Adelaide festivals: Food for Thought

A little fat, a little sugar, a little protein and a lot of water is one way to describe what makes us human. Even if this seems more like a list of ingredients that make the requisite elements of jelly. Jascha Boyce and Joren Dawson, of Gravity & Other Myths circus company, have exactly jelly in mind to help explain to children who we are.

Their show, JELLY OR JAM, promises to explore what goes on inside young heads, and old ones, when we're feeling emotions from anger to love. Add in some spectacular acrobatics and this all sounds an unusual way of explaining human identity to kids, perhaps. But the show is a tactile and sensory experience as well as a brainy one. In other words, a great excuse to get very messy with jelly.

And there are more untraditional ways to enjoy a meal and a show during the festival season. Hannah Rohrlach and Stephanie Daughtry are so good at throwing dinner parties their Post Dining evenings have become a new art form. At the 2017 Fringe the show picked up an Adelaide Fringe weekly winner award. Back then, it was a feast inspired by the themes of the Foresight 2050 project: pairing foods that represented growth, catastrophe, restraint and transformation. This year, they're working with the Australian String Quartet to host one of the Close Quarters series. ASQ bring chamber music out of its usual settings and into new places. Pitchfork offers a chance to find out which foods provide the perfect side dish to Schubert.

Political debate seems more and more entrenched. Food may offer a way into a better discussion. And what better place to do so than at a festival. After all, feasts and festivals share the same root word.

Political writer Annabel Crabb is serving a civilised conversation by hosting one of the Adelaide Festival's returning Long Lunches. It'll be a finale to a busy festival for Crabb, who also appears at the Fringe and is delivering the International Women's Day address at WOMADelaide. As the host of ABC's Kitchen Cabinet, Crabb is ideally placed to talk about the world's chaotic politics while breaking bread. She's joined at the lunch by former foreign minister Julie Bishop.