to have been the world’s first ever carbon-neutral international arts festival, an achievement he and the South Australian Government passionately sought to realise.
With adventurous and exclusive programs of work, Brett grew Adelaide Festival’s interstate and overseas visitation from 16% of total attendances to 24% in 2006, followed by a further 105% increase in interstate and overseas visitation from 2006 to 2008. As well, both programs resulted in a significant financial surplus.
Brett’s Melbourne and Adelaide programs have all met with enthusiastic acclaim from artistic, press and public circles, nationally and internationally, particularly their raft of commissioned world premieres.
Works presented as part of Brett’s Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney Festival programs have seen a festival record of 67 nominations for the Helpmann Awards (Australia’s national performing arts awards, akin to Britain’s Olivier Awards), winning 15.
These 15 Helpmann Awards have included the nation’s Best Opera (Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s ‘Flight’), Best New Australian Work (ADT’s ‘Devolution’), Best Dance Production (the Australian debut of Shen Wei Dance Arts), Best Classical Concert (‘12 Angry Cellos’), Best Special Event (Brett’s in-depth ‘Celebrating Samuel Beckett’ project), and Best Physical or Visual Theatre Production (‘Same, same but Different’).
For Sydney Festival, Brett’s four programs included 37 world premieres; saw the Festival double its box office attendances; enjoyed four successive significant financial surpluses; recorded a 30% increase in attendances to free outdoor events; established satellite Festival precincts in Greater Sydney; established a loyal audience following in the 18 to 35 age group; was voted Sydney’s Best and Most Popular Event by the Sydney Chamber of Commerce; and was twice named the Best Event in New South Wales - in 2003 and 2005 - by NSW Tourism.
At the Sydney Opera House, through his Sydney Festivals, Brett has presented more events across more artforms than any other outside producer (including dance, drama, opera, music-theatre, visual arts, classical music, contemporary music, jazz, design, film, multi-media events, large-scale sculptural installations and outdoor spectacles).
In Melbourne, Brett’s vision secured the Festival’s first principal partner in eight years with Foxtel, and in Adelaide Brett secured with Adelaide Bank the largest arts sponsorship in the history of the State of South Australia, and one of the largest in Australia, at $3 million over three festivals with an option on a further two festivals through to 2014.
During his Sydney Festival tenure, two of Sydney Festival’s corporate partnerships were honoured with Australian Business Arts Foundation (ABAF) Awards including Australia’s Corporate Partnership of the Year, from a total of three nominations.
Prior to joining Sydney Festival, Brett was Artistic Associate, Literary Manager and Deputy General Manager of the Sydney Theatre Company, then Australia's largest theatre company. He was also dramaturg of more than a dozen Sydney Theatre Company productions and workshops.
Brett has been a recipient of several awards including two International Society for the Performing Arts Awards (1993 and 1994), the prestigious Mobil Fellowship in Arts Administration (1991), a Qantas International Theatre Scholarship (1987), and a Brisbane Writers' Festival Award for Poetry (1981). In 1989 Brett edited (with Theresa Willsteed) the award-winning book Sydney Theatre Company 1978 to 1988.
Brett has also been a Reader for the Australian National Playwrights' Centre (1988-1989), a Script Assessor for the Australia Council (1989-1990), and a member of several bodies, among them the Sydney Writers' Festival Committee (1995-1997), the NSW Centenary of Federation Arts and Events Committee (1998-2001), the Board of the Australian Theatre for Young People (2000-2003), the Committee for Sydney (2001-2005), the Arts Advisory Group of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (2004-2006), and he is currently a member of the Artists’ Advisory Panel of the Bell Shakespeare Company and a member of the Board of Directors of SBS Subscription TV Ltd.
In 2005 Brett was named by the Australian Financial Review Magazine as one of the 20 Australians across all fields to be watched for their impact on society in the next 20 years, and in 2007 he was named by ABC’s Limelight magazine as one of the five most influential arts figures in Australia.
Most recently he was one of twelve eminent Australians appointed by the Australian Financial Review Magazine to its Power Panel; was a participant in the Australian Government’s 2020 Summit; was appointed by the Australia Council as a national Ambassador for the We All Play a Part initiative encouraging nation-wide community involvement in the arts; was appointed by the Harold Mitchell Foundation to be the selector for the Foundation’s annual Arts Fellowship; and recently completed a tour of China at the invitation of the Chinese Government as part of a delegation of eminent Australian arts practitioners.
Brett’s primary advocacy within the contemporary arts is for excellence, innovation, accessibility and dialogue between all artforms in the Australian cultural landscape.
Brett can be contacted via the Publicity Department, Melbourne Festival, Level 5, 180 Flinders Street, Melbourne 3000, Australia.