Q&A with Marnie Karmelita of Ten Days on the Island

Hi Marnie, you’ve had a globetrotting career running festivals in Perth, New Zealand and the US. How on earth did you find yourself running a major arts festival from a tiny beach on Tassie’s North West Coast?

We moved here from New Zealand so I could take up the role of Artistic Director at Ten Days on the Island. The head office is in Burnie so I was looking for a temporary Airbnb that could accommodate us and our very large German wirehaired pointer, Charles.

When we first arrived, we found an Airbnb near Hawley Beach, which is just one of the most stunning beaches along that coastline. My partner, Glen, who's from New Zealand, and I were both completely blown away by the landscape. Every day driving around feels jaw-dropping.

I’ve spent much of my life working in small and remote places and this was definitely one of the attractions of the role with Ten Days. I feel strongly that you can find expansive vision and innovation in places like Lutruwita/Tasmania.

How has that sense of jaw-dropping wonder influenced the program for Ten Days on the Island?

Stepping into that landscape, I immediately felt the vision for the festival taking shape. And then also, making my way around the island and meeting people, meeting artists, I realised, that the landscape needed to be part of the curatorial vision for the festival.

I think you can see that coming through strongly, not just in the look and feel for the festival this year, but also very much across the program as well.

The festival website and brochure are artworks in their own right – so brilliant, literally! What can you tell us about the artist?

Futago are our design partner, and through that partnership with them, we came across the work of Aldous Kelly, who's one of their in-house designers.

He has this whole world living inside of him, which is a surreal, quite dark, but also quirky place. And we realised that his creative world really reflects the island and the way that we live in the landscape.

The brochure and website and our highlights animation are our way of introducing Aldous and his artistry to our audiences.

When we were coming up with the concept, we were thinking about bioluminescence and the Aurora and the strange but really beautiful animals, some of which glow in the dark under UV light.

We just kept coming back to the idea that this place is different to anywhere else in the world, and the people who are from here and the people who choose to live here are also different, and do things a little differently, and see things a little differently.

We’re now going to work with Aldous across the next two years to create an artwork for the 2027 program.

Author and activist Hannah Maloney (of Gardening Australia fame) has a show in the festival called Time Rebel, which is described as ‘A climate justice cabaret’. Please tell us more.

Most people know Hannah as a writer and a tv presenter, but in Time Rebel we're going to see her perform in a way that she's never performed before. She's such a gifted and inspiring public speaker, but she's going to get up on stage with a whole bunch of local choirs, and she's going to tell her life story and what inspired her to become an activist.

She's even going to join those choirs singing some amazing music. It's going to be so much fun.

You’re also teaming up with our Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra musicians for a concert on 29 March, Four Last Songs, conducted by our Chief Conductor and Artistic Director Eivind Aadland. How do you think audiences will respond to this program featuring a huge orchestra?

I feel like this is a great concert for people who may not ordinarily come along to the orchestra, because of the oversized orchestra through the partnership with the Australian National Academy of Music.

Nearly 100 musicians all coming together and then the extraordinary voice of soprano Siobhan Stagg, it’s going to create an incredible sound. I find that quite stirring and it’s a perfect fit for our festival program.

What else is on the program? And what’s this about a giant swing in Civic Square in Launnie?

It's nine meters high. It's a swing for adults and everybody. Kids are certainly welcome to jump on as well, but really, it's about reminding us as adults what it feels like to fly through the air and kind of be at one with the world around you.

Then in Hobart, in Bellerive we have Taniwha (pronounced Tan-e-far) Time Machine, which is a huge colourful installation by the Dreamgirls Art Collective from Aotearoa New Zealand.

As for the rest of the program, we have intimate stories told by the amazing actors of Forced Entertainment, who have taken 12 of Shakespeare's tales and reframed them in everyday language, using everyday objects as the characters.

And we have a beautiful stage adaptation of David Malouf’s An Imaginary Life, which is performed by one actor and a live musician. In that show there's one stage light, so you feel like you're sitting around a fire and hearing this tale of the Roman poet Ovid and his discovery of a ‘wolf child’, a child who's been brought up by wolves.

All of these works have been designed to unlock people's hearts and emotions and certainly to get people thinking.

Thank you Marnie!

Discover the full program at www.tendays.org.au